Articles

This month our three book reviews address guns and political beliefs.  The first two books offer insights directly relevant to gun violence and gun control debates.  These books are reviewed by two ELCA pastors living in Montana.  Rev. Jean Larson, who also served as Faith Outreach Leader for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in […]

[1] Fear Not is useful for Christians confronting gun violence, even though it was not written specifically for that purpose.  This volume is a second edition of Law’s 2007 book, Finding Intimacy in a World of Fear, written in response to 9/11 and the American experience of fear and its manipulations.  Law has written a new preface and […]

[1] In the United States, public discussion about gun violence and gun control is over-politicized and under-ethicized.   Since our postmodern and polarized society does not share a common religious and moral vocabulary, it has instead reduced dilemmas like gun violence and gun control to the language of secular “rights” and the proper size of regulatory […]

[1] In November 1966 Ronald Reagan shocked the Democratic party in California by decisively defeating Governor Pat Brown in his bid for a third term in the statehouse. In response to this shocking victory, the social scientist James Q. Wilson wrote “A Guide to Reagan Country” to help the Democratic establishment understand the thinking of […]

[1] August 18, 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of women’s right to vote in the United States. November 20, 2020 will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the first woman’s ordination in a Lutheran church in the United States.  Despite Lutheran views about two kingdoms and American views about the separation of church and […]

0     “I desire that you would remember the Ladies.” Abigail Adams’ suggestion to John Adams, as they contemplated the Declaration of Independence.[1]   [1] Although Americans revere the “founding fathers,” we pay far less attention to the women, of any race, who contributed to the American Revolution and the development of the United […]

[1] The relationship between the political enfranchisement of women and their position in the Lutheran church illustrates the very slow pace of change when entrenched ideas are threatened by newer ones. So much so is this the case that the words of women who sought such power are largely drowned out by the words of men […]

[1] What a joy it was to see women marching, (no, dancing down the aisle, it was!) during the celebration of 50-40-10 of Women’s Ordination in the ELCA. The joy was simply contagious. Even watching the women process down the aisle, from remote, I could not help but shed tears of joy at this visible […]

[1] Perhaps it is easy to imagine that providing a theological and scriptural rationale for women in ministry is no longer necessary.  Perhaps it is easy to imagine that in 2020, fifty years after the Rev. Elizabeth Platz was ordained, the first female pastor in a Lutheran body in the United States and one year […]

Thank God for the Academic Vocation [1] Thank God for the academic vocation. Without it, I have no idea when I would eventually meet, know, and eventually become a female leader in the Lutheran church. Insofar as colleges and universities continue to exist as expressions of the church in the world, female faculty have a […]