{"id":7525,"date":"2024-10-11T12:42:39","date_gmt":"2024-10-11T19:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=7525"},"modified":"2024-10-11T12:42:39","modified_gmt":"2024-10-11T19:42:39","slug":"things-glen-found-interesting-volume-473","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2024\/10\/11\/things-glen-found-interesting-volume-473","title":{"rendered":"Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 473"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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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\n\n\n

This is volume 473, the largest known number whose square (223729) uses different digits than when it is raised to the 4th power (50054665441).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things Glen Found Interesting<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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  1. The Evangelistic Shift<\/a> (Jake Meador, Mere Orthodoxy): \u201cSo what accounts for this shift and how should Christians respond? The answer to the first question might be surprisingly simple: The shift dates back to the growing awareness, acceptance, and promotion of transgender sexual identities in mainstream American culture. This shift, dating to the mid 2010s and probably peaking in the early 2020s, did two things that fundamentally changed the evangelistic landscape for Christians in America.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Willful ignorance of the male suicide crisis<\/a> (Richard V. Reeves, Substack): \u201cIt\u2019s essentially impossible to come away from this [New Yorker] essay without a strong sense that the teen suicide crisis is, in fact, a teen<\/em> girl<\/em> suicide crisis. That is absolutely false. In fact, for every five teenagers dying from suicide, four are likely to be boys.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Is Evangelicalism Really Protestant?<\/a> (Aaron Renn, Substack): \u201cEvery time I read a book that describes the religious history of America that talks about the nature of Protestantism in the country, it strikes me that the Protestantism of the American past is alien to today\u2019s evangelicalism. They are different enough to raise the question as to whether or not American evangelicalism is actually Protestant in important ways.\u2026 <\/strong>All is not well for American Christianity to say the least. It\u2019s easy to point at trends in the world to explain this, but given the manifest and widely publicized problems within evangelicalism, I would submit that at least as much time should go into introspection and internal reform.\u201d<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Yes, Third-Trimester Abortions Are Happening in America<\/a> (Emma Camp, The Atlantic): \u201c\u2026Colorado, which is home to clinics that perform third-trimester abortions, recorded 137 third-trimester abortions in 2023. That\u2019s only one state\u2014eight other states, plus Washington, D.C., have no restrictions on third-trimester abortions. Just a few minutes from my office building in D.C., a clinic offers abortions up to nearly 32 weeks. In nearby Bethesda, Maryland, a clinic performs abortions up to 35 weeks\u2019 gestation.\u2026 Americans are broadly uncomfortable with third-trimester abortions. A 2023 Gallup poll found that although more than two-thirds of Americans believe abortion should be legal in the first trimester, just 22 percent think it should be legal in the third. And a 2021 Associated Press poll found that just 8 percent of respondents believe that third-trimester abortions should be legal in all cases.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. A Defense of Legacy Admissions, the Surprising Engine of Meritocracy<\/a> (Teddy Ganea, Stanford Review): \u201cThe purpose of college admissions isn\u2019t to create a new elite from scratch. It\u2019s to meld meritorious non-elites with the existing elite, to incorporate fresh talent and ideas into the highest echelons of power. It should be a win-win-win: established elites benefit from new merit, new merit benefits from elite connections and resources, and society benefits from a more meritocratic elite. Legacy admissions is a prerequisite for this mission statement, because you can\u2019t meld together two groups if one of them is missing.\u2026 Critics of legacy admissions ignore the key reality of human history: that the existing elite is almost always deeply entrenched, and breaking into it requires more than just individual talent \u2014 it requires access. And this is where legacy admissions play their most crucial role: by enabling meritorious non-elites to mix with the existing elite, they open up the real opportunity for upward mobility.\u201d