April reading – Pre-FFW

First, some Holy Week/Easter pieces – Wes Hill's piece on how Easter vindicates the foolishness of the Cross is especially good:
Wesley Hill, CT, Easter Fool's Day
Malcolm Guite, Good Friday - Stations of the Cross Sonnets
Tish Harrison Warren, CT, The Epic Jesus Follower Fail

Jon Meacham, NYT, Jesus Died Only to Rise Again. Where Did the Concept of Resurrection Come From?
Mike Frost, The only woman to give evidence at the trial of Christ

Some pieces on Jordan Peterson and the wider crises in masculinity that work to increase his appeal:

Scott Alexander, SlateStarCodex, Book Review: Twelve Rules for Life
Ross Douthat, NYT, God and Men and Jordan Peterson

Abby Perry & Kathryn Watson, Christ & Pop Culture, Rearing Boys to Be Peacemakers in a World Bent on War
Pankaj Mishra, The Guardian, The crisis in modern masculinity

Liz Bruenig's spiritual advice is good, both in the generalized form she offers everyone in the Medium piece, and the specific admonishment to the American Church for the Post. Another Post piece on religious literacy, and The Atlantic on the adaptation of Coptic Christianity in the US:
Elizabeth Bruenig, Medium, It Will Happen Again and Again
Elizabeth Bruenig, WaPo, Evangelicals' support for Trump will cost them – spiritually
Christine Emba, WaPo, You should read the Bible
Shira Telushkin, The Atlantic, The Americanization of an Ancient Faith

Tech: Silicon Valley is enough of a cultural juggernaut that it needs to step up w/r/t its responsibility as a cultural source (Bogost). Currently, however, it seems its complacency has trickled down – even to church pews – and become into a degraded culture of trolling (Morse). Much of this trolling is related to Freudian notions of taboo, causing repressed older people to lash out like adolescents against perceived cultural restrictions, to the detriment of their family connections (Renner). Deleting one's account is an insufficient and individualized solution in the absence of government regulation (Vaidhyanathan, Glaser). Our social media use should be stewarded wisely to help us to grow in virtue and work towards the common good of our online connections (Sacasas).
Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, Silicon Valley 'Has No Words'
Greg Morse, Desiring God, Internet Trolls in Church Clothes: How to Comment the Truth in Love
Nausicaa Renner, N Plus One, Trolling and Taboo
Siva Vaidhyanathan, NYT, Don't Delete Facebook. Do Something About It.
April Glaser, Slate, The Problem with #DeleteFacebook
LM Sacasas, The Frailest Thing, Vows of Digital Poverty

Also tech-related: How new technologies seek to advance our understanding of emotions and their expression; how we look futilely to fantasies of technological truth; how trying to program an overarching system of social trust is inherently problematic:

Christine Rosen, The Hedgehog Review, Expose Thyself! On the Digitally Revealed Life
Megan Garber, The Atlantic, The Lie Detector in the Age of Alternative Facts
Mara Hvistendahl, Wired, Inside China's Vast New Experiment in Social Ranking

Cities: Two great pieces from Duke Kwon on Christians coming into and leaving cities, and another on the challenges of missional urban churches and gentrification. Photos of how cities struck by rioting in 1968 have changed since. Self-driving cars are bad, just like all other cars; walk instead:
Duke Kwon, WaPo, The tragedy to communities when church buildings are demolished to make condos
Duke Kwon, TGC, What We Miss When We Say We're "For The City"
Taelor Gray, The Witness, Missional. Black. Gentrifiers?
Latoya Ruby Frazier, The Atlantic, The Geography of Oppression
Matthew Robare, The American Conservative, Self-Driving Cars and the Hostile Takeover of Our Streets

Antonia Malchik, Aeon, The End of Walking

Secular pieces on race: Desmond's has a good goal (analyzing the social changes over recent decades that have prevented or discouraged rioting, leading to citizens more complacent in their marginalization), but it ends up weird, almost as though he takes rioting to be a good in itself:

Matthew Desmond, The Atlantic, Where Have All the Rioters Gone?
Bree Newsome, The Atlantic, The Civil Rights Movement's Generation Gap
Daniel Harris, Baltimore Sun, If Hopkins creates an armed police force, people like me will be at risk

Religious pieces on race: 

Nicole Massie Martin, CT, King's Dream Succeeds If We Study the Bible
Paul Tripp, My Confession: Toward a More Balanced Gospel
Sarah Shin, Evangelicals for Social Action, The Limits of Colorblindness
Thabiti Anyabwile, TGC, We Await Repentance for Assassinating Dr. King
Timothy Isaiah Cho, Faithfully Magazine, Interview: James K.A. Smith On Public Theology And Racial Justice

Three pieces on John Perkins and his new book (Kwon's engaging review is the best):

Duke Kwon, CT, John Perkins Has Hope for Racial Reconciliation. Do We?

Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra, TGC, The Final Call of John Perkins

Holly Meyer, Tennessean, Why a leading voice on racial reconciliation says evangelicals aren't focusing enough on unity

Other social issues:
Stephanie Sommers, Public Justice Review, Why Immigration Is First About Families, Not Economics or Security
Ross Douthat, NYT, Among the Abortion Extremists

Reviews: A bad Christian movie, a good Christian movie, and finding the faith in a good non-Christian movie; new takes on Deneen and Robinson; a new book about Erasmus and Luther:
Alissa Wilkinson, Vox, How the Christian movie series God's Not Dead fails to be Christian
Ann Hornaday, WaPo, ‘Paul, Apostle of Christ’ portrays the early Christian community at its most fragile
Tara Isabella Burton, Vox, Great movies about faith are hard to come by. Enter Blue Velvet.

Christine Emba, WaPo, Liberalism is Loneliness

Wesley Hill, CT, Marilynne Robinson's Celebration of Humanity is Brilliant but Incomplete

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, NYT, Erasmus vs. Luther – A Rift That Defined the Course of Western Civilization

Philosophy:
Amia Srinivasan, New York Review of Books, More Equal Than Others
Diana Popescu, Aeon, What we talk about when we talk about post-truth

Miscellaneous:
Mark Bauerlein, Chronicle of Higher Education, Is This the Hardest Course in the Humanities?

DL Mayfield, A Response to the Failed Missionary Podcast
Alex Heard, Outside, Where in the Hell Is Our Cat?
David Auerbach, Slate, The Most Terrifying Thought Experiment of All Time
Austin Kleon, Like-minded vs. Like-hearted

Jia Tolentino, New Yorker, The Gig Economy Celebrates Working Yourself to Death

Marcelo Gleiser, NPR, Teaching and Learning at the Boundaries of 2 Cultures