Amy Carr is a Professor of Religious Studies at Western Illinois University in the Department of Race, Religion, Gender, and Multidisciplinary Studies. She also leads adult education at Trinity Lutheran Church of Macomb and has fostered ecumenical conversations about civic life and faith and about abortion. She studied at Carleton College (BA in Religion), Vanderbilt Divinity School (M.Div.), and the University of Chicago (PhD in Theology). She is currently working on a book for a Cascade series on Lutheran reconstructions of doctrine called Facing Divine Affliction: A Lutheran Theodicy for the Sinned-Against. She also participates in state-wide conversations about higher ed as WIU’s representative on the Faculty Advisory Council to the Illinois Board of Higher Education.
Practice and Power in Depolarizing Christianity
April/May 2025: Polarization: Discerning a Path Forward (Volume 25 Issue 2)
[1] Successful social change movements begin with persistence in bearing witness from a minority position with regard to the status quo. “To what should I compare the Kingdom of God? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened” (Luke 13:20-21). So […]
Theology as a Way to Think about Polarized Ethics: The Limits of Ethics Alone
April/May 2025: Polarization: Discerning a Path Forward (Volume 25 Issue 2)
[1] There are three questions I would like to explore, working from a different angle than that Christine Helmer examined regarding the relation between the theological doctrine of justification by faith and ethics. While she critiqued a separation between theology and ethics, I will ponder questions that address temptations to conflate theology and ethics. First, […]
Journal of Lutheran Ethics: The Podcast Episode 2 “Unpacking Ordinary Faith in Polarized Times”
October/November 2024: Ordinary Faith as an Antidote to Polarization (Volume 24 Issue 5)
Amy Carr, Christine Helmer, Matthew Best
Americans are more divided from one another than at any point in recent history. The divisions that we feel individually are even seen in recent research. Even faith communities are not free of sharp polarization. But that doesn’t have to be the case. In this episode, host Matthew Best talks with Amy Carr and Christine […]
Leaning In to the Constructive Criticisms: On Justice, the Heart of the Gospel, Quietism, and Both-Sideism`
October/November 2024: Ordinary Faith as an Antidote to Polarization (Volume 24 Issue 5)
[1] In the section above we situated the responses to our book in a historical framework of Lutheran thought. We now lean into thinking with some of the questions, concerns, and alternatives offered by our reviewers. [2] Both Justin Nickel and Leah Schade commented that we had not clarified the precise notion of justice presupposed […]
First Thoughts on the End of Roe v. Wade: State Rules, Gender Norms, and the Fragile (or Conditional) Personhood of Women
February/March 2023: Il/legal Abortion: Lutheran Ethical Responses post-Dobbs (Volume 23 Issue 1)
[1] This is a period piece, a snapshot of one Gen X theologian’s first reactions, landing on some observations and questions to hold open in the life of faith. [2] At some point on June 24, 2022, I realized I had entered the same kind of space I found myself in on September 11, 2001 […]
What Makes for a Theological Vocation in the ELCA?
August/September 2020: Women’s Leadership in the Church, State, and Academy (Volume 20 Issue 5)
[1] As a theologian who teaches religious studies at a public university, I hesitated to contribute to a question about the role of women’s leadership in the Lutheran academy in the U.S. I comfortably identify as a Lutheran theologian who works alongside two wonderful religious studies colleagues, both women, one specializing in Asian religions and […]
Theological Touchstones for Disagreeing in the Body of Christ
October/November 2019: The Ethics of Dialogue and Debate (Volume 19 Issue 5)
[1] Martin Luther wrote his Small Catechism after traveling and observing how little of Christian teaching most people knew. Four hundred years later, one of us (Amy) had a Missouri Synod Lutheran grandmother who was not permitted to move from lower to upper Michigan with the rest of her family until she had finished memorizing the Small […]