The Friday Focus #9: Baptisification, Democratic Resilience, and
Hey friends,
Happy Friday!
A bit of a shorter post this Friday. Earlier this week I talked about Biden's pardon of his son Hunter, an attempted coup in South Korea, and what they mean for the stability of democracy.
Here’s everything else I wanted to share this week:
Baptisification Takes Over (17 minutes): This prescient article from decades ago excellently explains the process by which the evangelical church has metastasized into something unrecognizable. Baptisification is effective at driving recruitment, but its tribalistic nature sows the seeds of the church's demise.
Are we exaggerating populism’s threat to democracy? (12 minutes): It's easy for those of us constantly watching the news to fall into a cycle of doomerism about the future of our republic. But this book review makes some very strong points about why we might not need to feel to much despair. A great follow-up to Tuesday's post.
❝
A bad guy just died
They're making memes about it
Nothing matters now
Go fuck myself?
I already did
My friend lost his head
And what'd I do about it?
And we could laugh about the thoughts that I've been having
Porter Robinson, Russian Roulette
The internet joked about, or even celebrated the murder of a CEO of a company they don't like. We've reached peak desensitization, and I haven't seen anyone other than Porter Robinson talking about the effect that this can have on our personal relationships. I'm going to write more about this on Tuesday, but in the meantime: what are you desensitized to? How are those around you suffering due to your desensitization? What can you change?
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