Believe it or not, Labor Day is already here. Time to put away those white shoes, fellows. It has been a hectic last week of summer here at ILYBYGTH. Here are a few stories of interest that you may have missed:

Are some cultures better than others?

• Law professors Amy Wax and Larry Alexander say that “all cultures are not equal.”
• Penn students and some of Wax’s colleagues condemn her.
• Jonathan Haidt defends her.
• What does any of this have to do with school reform? The ILYBYGTH take.

Love means never having to say you’re sorry: Trump pardons Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

At The Gospel Coalition, an open letter from Christian scholars denouncing racism.

Are white evangelicals more racist than Christian?

• Randall Balmer says yes.
• Mark Labberton of Fuller Seminary says yes but they can change.
• The relevant ILYBYGTH archives:
  • Finding racism among white evangelicals is not the full answer to the question but rather only the first answer.
  • White American evangelicals—as a group but not necessarily as individuals—have always tended to be prone to the same racist assumptions as white American non-evangelicals. But so have African American evangelicals. And the question of racism is only a symptom of the fact that white American evangelicals have often put their American-ness and their white-ness above their evangelical-ness. Consider the cases of Randy Beckum and the tradition of love-it-or-leave-it patriotism at evangelical colleges.

The problem with “privilege.” Jeffrey K. Mann wants us to look beyond race and gender.

What happened to all the Christian bookstores?

Yes, you read it correctly: Reese Witherspoon will be playing the role of a defector from the “God-Hates-Fags” Westboro Baptist Church.

Where are all the sinister atheists who are trying to undermine Christian America? The Trollingers couldn’t find them at the American Atheists Convention, from Righting America at the Creation Museum.

Family sues NYC schools over their son’s “gender expansive” preference for dresses. The school accused the parents of sexual abuse.

Vouchers and stealth vouchers: The Progressive offers a guide to the wild and woolly world of public-school funding options.

What should conservative evangelicals think about gender and sexuality?

• One group of intellectuals issued a new Nashville Statement. They are “persuaded that faithfulness in our generation means declaring once again the true story of the world and of our place in it—particularly as male and female.”
• Neo-Benedictine Rod Dreher loves
• Not every conservative pundit does. Matthew Lee Anderson won’t sign.
• Some progressive evangelicals have offered a counter-statement.
• And Pietist Schoolman Chris Gehrz has offered his own thoughts on this “theology for the age of Trump.”

Only in New York: A Brooklyn school principal accused of recruiting her students into the communist movement.