Author: Michael Kuchinsky

Michael Kuchinsky, M.Div., Ph.D. recently retired as Professor of Political Science and Global Studies at Gardner-Webb University.

The National Narrative of a Virus

[1] We did it.   We crossed the quarter million mark in numbers of deaths due to Covid 19 in the United States.  And just before Thanksgiving.  Estimates now include being at over four hundred thousand by Inauguration Day.  Someplace in the middle for when Lutheran Social Ethicists gather?[1] [2] With over a hundred and eighty […]

Review: Human Dignity and the Future of Global Institutions (Georgetown University Press, 2014)

Though it was published three years ago (2014), the information, issues, and tenor of Human Dignity and the Future of Global Institutions contains a present day salience perhaps not foreseen by the editors and contributors at the time. We appear to be entering another time of intense debate over the nature and need of things global – globalization, globalism, global institutions, global narratives – versus a resurfacing of neo-nationalism through Brexits, the call to make America great (or first) again, and the public and foreign policies of states as diverse as Russia, China, Hungary, or the Philippines. Perhaps not another “paradigm shift” as occurred in November 1989, but questions have returned to the public discourse loudly and clearly about the vitality of NATO, or the relevance of regional organizations such as the European Union, or if the positive purpose of regional or hemispheric trade treaties like NAFTA is outweighed by their future impacts, risks, or constraints.

Review: My Report to the World: Story of a Secret State (Georgetown University Press, 2013)

Editor’s Note: Though this book, so insightfully and thoroughly reviewed, is not our customary work of theological ethics, it is a work of historical and moral significance with implications for today’s world. It might well be considered in tandem with Mary Solberg’s A Church Undone: Documents from the German Christian Faith Movement, 1932-1940, which was […]