By: Shela Sullivan on March 7, 2024
Here is an individual I like to have coffee with! Yascha Mounk’s book, The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time refers to a situation where rigid adherence to group identities, whether based on ethnicity, nationality, religion, or other factors can hinder meaningful dialogue and understanding between different groups. Here are…
By: Erica Briggs on March 7, 2024
Befuddled. That’s the word I would use to describe my efforts to understand where Yascha Mounk is coming from in The Identity Trap. On the one hand I weighed his personal background: his mother lost most of her family in the Holocost, he became a teenage activist noting Germany’s lack of support of refugees, and…
By: Joel Zantingh on March 7, 2024
I am appalled at prejudice and injustice based on race or ethnicity. I did not come to this conviction initially from any social or political movements that were seeking to address it, but it was formed in me from my Christian worldview, stemming from the heart of God. In Psalm 67:4, the Psalmist writes “May…
By: Chad Warren on March 7, 2024
My teenage daughter and I recently discussed the book she just finished reading for school, Ray Bradbury’s novel “Fahrenheit 451.”[1] What we both found fascinating was how, nearly 75 years ago, he imagined much of the situation we find ourselves in today. Written in 1951 Bradbury portrays, he imagined a world where people are entertained…
By: Ryan Thorson on March 7, 2024
Hi, I am a follower of Jesus. My given name is Ryan, my family name is Thorson. I have lived almost all of my life in the Pacific Northwest of the United States of America in the late 20th and early 21st century. I have been married to my best friend for almost twenty years…
By: Graham English on March 7, 2024
“The Identity Trap” by Yascha Mounk is a book that I didn’t want to read but, ultimately, I’m glad I did. I was born and grew up in Cape Town, South Africa in the darkest days of apartheid. I was born with a number assigned to me that identified my gender as male and my…
By: Diane Tuttle on March 6, 2024
Author Yascha Mounk in The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time starts his book by reminding the reader that throughout history there have been small groups of people who have mistreated, enslaved, and otherwise wielded power over other large numbers of people who have been deemed to be less equal.…
By: Chris Blackman on March 6, 2024
To all reading this, what would go through your mind if, prior to meeting someone for your first date, they sent you an email or a text that says, “Before we meet, there is something I need you to know. I am an ex-felon and served three years in the Nevada State Prison.” I had…
By: Pam Lau on March 6, 2024
In 2016, the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year was post-truth: “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”[1] In that same year, the people around the world from all political and religious beliefs watched with mourning as unbelievable stories were…
By: Kally Elliott on March 5, 2024
I am ever so guilty of throwing around the word, “post-modern” without fully understanding how deeply ingrained this philosophy is in how I think and live. As I slogged through Stephen R.C. Hicks’ book, Explaining Postmodernism Skepticism from Rosseau to Foucault, and more willingly listened to some podcasts with Hicks as a guest, I began…
By: Jennifer Eckert on March 5, 2024
The year was 1995. I was 22 years old, and it was a regular Wednesday morning. Nothing was out of the ordinary. The skies were clear with a soft, cool April breeze. The typical rush hour traffic had subsided, and people had successfully shuffled themselves nicely into their cubicle workstations for the day. Tick tock…
By: Nancy Blackman on March 5, 2024
“Wer bin ich? Der oder jener? Bin ich denn heute dieser und morgen ein andrer?”[1] ——Dietrich Bonhoeffer Who am I? This one or that one? Am I then this one today and tomorrow another? The Identity Trap by Yashca Mounk covers six concepts: identity politics, group identity vs. individual identity, social fragmentation, intersectionality, tyrannies…
By: Debbie Owen on March 5, 2024
“I’d say that it’s one short step from ‘Wizards first’ to ‘Purebloods first,’ and then to ‘Death Eaters,’” replied Kingsley. “We’re all human, aren’t we? Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving.” — Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows [1] I was applying to colleges during the fall of 1980. My father…
By: Glyn Barrett on March 5, 2024
The challenges associated with the Identity Trap make leading a faith community increasingly tricky. We see increased tension when we add the complexity that the Bible is often at odds with popular societal thinking. In 2013, the Telegraph printed an article in which Amber Dillon writes, “I can’t help thinking that some of the Bible’s…
By: Jeff Styer on March 4, 2024
Have I fallen into The Identity Trap? In his book, The Identity Trap, Yascha Mounk identifies and discusses the seven main themes of what he calls “Identity Synthesis.”[1] Mounk states that Identity Synthesis was “deeply shaped by the triple influence of post modernism, postcolonialism and Critical Race Theory.[2] I teach a course titled Cultural and…
By: Adam Cheney on March 4, 2024
I am white. I am male. I am heterosexual. I am middle-class. I am Christian. I voted for Bush, and I voted for Obama. These traits are identifiers, some outside of my control. Yet, none of them speak to my true identity. My true identity is found in Christ, as a child of God.…
By: Tim Clark on March 4, 2024
I spent my formative teenage and young adult years in 1980’s/90’s Los Angeles, which seemed to be a ground zero for postmodernism in the United States at the time. In fact, I remember in college hearing a lecture on emerging postmodernity and thinking “that’s not emerging, it’s what I grew up with” (now I would…
By: Russell Chun on March 3, 2024
ܙܒܢܐ ܡܬܚܠܦܢܐ، ܣܟܢܐ ܕܟܠ ܓܒܪܐ” (zevna methhalphana, sekana dkul gavra) Aramaic, Shifting Sands, Everyman’s Peril Introduction – Shifting sands, Everyman’s peril Part 1 Post Modern Impact on Christianity Part 2 Focus on Chapter 6 Epilogue – Not a modernist or a post-modernist. Introduction Post modernism is not a topic that excites “everyman.”[1] To even begin…
By: Akwese on March 2, 2024
As I continually examine my current state of leadership, I find myself reminiscing about the days when I could truly live out what I believe, putting it into action. Now, more often than not, I find myself frustrated that much of what I know and think about leadership, I am failing to move into action,…
By: Jana Dluehosh on March 2, 2024
Sankofa is an African word from the Akan tribe in Ghana. The literal translation of the word and the symbol is “it is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind.” The word is derived from the words: SAN (return) KO (go) FA (look, seek and take)[1] In my early career, at North Park University in Chicago, IL,…
