{"id":28,"date":"2010-05-14T14:08:00","date_gmt":"2010-05-14T14:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2010\/05\/what-im-reading-articles-and-essays-2.html"},"modified":"2010-05-14T14:08:00","modified_gmt":"2010-05-14T14:08:00","slug":"what-im-reading-articles-and-essays-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/05\/what-im-reading-articles-and-essays-2.html","title":{"rendered":"What I&#8217;m Reading: Articles and Essays"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve decided to start another weekly Friday feature, which will simply be a list of articles I&#8217;ve read in the past week that seem relevant and interesting to the topics I otherwise discuss on this blog. I won&#8217;t comment at length here, but I will provide a sentence or two so you can know if you&#8217;d like to read further:<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.time.com\/time\/health\/article\/0,8599,1987397,00.html\">The Big Spill<\/a>&#8221; from TIME, May 17. A helpful look at the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and how it should influence our national energy policy. But the most striking part of this article: &#8220;Nigeria&#8211;a petro-state that produces more than 2 million bbl. of oil a day (a little more than 10% of U.S. daily consumption)&#8211;has spills equal to that of the <i>Exxon Valdez<\/i> about every year.&#8221; Let me quote that again: &#8220;has spills equal to that of the <i>Exxon Valdez<\/i> about every year.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/reporting\/2010\/05\/10\/100510fa_fact_seabrook\">The Last Babylift: Adopting a Child in Haiti<\/a>&#8221; from The New Yorker, May 10. Unfortunately, unless you subscribe, you can only read the abstract online. Still, I recommend it for its history of international adoption, reflection upon the state of affairs for orphans in Haiti, and for the thoughts about religion (Christianity in particular) and ethics that arise. <\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/well.blogs.nytimes.com\/2010\/05\/10\/tracking-the-science-of-commitment\/?scp=1&amp;sq=marriage%20fidelity%20gene&amp;st=cse\">The Science of a Happy Marriage<\/a>&#8221; from The New York Times, May 10. Researchers have discovered a &#8220;fidelity gene.&#8221; Is faithfulness simply a matter of biology? I&#8217;ll be writing more about this next week.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/news\/world\/asia\/article7107200.ece\">Doctors Sterilize Uzbek Women<\/a>&#8221; from The Sunday Times, April 25. Against their will and without their consent, doctors in Uzbekistan are sterilizing poor women in order to control population growth.  <\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/ct\/2010\/may\/16.33.html\">Faithful Presence: An Interview with James Davison Hunter<\/a>&#8221; from Christianity Today. James Hunter speaks of cultural change and Christianity from the perspective of faith and sociology. If you&#8217;ve ever wondered whether and how your life matters, reading this interview (and then his book) might be a good place to start. <\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.booksandculture.com\/articles\/2010\/marapr\/asdifferentwethink.html\">As Different As We Think<\/a>&#8221; from Books and Culture, March\/April. A personal reflection on the differences between Catholics and Protestants. I found myself in both descriptions, which confirms what I have said for year: &#8220;I am denominationally confused.&#8221; <\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve decided to start another weekly Friday feature, which will simply be a list of articles I&#8217;ve read in the past week that seem relevant and interesting to the topics I otherwise discuss on this blog. I won&#8217;t comment at length here, but I will provide a sentence or two so you can know if&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-what-im-reading"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What I&#039;m Reading: Articles and Essays - Thin Places<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/05\/what-im-reading-articles-and-essays-2.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What I&#039;m Reading: Articles and Essays - Thin Places\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I&#8217;ve decided to start another weekly Friday feature, which will simply be a list of articles I&#8217;ve read in the past week that seem relevant and interesting to the topics I otherwise discuss on this blog. I won&#8217;t comment at length here, but I will provide a sentence or two so you can know if&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/05\/what-im-reading-articles-and-essays-2.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Thin Places\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-05-14T14:08:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"amyjuliabecker\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What I'm Reading: Articles and Essays - Thin Places","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/05\/what-im-reading-articles-and-essays-2.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"What I'm Reading: Articles and Essays - Thin Places","og_description":"I&#8217;ve decided to start another weekly Friday feature, which will simply be a list of articles I&#8217;ve read in the past week that seem relevant and interesting to the topics I otherwise discuss on this blog. I won&#8217;t comment at length here, but I will provide a sentence or two so you can know if&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/05\/what-im-reading-articles-and-essays-2.html","og_site_name":"Thin Places","article_published_time":"2010-05-14T14:08:00+00:00","author":"amyjuliabecker","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/05\/what-im-reading-articles-and-essays-2.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/05\/what-im-reading-articles-and-essays-2.html","name":"What I'm Reading: Articles and Essays - Thin Places","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-05-14T14:08:00+00:00","dateModified":"2010-05-14T14:08:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/#\/schema\/person\/4dde10eee38770361dc9b46a9413776b"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/05\/what-im-reading-articles-and-essays-2.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/05\/what-im-reading-articles-and-essays-2.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/05\/what-im-reading-articles-and-essays-2.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"What I&#8217;m Reading: Articles and Essays"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/","name":"Thin Places","description":"Amy Julia Becker on Faith, Family, and Disability","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/#\/schema\/person\/4dde10eee38770361dc9b46a9413776b","name":"amyjuliabecker","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/222\/2222023dcae76abe6e896a3cf80e9836x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/222\/2222023dcae76abe6e896a3cf80e9836x96.jpg","caption":"amyjuliabecker"},"description":"Amy Julia Becker writes about theology, disability, family, and culture. Two major life experiences have shaped her writing and her faith\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcaring for her mother-in-law as she battled cancer and welcoming her daughter Penny into the world after she was diagnosed at birth with Down syndrome. Both experiences expanded and enriched her understanding of what it means to be human and to receive each and every person as a gift.\u00c2\u00a0 A graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, she is the author of Penelope Ayers: A Memoir, and the forthcoming A Good and Perfect Gift (Bethany House). Her essays have appeared in First Things, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Century, ChristianityToday.com, and Bloom, among other online venues.","sameAs":["http:\/\/amyjuliabecker.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/author\/amyjuliabecker"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}