Articles

[1] Famously, Jesus said, “You will always have the poor with you.” Well, not if economist Paul Collier has his way. In The Bottom Billion Collier makes the case that a research-based, carefully applied set of instruments targeting specific traps that keep the global poor in poverty could actually work to eliminate poverty as we […]

[1] The Rev. Mark Wm. Radecke, an ELCA pastor at Susquehanna University has penned an excellent article in a recent issue of Christian Century entitled “Misguided Missions.”1 In discussing short-term mission trips, Pastor Radecke explains that “I’ve found that [mission trips] can have a profound effect on the faith and life of participants, and good […]

[1] Roy Menninger writes that there are three reasons for giving: narcissistic, demands of conscience and altruistic.1 However, there is also a fourth type of giving which is akin to altruism. It is sacrificial giving which is a blessing to someone but at a real cost to the giver. Narcissistic giving is not worthy giving […]

[1] Haiti’s centuries-old struggles never seem to end. Recent reports of increasing gender-based violence and degradation stress again the urgency of Haiti’s problems.1 This, of course, was completely predictable. It’s not the first time men caught up in a catastrophe have inflicted widespread rape on women and girls. The roughly 1,200 encampments throughout Haiti, not […]

[1] My first response to seeing a series of pictures of the decimated Port-Au-Prince after the January 12th earthquake was “How will they build factories now?”1 Prior to that date many of us concerned with the desperate state of things in Haiti had been focused on the man-made disaster that was currently in the making […]

[1] One billion human beings are hungry today. One billion people do not have enough to eat. The number alone is staggering. But what makes it scandalous is the fact that God’s abundant creation — the fertile earth and seas — can produce adequate nutrition for all. Scarcity is not the problem. The problems (and […]

1] The Christian life hurts. God hurts. That theme is firmly embedded in Lewis’ writings, and it is, I think, the deepest reason for the power of his writing. “The Divine Nature wounds and perhaps destroys us merely by being what it is,” Orual reflects in Till We Have Faces. This theme — that God […]

[1] Firstly, I am grateful to Robert Benne for plugging my new book, Empire of Sacrifice. I don’t think it’s “brilliant,” but I do think its analysis of religious violence in America sheds some light on Lutheran CORE, and especially its Chapter 4, “Sacrificing Sex.” [2] More substantively, while my essay might appear to Benne […]

[1] As an ordained woman who is a member of Lutheran CORE I find that I cannot remain silent in the face of Dr. Pahl’s florid and sprawling jeremiad against Lutheran CORE. [2] Dr. Pahl contends that Lutheran CORE is a bastion of angry, fearful American civil religionists, rotten to the core with a millennial, […]

[1] Our May issue of Journal of Lutheran Ethics (JLE) was one of our most-visited in recent memory. One particular article, in fact, was among the most-visited pages on the entire ELCA site for the second week in May. The corresponding number of emails about Jon Pahl’s article on Lutheran CORE in historical perspective has […]