{"id":4882,"date":"2018-03-09T20:59:07","date_gmt":"2018-03-10T04:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=4882"},"modified":"2018-03-09T20:59:07","modified_gmt":"2018-03-10T04:59:07","slug":"things-glen-found-interesting-volume-142","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2018\/03\/09\/things-glen-found-interesting-volume-142","title":{"rendered":"Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 142"},"content":{"rendered":"

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On Fridays I share articles\/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions. If you read something fascinating please pass it my way.<\/p>\n

Things Glen Found Interesting<\/h3>\n
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  1. A Quiet Exodus: Why Black Worshipers Are Leaving White Evangelical Churches<\/a> (Campbell Robertson, NY Times): \u201c<\/span>As the headlines of the outside world turned to police shootings and protest, little changed inside majority-white churches. Black congregants said that beyond the occasional vague prayer for healing a divided country, or a donation drive for law enforcement, they heard nothing.\u201d<\/span> The dynamic described is real and one I have personally witnessed.  All in all a pretty good article although it has a few glaring blind spots, mostly because it focuses almost exclusively on those who chose to leave and doesn\u2019t tell the story of those who chose to stay.<\/li>\n
  2. And while we\u2019re talking about race: \u201cI Hope We Have No Crackers Here\u201d: EBF Staff Sanction Racial Slur<\/span><\/a> (Anna Mitchell & Philip Clark, Stanford Review): \u201cYou would think that residents of a supposedly progressive and racially conscious house would jump to remove a racial epithet from house property.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. This is also relevant to the first article: In Donald Trump, Evangelicals Have Found Their President<\/a> (David Brody, New York Times): \u201cIn fact, evangelicals take the long view on Mr. Trump; they afford him grace when he doesn\u2019t deserve it. Few dispute that Mr. Trump may need a little more grace than others. But evangelicals truly do believe that all people are flawed, and yet Christ offers them grace. Shouldn\u2019t they do the same for the president?\u201d<\/li>\n
  4. This Is How To Pay College Athletes<\/span><\/a> (Patrick Hruby, Deadspin): \u201cBecause here\u2019s the thing: nobody asks <\/span>how\u2019s it going to work<\/span><\/i> when it comes to, say, paying dentists. Or investment bankers. Or programmers. Or professors. Or for that matter college coaches, athletic directors, and school presidents. There are no master compensation plans for those and hundreds of other lines of work because <\/span>there\u2019s no need for a plan<\/span><\/i>. The very notion of coming up with a complicated, centralized set of rules dictating how much plumbers can earn and under what circumstances they can earn it would be un-American\u2026\u201d <\/span><\/li>\n
  5. Was the apostle Paul married? Yes, he was. Here\u2019s how we know.<\/span><\/a> (Denny Burk, Personal Blog):  \u201cIt may be that Paul\u2019s words have implications for all who are unmarried, but I think Paul\u2019s reference to the unmarried refers to widowers specifically. There are a number of reasons for this. Not the least of which is the fact that the Greek word for \u2018widower\u2019 was rarely used in ancient Greek and was never used in the Koine period\u2026. Paul uses the term \u2018unmarried\u2019 two other times in this chapter to refer to those who were previously married.\u201d The author is a professor of Biblical studies. <\/span><\/li>\n
  6. Leaving Blokesworld: Why You Can\u2019t Have Your Porn and #MeToo<\/span><\/a> (Meagan Tyler, Australian Broadcasting Company: Religion and Ethics): \u201cIn one of the few attempts to link #MeToo and porn culture, two Dutch filmm<\/span>akers asked men to try and differentiate between women\u2019s accounts of sexual assault and scripts from porn films. The comparison highlights the difficultly in discerning any difference\u2026. So, for all the men who have been asking what they can do in light of #MeToo, here\u2019s a place start: stop linking your sexual arousal to women\u2019s sexual subordination. Stop watching porn.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n
  7. The Center Left Is On Life Support<\/span><\/a> (Michael Brendan Dougherty, National Review): \u201cAs liberals backed away from the hard politics of material redistribution, they found themselves trying to redistribute the honorific resources of society. Instead of dramatically expanding day care, you could talk about single mothers as heroes.\u201d The author is on the right and is diagnosing a problem he sees across the aisle. His comments about redistributing honorifics are insightful and remind me of Tyler Cowen\u2019s observation that politics is often more about raising or lowering some group\u2019s social status than actually solving pressing problems. <\/span><\/li>\n
  8. What\u2019s an Inclusion Rider? Let the Professor Who Helped Invent the Concept Explain<\/span><\/a> (Rebecca Keegan, Vanity Fair): <\/span>\u201c<\/span>Smith said that an inclusion rider is a provision added to actors\u2019 contracts to ensure that casting on productions is more representative. \u2018It stipulates that in small and supporting roles, characters should reflect the world we live in,\u2019 she said. That includes 50 percent gender parity, 40 percent inclusion for people of color, 5 percent L.G.B.T.Q., and 20 percent disabled.\u201d This is a clever maneuver. Unsurprisingly, there does not seem to be a provision for highlighting evangelical Christians according to our proportional representation in society. What if in every sitcom there was a Ned Flanders character?<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Less Serious Things Which Also Interested\/Amused Glen<\/h3>\n