Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 22

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

To that end, on week­ends (usu­al­ly Fri­days but last night we had alum­ni over for home­com­ing and it turned into a five hour par­ty, so this time Sat­ur­day) I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. Mus­lim Migrants, Meet Chris­t­ian Gyp­sies (Jil­lian Mel­chior, Wall Street Jour­nal): this is pret­ty beau­ti­ful.
  2. Moral Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Emo­tion­al Rejec­tion of God (William Lane Craig): Craig, who we host­ed on cam­pus years ago, answers a tough ques­tion. I think it’s amus­ing how often he directs the read­er to anoth­er one of his books, but I don’t guess he had an alter­na­tive if he want­ed to keep his answer short enough to be read­able.
  3. Hook­ing Up Is Easy To Do (Katie Van Syck­le, NY Mag):  “I’ve come back to my alma mater because it sits at the cross­roads of two major themes of mod­ern-day col­lege sex: hookup cul­ture, which seems as ram­pant as I remem­ber it, and sex­u­al assault… Late­ly, researchers have been mak­ing an obvi­ous but con­tro­ver­sial point: that these two trend lines are in fact relat­ed — that hook­ing up puts stu­dents at high­er risk of hav­ing non­con­sen­su­al sex, and that there are ele­ments of this cul­ture… that are more com­pli­cat­ed than ‘yes means yes.’”
  4. How Friend­ships Change In Adult­hood (Julie Beck, The Atlantic): there’s a lot in this arti­cle. I was struck by the idea that friend­ships are either active, dor­mant, or com­mem­o­ra­tive.
  5. Joel Osteen: Would Jesus Christ Be A Good Pres­i­dent? (David Wal­lis, New York Observ­er): the title is super-click-bait. It’s a short, inter­est­ing inter­view with Joel Osteen, pas­tor of the largest church in Amer­i­ca.
  6. Trea­sures On Earth: How Reli­gion Is Redis­trib­ut­ing The World’s Wealth (Mor­gan Lee, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): mis­lead­ing title, inter­est­ing data.
  7. Quick Links:

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 21

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. How big of a deal do you have to be for POTUS to inter­view you? Pres­i­dent Oba­ma & Mar­i­lynne Robin­son: A Con­ver­sa­tion In Iowa (NY Review of Books). You might recall that Robin­son is speak­ing at Stan­ford soon and also that I men­tioned her essay “Fear“ a few emails back.
  2. Won­der­ing why peo­ple are flee­ing Syr­ia? Check out Syria’s War: A Five Minute His­to­ry (a Vox video). This is real­ly well-done. 
  3. There is also vio­lence erupt­ing in Israel. For­eign Pol­i­cy asks Can Any­one Pre­vent A Third Intifa­da?  Inci­den­tal­ly, if you won­der why peo­ple are skep­ti­cal of the way news con­cern­ing Israel is report­ed, take a look at Return­ing to the Copy Desk, Briefly (Kevin Williamson, Nation­al Review). It is a take­down of a NY Times arti­cle show­ing how much bias can creep into an appar­ent­ly objec­tive arti­cle (this is from the right cri­tiquing the left — for coun­terex­am­ples search for clips from the Dai­ly Show). Bot­tom line: it’s real­ly hard to find trust­wor­thy news about Israel.
  4. Lying About Our Reli­gion, and Oth­er Prob­lems With Polling (Reli­gion Dis­patch­es). There real­ly is a prob­lem devel­op­ing with polling, which is bad news because we rely upon polling in our nation­al life to tell us what the pub­lic thinks. Nate Sil­ver is also wor­ried about this — Polling Is Get­ting Hard­er, But It’s A Vital Check On Pow­er (FiveThir­tyEight).
    • An insight­ful obser­va­tion from the “Lying About Our Reli­gion” arti­cle: “In a democ­ra­cy with hun­dreds of mil­lions of peo­ple, how do you know what the pub­lic thinks and wants? How do you fig­ure out what binds them togeth­er, besides an annu­al oblig­a­tion to the IRS and a love of fire­works? In short: how do you know what the pub­lic is? Like many hard ques­tions, these prob­lems have been ren­dered large­ly invis­i­ble, in no small part because “The Pub­lic” and “The Amer­i­can Peo­ple” are favorite fic­tion­al char­ac­ters for politi­cians and jour­nal­ists, who speak of them with­out a trace of pre­ci­sion. So let’s indulge in a quick real­i­ty check. The Super Bowl—that nation­al spec­ta­cle that unites us around the flick­er­ing LCD hearth—had 115 mil­lion view­ers in the Unit­ed States last Feb­ru­ary; in oth­er words, near­ly two-thirds of us weren’t watch­ing it. The most-viewed polit­i­cal spec­ta­cle of the year, the State of the Union address, draws around 10% of the pop­u­la­tion. Barack Oba­ma won the 2012 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion with 62 mil­lion votes, mean­ing that few­er than 20% of us vot­ed for him. The peo­ple have spoken…kind of.”
  5. Quick links:

