[1] Debates about climate policy will be prominent during 2009. Barack Obama addressed the issue during his campaign and has indicated he intends to make it a priority during his first year in office. As a result, leaders in both chambers of the Democrat-controlled Congress have pledged to pass domestic climate policy legislation during 2009. […]
Climate Change [1] While discussions about the environment might address a vast array of topics and problems, climate change has recently become the primary focus of attention in nearly all venues of public discourse. This is perhaps because the stakes are extremely high, it is a politically and economically charged issue, and it intersects with […]
[1] It might take the worst financial crisis in eighty years, but it seems that the message is finally sinking in: markets are not moral. However, it is unfortunate that such a realization is needed at all. Characterization of the “the market’s” actions or changing moods may just be just figures of speech, but this […]
[1] I was called to serve Grace Lutheran Church in Evanston one year ago this April. Grace is my First Call, and I am blessed to be doing ministry with such an assembly. [2] Grace participated in at least two of the three sexuality studies. We’ve been a Reconciling in Christ congregation for some time. […]
[1] March 13, 2008, the public release date of the ELCA’s Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality, was not a date I had noted on my calendar. I confess that I was not paying much attention to the release of this draft, at least until two weeks ago when I was asked to be one […]
[1] I couldn’t stop myself even though I knew the interest was purely prurient–I was continually tuning in to cnn.com awaiting the final blow to Eliot Spitzer’s political career. It’s not just because I’m from NY. I think it’s more knowing of Spitzer’s reputation as a moral crusader, thinking that surely he would run for […]
[1] The General Synod met in May 1862 for the first time since the beginning of the Civil War and adopted a resolution on “the State of the Country” prepared by a committee headed by W.A. Passavant. By this time ecclesiastical ties between the Southern synods and the Northern synods were broken, and no delegates […]
A New Deal for the Global Economy The Current Crisis “Money is a singular thing. It ranks with love as man’s (sic) greatest source of joy. And it ranks with death as his greatest source of anxiety.”[1] [1] The current global crisis began as a crisis about money but quickly became a pandemic global economic […]
Samuel Torvend. Luther and the Hungry Poor: Gathered Fragments (Fortress Press, 2008). 978-0-8006-6238-7. [1] With the negative externalities of globalization ever more present in the United States due to the sub-prime mortgage meltdown and its effects on the United States banking and finance infrastructure and individual lives affected, social ministry is more relevant than ever. […]
[1] Luther has always been a difficult read, as Martin Marty has informed us.[1] His worldview changed repeatedly. It follows that his writings are filled with contradictions and paradoxes.[2] Samuel Torvend appears to have missed the counsel of Benne, Marty and Edwards for he sees Luther as a whole intellect from the pounding on the […]
