Articles

  [1] Kyle Korver, a shooting guard and small forward for the NBA’s Utah Jazz, drew some attention in April 2019 with an essay simply entitled “Privileged,” addressing racial inequalities in the NBA and American society generally. The essay discusses statistics regarding poverty, incarceration, and unemployment, but its motivation and energy arise from Korver’s friendships […]

[1] My “awakening” to the poor and oppressed of Central America and Mexico and the relationship of that to U.S., policy, is easily traced to my travel with the Augsburg College Center for Global Education to Mexico and Nicaragua, in 1982.  Almost immediately after, I sought a Tex-Mex border experience, and then found the local Overground […]

[1] Four new films offer penetrating and personal looks into various aspects of migration, deepening our understanding of migrant worker vulnerability, environmental destruction from continued wall building, the courageous work of Dreamers, and the shocking and complex violence driving families to flee Guadalupe, Mexico. [2] The Infiltrators is the provocative and uplifting story of Dreamers who courageously […]

[1] In an age of conflict and division between political parties and within political parties, between churches and within churches, American Christians often mourn disagreement, regret the diversity of opinion, and sigh for unity. This issue looks into the reality of disagreement in our nation and in our churches without rebuke. Disagreement, even radical and […]

[1] The Journal of Lutheran Ethics hopes to provide reading material to stimulate thinking and conversation among academics, clergy, and laity. To this end, this new section will be included in each issue of JLE in order to encourage constructive discussion within congregations about the topics discussed in JLE.  Consider using this section in formal […]

[1] Martin Luther wrote his Small Catechism after traveling and observing how little of Christian teaching most people knew. Four hundred years later, one of us (Amy) had a Missouri Synod Lutheran grandmother who was not permitted to move from lower to upper Michigan with the rest of her family until she had finished memorizing the Small […]

  [1] “For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building.”[i] [2] The Lutheran doctrine of the “two kingdoms” has real-life import when it comes to churches engaging in public issues. Because Lutherans believe that God’s realm meets the earthly realm, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has a history of helping […]

[1] Parts of this article are adapted from Schade’s book Preaching in the Purple Zone: Ministry in the Red-Blue Divide (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019). [2] In the first two months of 2017, I conducted a survey of mainline Protestant clergy in the United States to assess how preachers were approaching their sermons during this divisive time in our […]

The book reviews in this issue carry forward the theme of dialogue found in the essays.  First, Sarah Bereza reviews Preaching in the Purple Zone: Ministry in the Red-Blue Divide by Leah D. Schade.  Schade proposes a sermon-dialogue-sermon model for eliciting grace-filled conversations about divisive topics.   Next, we pioneer a new format for a Journal of Lutheran Ethics […]

9 [1] Good morning congregation, let’s talk about women’s reproductive rights! Or maybe gun control? How about immigration?   [2] If a sermon or adult forum on these topics doesn’t elicit some nervousness for you as a pastor or layperson, I bet you can think of several other topics that would be controversial—and likely divisive—in […]