Articles

[1] The juxtaposition of two apparently contradictory notions, namely, vulnerability and security, makes for a wonderful paradox in the best of Lutheran tradition. They seem mutually exclusive but, in fact, comprise two basic, coexisting human characteristics: all human beings desire security, safety, protection, and shelter. As human beings, however, we also experience that we are […]

[1] Peacemaking is a part of politics. God wills peace for his creation, and God’s will for peace expresses itself partly through government’s work of preservation. This, anyway, is the view of Article XVI of the Augsburg Confession. Earthly peace depends upon political power, and, therefore, in the service of peace government may “punish evildoers […]

[1] The “pacific mandate” does not apply to Lutherans. Neither does it apply to Christians. If that were the case, it’d be shocking. In truth, of course, God’s mandate of peace, of just peacemaking, applies to all people and peoples. It pertains then to all Christian saints who, simultaneously as sinners and as creatures, stand […]

This article has been reprinted by permission from Sojourners Magazine. “In the Face of War” first appeared in Sojourners Magazine January 2005. [1] Our time – as every era – is a time of structured enemies. Yes, there are moments of true regard for the other, even moments of sheer poetry. Yet the fabric of […]

[1] I have a confession to make. For the past decade, I have been teaching Lutheran ethics to the students of George Washington University Law School. This confession will come as something of a surprise to my students and colleagues. GW is not, after all, a religiously affiliated law school, much less a Lutheran one; […]

[1] We have a special focus on just peace and just peacemaking in this issue. Mark Hanson, President of the Lutheran World Federation and Presiding Bishop of the ELCA, called for theological work among the member communions on principles of a just peace in his September 2004 President’s Address to the Lutheran World Federation Council. […]

[1] I have been engaged in the subject of homosexuality and the church, as both ethicist and teacher of church governance for many years. Formal engagement with the subject began in 1978, when I was the primary writer for a paper prepared by the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary faculty for the Executive Council of the […]

[1] In the aftermath of the many international crises during the 1990s culminating in Kosovo, the Commission on International Affairs of the Church of Norway felt a need to address the issue of legitimate use of power and military force at a theological and ethical level, without losing the concrete experiences and challenges from sight. […]

[1] One of Sharon Welch’s gifts is to take a common ethical question and discuss it in ways few have imagined. She transforms questions into prisms which invite us to turn them in the light and meditate on what the resulting refractions might mean for our moral vision. In After Empire, Welch approaches an issue […]

[1] This Study takes as its starting point the conviction that “the vulnerability and defenselessness of humankind are the precondition for its capacity for openness and solidarity.” The study also identifies and rejects a second concept of vulnerability, which the authors apparently hope to defeat by way of reasoned argument. Insofar as they proceed as […]