Author: Robert D. Francis

Robert D. Francis is the Director of Advocacy and Policy for Lutheran Services in America.

Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell’s American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us and Adam Taylor’s Mobilizing Hope: Faith-Inspired Activism for a Post-Civil Rights Generation

[1] In his 1990 classic, The Restructuring of American Religion, sociologist of religion Robert Wuthnow observed that a seismic restructuring occurred in American religion during the decades following World War II. In his estimation, denominational identities during that time were diminishing in salience, giving way to a realignment of American religion into conservative and liberal […]

New Wine, Old Wineskins: The Emerging Church, Ethics, and the ELCA

[1] Religious groups perpetually dialogue with their sociocultural contexts as they seek to define and maintain their identities as communities of faith. In other words, religious communities are constantly balancing continuity and change.[1] Recent decades have brought a series of rapid political, economic, philosophical, social, and spiritual shifts, and there is a growing movement of […]

Immoral People, Broken Markets, Christian Freedom

[1] It might take the worst financial crisis in eighty years, but it seems that the message is finally sinking in: markets are not moral. However, it is unfortunate that such a realization is needed at all. Characterization of the “the market’s” actions or changing moods may just be just figures of speech, but this […]