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 20

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. From the Glen-allud­ed-to-this-in-his-ser­mon depart­ment:
  2. From the cur­rent events depart­ment
  3. From the all-things-sex­u­al depart­ment:
  4. From the Stan­ford depart­ment: this Dai­ly op-ed caught my eye: Peti­tion To Stu­dent Activ­i­ties and Lead­er­ship to End Open Mem­ber­ship. There was a swift nuh-uh from the admin­is­tra­tion. The peti­tion itself is on change.org. For the record, Chi Alpha has no desire to exclude peo­ple from our min­istry. I do, how­ev­er, think that Stanford’s open mem­ber­ship pol­i­cy need­less­ly abridges stu­dents’ con­sti­tu­tion­al right to free­dom of asso­ci­a­tion. As a pri­vate insti­tu­tion, Stan­ford is allowed to do that… but it is unwise to do so.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 19

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. There was a shoot­ing at a col­lege in Ore­gon yes­ter­day. There’s a reli­gious angle to this sto­ry, but the details are still not clear.
  2. For com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent news, read Googling For God (NY Times, Seth Stephens-Davi­d­owitz): file under “interesting but not that sur­pris­ing” (although I am sur­prised at the rel­a­tive posi­tions of ques­tions 1 and 2  — I assumed they were swapped)
  3. Pope Fran­cis and the Not-Quite-Sec­u­lar West (NY Times, Ross Douthat): Secularism’s grip on Amer­i­ca is weak­er than it appears.
  4. Stop The Robot Apoc­a­lypse (Amia Srini­vasan, Lon­don Review of Books): the title is mis­lead­ing — this is an insight­ful cri­tique of the effec­tive altru­ism move­ment from the left.
  5. Huh. The Cor­re­la­tions Between Arts and Crafts and a Nobel Prize (Rosie Cima, Priceo­nom­ics).

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 18

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. Down­ward­ly Mobile For Jesus (Lawrence Lana­han, Al Jazeera): this is a real­ly well-writ­ten and engag­ing sto­ry that weaves togeth­er faith, race, pover­ty and jus­tice.
  2. If you are in the social sci­ences, read this jour­nal arti­cle from Behav­ioral and Brain Sci­ences: Polit­i­cal Diver­si­ty Will Improve Social Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence (sum­ma­ry by one of the authors here). There is an arti­cle with relat­ed insights at The Amer­i­can Soci­ol­o­gist: How Ide­ol­o­gy Has Hin­dered Soci­o­log­i­cal Insight. There are many implied reli­gious issues at play besides the polit­i­cal ones which are the focus of these two pieces.
  3. Sad truths: The Decline and Fall Of Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Debate (John David­son, The Fed­er­al­ist). David­son says “our frag­men­ta­tion and insu­lar­i­ty has reached a dan­ger­ous tip­ping point: we no longer agree on what’s real.” Read espe­cial­ly the sec­tion labeled “Take Two Recent Examples.”
  4. A sur­pris­ingly fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle: More Tit­il­lat­ed Than Thou: How the Amish Con­quered the Evan­gel­i­cal Romance Mar­ket (Ann Newu­mann, The Baf­fler). Real­ly.
  5. An unex­pect­ed per­spec­tive: Why The Best Thing This Gen­er­a­tion Can Do Is Put Down The Drink (Alex­ia LaFe­ta, Elite Dai­ly): the com­ments sec­tion, unsur­pris­ing­ly, is filled with vit­ri­olic objections. Some of the lan­guage in the arti­cle, inci­den­tal­ly, is less than refined and gen­teel.
  6. This is Timi’s mom: Funke Opeke: Nige­ri­a’s Cyber Rev­o­lu­tion­ary (Femke van Zei­jl, Al Jazeera). I hope her name is pro­nounced the way I am pro­nounc­ing it in my head, because that would be awe­some. Also, Timi’s mom is a boss.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 17

