Articles

Dismal, Preliminary Considerations [1] Eager to be useful to the church, biblical scholars sometimes forget the difference between interpretation and shopping.[1] And so it was as I rummaged through the writings of the New Testament looking for the ideal system of criminal justice. I was hunting for bargains. I wanted straightforward answers. I wanted the […]

[1] First of all, a word of appreciation to the members of the Task Force who have generated this draft. Having been a part of the development of the last sexuality documents, I do understand the time and energy entailed. Much insight is available in this draft and certainly the final social statement should stand […]

Introduction [1] Since the time of David Hume (1711-76), philosophers have been struggling with the question of whether “ought” can be inferred from “is.” Famously, Hume held that it “seems altogether inconceivable how this new relation [ought] can be a deduction of others [is] which are entirely different from it.[1] For Hume, propositions of how […]

[1] Each year at Augustana College, a faculty committee selects a book which all first-year students are encouraged to read over the summer prior to beginning their college careers. The book chosen for the 2007-2008 academic year was The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness, an extended essay written by Simon Wiesenthal with […]

[1] Note: At the 2009 Annual Gathering of Lutheran Ethicists, Roger Willer introduced and described and commented upon the ethical and theological approach taken by the ELCA Task Force on Genetics in its study, Genetics and Faith: Power, Choice, and Responsibility. [2] Willer’s comments are not written down and presented in this issue of JLE, […]

[1] Since the beginning of the ELCA a relatively small number of members has worked continually to change traditional Christian teaching and practice in order to allow sexually active gays and lesbians in long-term relationships to be ordained. No matter how many votes they have lost they have persisted in their quest. They accept no […]

[1] It seems to me that Michael Root is off base in three claims that undergird his “Communion and Difference.” 1. His claim for “normative ethical teaching” in the church of the Augsburg Confession. 2. His claim that a “consensus of the wider church” exists about homosexuality–a clear “no”–and that this consensus is itself “normative” […]

[1] Kudos to the JLE and July authors who responded to The Shock Doctrine. [2] When I first arrived at Bread for the World in 1978, the commonly held wisdom was that the cause of hunger was poverty. Simply stated, “If people had money or other resources (e.g. arable land) they would feed themselves.” As […]

[1] In 2000, ELCA’s Studies Department in Church in Society held a consultation on human cloning. In the publication of the papers that followed,[1] project director Roger A. Willer created a literary form to summarize the discussions that followed the oral presentation of each of the papers at the consultation. He called it “Threads from […]

[1] Periodically, I find myself put on listservs delivering information to my inbox that someone thinks I should not be without. Recently I found myself on a Vatican News listserv. One morning last March, I opened to a headline announcing that after 1,500 years the Vatican had named seven new deadly sins. To the usual […]