Rev. Bruce Wollenberg, PhD. is a retired pastor living in Santa Barbara.
Review: Healing All Creation: Genesis, The Gospel of Mark, and the Story of the Universe by Joan Connell and Adam Bartholomew
[1] This book breaks no new ground and has little to offer cognoscenti. But this is an observation, not a criticism. The authors, a biblical scholar and a religious journalist, aim for a general audience made up of millennials and others who are comfortable with evolution and distance from Christian faith because of its perceived […]
Review: Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter (Princeton University Press, 2016)
May 2017: Economics and Sanctification (Volume 17 Issue 3)
[1] Utilitarianism, the pragmatic philosophy developed by Jeremy Bentham (d. 1832) and John Stuart Mill (d. 1873) views actions as good or moral that conduce to human happiness and as bad or immoral those that do not. Its critics sometimes argue that justice is more important than individual freedom to pursue one’s bliss. Peter Singer […]
Review: A Christian Justice for the Common Good (Abingdon Press, 2016)
October 2016: Politics (Volume 16 Issue 9)
[1] Tex Sample, emeritus professor at Saint Paul School of Theology, Leawood, Kansas, has been thinking creatively and helpfully about the church’s role in society for a very long time. His previous books include U.S. Lifestyles and Mainline Churches, Hard Living People and Mainstream Christians and the delightfully titled Ministry in an Oral Culture: Living […]
Wielding the Word: Martin Luther on Temporal Authority
September 2014 (Volume 14 Issue 8)
[1] Since the sixteenth century the argument has been made, and is made today, that any Christian participation in the public square is properly personal and private altogether. The business of the church, as the corporate body of Christ on earth, is to be concerned with matters reflecting the kingdom of God’s right hand. The […]
Socialism: A Reality Check
January 2010 (Volume 10 Issue 1)
[1] Eleven percent of the American public thinks President Obama is a Muslim. But another label, true only in the loosest and most attenuated sense, has been attached to him and his political allies. Back in May the state chairs of the Republican Party, meeting in Maryland, declared themselves alarmed at the Democrats’ drift toward […]
Revisiting the Question of the Muslim Deity
[1] The question is whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God. This question has been posed, and answered in the negative, by Walter R. Bouman (JLE, 4/8/02). Harold Vogelaar has weighed in on the other side (JLE, 4/24/02). I would like to affirm everything Professor Vogelaar has to say, especially in his distinction between […]