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

  1. Fear (Mar­i­lynne Robin­son, NY Review Of Books): I don’t often find overt­ly the­o­log­i­cal pieces in the New York Review of Books, much less ones whose open­ing lines are, “America is a Chris­t­ian coun­try. This is true in a num­ber of senses.” She’s gonna get some hate mail.
  2. Some things that made me chuck­le:
  3. Why Do Good Uni­ver­si­ties Tend To Be Good At Every­thing? (Quo­ra ques­tion): Short but insight­ful.
  4. What Stan­ford Taught Me About Grace (Seth Vil­le­gas, per­son­al blog): Seth is an alum­nus of our min­istry who is cur­rent­ly doing grad work at Fuller The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary.
  5. Reli­gion and the Repub­lic (David Forte, With­er­spoon Insti­tute): the author (a law pro­fes­sor) explains the impor­tance of reli­gious speech in the pub­lic square. This seems like a good place to men­tion one of my favorite aca­d­e­m­ic papers: The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy.
  6. From the I‑know-I-shared-this-last-week-but-want-to-share-it-with-the-new-stu­dents depart­ment: How To Stay Chris­t­ian On Cam­pus (David Math­is, Desir­ing God): I expect­ed some­thing very dif­fer­ent than what I got. Rec­om­mend­ed.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 16

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

  1. From the rec­om­mend­ed-by-a-stu­dent depart­ment: How To Stay Chris­t­ian On Cam­pus (David Math­is, Desir­ing God): I expect­ed some­thing very dif­fer­ent than what I got. Rec­om­mend­ed.
  2. From the per­ilous times depart­ment:
  3. From the unex­pect­ed-insights-from his­to­ry-depart­ment: Morals Leg­is­la­tion, Revis­it­ed (Books and Cul­ture, David Skeel): Books and Cul­ture is an evan­gel­i­cal ver­sion of the NY Times Review of Books. This arti­cle is writ­ten by a law prof at Penn review­ing a Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Press book about the evan­gel­i­cal ori­gins of the liv­ing con­sti­tu­tion approach to law.
  4. From the every­body-is-quot­ing-it depart­ment: Microag­gres­sion and Moral Cul­tures (Camp­bell and Man­ning, Com­par­a­tive Soci­ol­o­gy): I have seen so many peo­ple pump­ing this aca­d­e­m­ic arti­cle I am astound­ed. Three to take a look at: Conor Frieder­s­dorf in the Atlantic, Megan McAr­dle in Bloomberg View, and Jonathan Haidt on his per­son­al blog. The orig­i­nal arti­cle is descrip­tive — the response pieces tend to be eval­u­a­tive.
  5. From the prin­ci­ples-you-will-prob­a­bly-need-to-know-one-day depart­ment: When Does Your Reli­gion Legal­ly Excuse You From Doing Part of Your Job? (Wash­ing­ton Post. Eugene Volokh): this one came out right after my last email update. Volokh is a law prof at UCLA.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 15

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

  1. From the help­ing-you-get-bet­ter-grades depart­ment: Here’s The Best Way To Guess Cor­rect­ly On A Mul­ti­ple-Choice Test (Justin Couch­man, Quartz): the author, a psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor, describes a tech­nique you can use to tell whether to trust your first instinct or revise the answer. You’re wel­come.
  2. From the kim-davis-no-rela­tion depart­ment:
  3. From the with-this-ring-I-thee-wed depart­ment:
  4. From the rag­ing-debates-which-enrage-peo­ple depart­ment: Hun­gry For Souls: Was Junipero Ser­ra A Saint? (Gre­go­ry Orfalea, Com­mon­weal): this is a help­ful sum­ma­ry of the case for Junipero Ser­ra. I’m not sure — is it J‑Ro that is named after him, Ser­ra, or both?

