Articles

[1] When asked to write an article upon the occasion of John Stumme’s impending retirement, my immediate impulse was to reflect back on our early days together in 1988 at the beginning of the ELCA, and the long conversations we had trying to discern how the ELCA should go about arriving at social statements. Everything […]

[1] As someone who has known John Stumme since his student days at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago in the late 1960s, when I was a young professor there, I am not surprised at the stellar career he has had in the succeeding decades. For already at that time he was a visible […]

[1] One of the most important events in United States history is the southern Civil Rights Movement. Although the Civil Rights Movement involved religious leaders and communities of many denominations, this paper focuses on how Lutheranism interacted with the movement. Lutheran involvement in the movement is a milestone in Lutheran history that will possibly be […]

[1] Martha and I and our two sons arrived in Buenos Aires on a cold September day in 1978. The military government was an immediate reality as we walked through a line of armed soldiers and were greeted with incredulous stares at the immigration desk. Informed that our luggage had not arrived, we were given […]

[1] Every once in a while I pull a slim volume from my shelf and leaf through it. The book is Helmut Thielicke’s A Little Exercise for Young Theologians, translated into English and published in the United States in 1962.[1] This go round, I turned my attention to Martin E. Marty’s introduction to Thielicke’s work. […]

[1] I worked with John Stumme only since 1999, during the six years that I was on what until recently was called the Division for Church in Society board. Our biannual meetings gave me brief but striking glimpses into the workings of the Division, with its overwhelming polyphony of projects and agendas. Add to this […]

[1] “The church,” writes John Stumme, “is about speaking and listening. For those who believe the church has responsibility in and for society, it follows quite naturally that Christians should talk together about the relationship of the faith to their responsibilities. Christians have done so for centuries in a variety of ways, and in a […]

[1] Because Lutherans tend to emphasize that even the best of our achievements will be corrupted and tainted by what Helmut Thielicke called our “Babylonian heart,” they should, one might think, be modest in their expectation of any government’s ability to shape and foster a virtuous life among its citizens. [2] Moreover, politics is not […]

[1] The ELCA is fast approaching its twentieth year and, having been there from the beginning, John Stumme is fast approaching his twentieth year of ELCA leadership, first as the Associate Director for Studies of the ELCA’s division for Church in Society and eventually as the Director for Studies. His imminent retirement provides an opportunity […]

[1] Is there a Lutheran intellectual tradition?[1] [2] When my academic dean, Bill Craft, invited me to answer this question I decided to run some quick keyword searches in a couple of databases. The results were not very encouraging. When I searched for “Lutheran” and “intellectual” in an on-line database for periodical literature in religion, […]