Articles

Vocation: Where Liturgy and Ethics Meet

[1] “The supper is ended. Oh, now be extended the fruits of this service in all who believe” (LW 247). Omer Westendorf’s popular hymn accents the linkage between the Lord’s Supper and our life in the world. The words of the hymn are echoed in the Introduction to Lutheran Worship where we are told “Our […]

Revisiting the Question of the Muslim Deity

[1] The question is whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God. This question has been posed, and answered in the negative, by Walter R. Bouman (JLE, 4/8/02). Harold Vogelaar has weighed in on the other side (JLE, 4/24/02). I would like to affirm everything Professor Vogelaar has to say, especially in his distinction between […]

Preaching Justice: The Ethical Vocation of Word and Sacrament Ministry

This article is James Childs’ address from February 4, 1998, when he was installed in the newly established Sittler Chair. Copyright © 1998 TRINITY SEMINARY REVIEW, Trinity Seminary. Used with permission. From Trinity Seminary Review, Number 20, Spring/Summer 1998. [1] I am keenly aware that whatever shine is on me is that of reflected glory […]

La Crisis Argentina: Economía, Sociedad y Etica en tiempos de la Globalización

Donde estamos [1] La dimensión que ha alcanzado hoy el conjunto de la economía, significa una concentración tal de poder y de influencia penetrante de tipo económico, político, social y cultural, que el carácter de la sociedad capitalista contemporánea tiene está experimentando transformaciones fundamentales con repercusiones significativas sobre las poblaciones de los países desarrollados y […]

A Review of The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World by Bjørn Lomborg

[1] The Skeptical Environmentalist (by Bjørn Lomborg) is a copiously-referenced (2930 citations!) assessment of global environmental health by a professor at a Danish university trained as a political scientist and statistician. Lomborg’s principal thesis is that the vast majority of environmental problems are either overstated or non-existent. Lomborg refers to tendency to exaggerate as “The […]

Still, A “Lutheran Accent”: A Response to the Reviews

[1] I thank Editor Peters for this dialog symposium on The Promise of Lutheran Ethics (PLE). In our initial plan for the book, Karen Bloomquist and I envisioned a second part in which pastors, other ethicists, and an historian would comment on the original essays. For practical reasons we had to drop the idea. This […]

Purdum on The Promise of Lutheran Ethics

[1] The ELCA Division for Church in Society has lost no time in getting copies of The Promise of Lutheran Ethics out to the desks of parish pastors. Now the question remains: Will pastors find promise in The Promise. . . ? Will these shiny two-tone volumes join the clutter of dust-covered books that already […]

Meilaender on The Promise of Lutheran Ethics

[1] One need only read the respective introductions by the editors of this volume to appreciate the instabilities of the task they have undertaken. John Stumme struggles manfully (as, perhaps, one may still be allowed to say) to suggest that, while the several authors whose essays appear in this volume have not “produce[d] a single […]

Forell on The Promise of Lutheran Ethics

[1] This collection of essays by eight different authors in addition to the editors, who are the director and associate director of studies in the division for Church in Society of the ELCA respectively, is an effort to establish “What is distinctive about Lutheran ethics?” The first chapter offers a short introductory statement by John […]

Daunting, Indeed! A Critical Conversation with The Promise of Lutheran Ethics

[1] “This daunting challenge”! Just so has John Stumme aptly christened The Promise of Lutheran Ethics1 (hereafter PLE). The Division for Church in Society of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America commissioned this volume “to examine in a fundamental way the nature of Lutheran ethics today” (4). Daunting, indeed! Seven major essays make up the […]