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 14

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived athttp://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

  1. From the big-bang-faith depart­ment: May­im Bia­lik: Hol­ly­wood is not friend­ly to peo­ple of faith (Sasha Bogursky, Fox News): Bia­lik, a devout Jew, is an actress on the Big Bang The­o­ry and in real life holds a Ph.D. in neu­ro­science. This inter­view caused such com­ment that she post­ed a fol­low-up on her blog: Where Faith Meets Sci­ence.

  2. From the his­tor­i­cal analy­sis depart­ment: Did Reli­gion Make The Civ­il War Worse? (Allen Guel­zo, The Atlantic): the author is a respect­ed pro­fes­sor with a sem­i­nary back­ground. I’m not sure what I think of his argu­ment, but I did find it inter­est­ing. The arti­cle made me think about Lincoln’s Sec­ond Inau­gur­al Address, which is always worth a re-read.

  3. From the hap­py news depart­ment: Chris­t­ian Mis­sions and the Spread of Democ­ra­cy (Greg Scan­dlen, The Fed­er­al­ist): This is a sum­ma­ry of some rather won­der­ful research Robert Wood­ber­ry pub­lished in The Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Review back in 2012: The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy. If it looks famil­iar it’s because I allude to it from time to time in my ser­mons and con­ver­sa­tions.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 13

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

  1. From the provoca­tive-but-not-ful­ly-explained depart­ment: Maris­sa John­son, Part of a New, Dis­rup­tive Gen­er­a­tion of Activists (Nina Shapiro, Seat­tle Times): turns out that Maris­sa John­son (the Black Lives Mat­ter activist famous for dis­rupt­ing a Bernie Sanders speech) attends an evan­gel­i­cal church and stud­ied the­ol­o­gy in col­lege. Fas­ci­nat­ing pro­file, although it leaves me with many ques­tions.
  2. From the friends-in-high-places depart­ment: The Late, Great Stephen Col­bert (Joel Lovell, GQ): Col­bert has deep faith, and it real­ly comes out in this inter­view. It’s long, so if you just want the faith bit search for the phrase “He lift­ed his arms as if to take in the office” and start read­ing there.
  3. From the spir­i­tu­al insight depart­ment:
  4. From the peo­ple-of-this-world-are-shrewd depart­ment: Effec­tive Altru­ism: Where Char­i­ty and Ratio­nal­i­ty Meet (Tyler Cowen, NY Times): there is noth­ing overt­ly Chris­t­ian about this piece, but the sub­ject should be of great inter­est to Chris­tians. We are called to give to spread the gospel and help the poor — and the Church can do bet­ter at both.
  5. From the pol­i­tics-and-the-pul­pit depart­ment: Ten Things To Remem­ber As the Pres­i­den­tial Cam­paign Sea­son Gets Into Full Swing (Kevin DeY­oung, per­son­al blog): DeY­oung is a well-known pas­tor and author. Points 6, 7, and 8 are espe­cial­ly good.
  6. From the unex­pect­ed bed­fel­lows depart­ment: Scalia Gets It Pret­ty Much Right (Stan­ley Fish, Huff­in­g­ton Post): I share this most­ly because famed post­mod­ern (or anti-foun­da­tion­al­ist) the­o­rist Stan­ley Fish is one of the most unlike­ly defend­ers of the famed orig­i­nal­ist Jus­tice Scalia I can imag­ine. The world is an odd place. Be sure to read the fol­low-up Respond To The Col­umn That Was Actu­al­ly Writ­ten.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles.