The Top 5: From a church planter to Obama's pluralism speech
Welcome to the latest edition of the Top 5 articles we’ve read this week. Each week, we read dozens of articles in the hope we find essays and reporting that speak to big ideas, trends, future looks, and incredible human stories. We hope you enjoy these articles, and do always let us know if you have a suggestion or a recommendation!
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The Top 5 articles for your week:
“Acts of Apostles” (Seven Days Vermont)
Because Joe Sexton caught up with a pastor planting a church in Barre, Vermont for those suffering from addition and the opioid crisis. A beautiful, informative, and hopeful piece.
It would not be an ordinary church. In a city brutalized by Vermont's opioid crisis, Clark's plan, at once radical and rooted in the New Testament, was to organize a church for the addicted, a population of the lost and the hurting who might have come from nothing or squandered riches. Clark's vision was as clear as it was unorthodox: The church would not just offer up prayers, a bit of food or temporary shelter to those who were unfortunate or struggling with substance abuse. Rather, it was to be all but wholly made up of people battling addiction and those newly sober. It would be both unpretentious and deadly serious. It would be a church, God willing, that would rescue lives and save souls.
“My Remarks at the 2024 Obama Foundation Democracy Forum” (Medium)
Because this year the Obama Foundation’s Democracy Forum focused on pluralism, and former President Obama’s speech at the event is worth consideration and discussion.
Now, let’s face it: pluralism is not a word that most of us use in everyday speech. I talked to one young leader earlier this year, who’s doing incredible work reducing gun violence here in the United States, and she admitted that she had to look the word up right before our call. But the concept of pluralism should, and is actually familiar to all of us. It means that in a democracy, we all have to find a way to live alongside individuals and groups who are different than us. So we commit to a system of rules and habits that help us peacefully resolve our disputes; we try to cultivate habits — those practices that encourage us not just to tolerate each other but also — every so often — join together in collective action. The pluralist ideal is what allows a Christian church and Muslim mosque to sit side by side on the same city block — and then maybe agree to share a parking lot. It’s what keeps you from pulling down a sign in your neighbor’s yard supporting a cause you find completely irritating, and it keeps him from doing the same to you; it’s what encourages you to team up with a co-worker on a project and get the job done despite the fact that the two of you disagree on abortion, gun ownership, and the merits of Taylor Swift versus Beyoncé.
“Geoengineering Could Alter Global Climate. Should It?” (UnDark Magazine)
Because Ramin Skibba reports on the risks involved with geoengineering, a concept that has gained popularity and respect because it involves using technology to slow or stop climate change on a massive scale.
If people one day decide to proceed with some kind of geoengineering, they’ll first have to show that it’ll work, that it’ll be safe, and that the risks are bearable. There’s no clear course on who gets to make such decisions, though. With no overarching governance on a technology that could — and will, if it works as intended — have global effects, current rules and regulations on smaller solar geoengineering experiments in the United States are limited to the local and state governments where such experiments may take place, which are ultimately led by officials with different perspectives and levels of expertise.
“Asleep at the Wheel in the Headlight Brightness Wars” (The Ringer)
Because Nate Rogers interviews the leaders from Reddit who are trying to reduce headlight brightness on cars. (nb there is some vulgarity at the beginning of the piece)
Headlight brightness might almost seem like too random a subject for anyone to be as invested in as they are. But as it turns out, that’s kind of the point. “There’s a lot of issues that I care about,” Morgan said. “This is one that I think is niche enough that I can have an influence on.” Gatto’s motivation comes from the experience of watching his partner, Liz, struggle to recover from being hit by a cab while walking across the street. He sees headlights as “a realistic and tangible attack surface on the current trend toward antihuman design in our world, primarily guided by the auto industry.”
“Meet the Extreme Travelers Trying to Visit Every Country in the World” (Outside)
Because Tim Neville follows along with the group of people who have travelled to the most countries in the world since the early 2000s.
So the idea of reducing something so meaningful and transformative—and increasingly exclusive—to a collector’s game felt supremely icky, a big eff-you to the world and its cultures and all the resources it takes to go from A to B. How uninterested do you have to be in a place to create rules that govern whether you’ve actually been there? “If you’re just ticking boxes, you’re seeing a lot, but are you feeling a lot?” says Jake Haupert, cofounder of the Seattle-based Transformational Travel Council, an organization that promotes “meaningful” journeys. “Travel is just a medium for human connection.”