Denise Rector

1. Conflict [1] Throughout its history, conflict and contentiousness have characterized efforts to make public policy in the American West. Ours is a “legacy of conquest” as Patricia Nelson Limerick writes, in which Westerners with diverse interests and backgrounds engage in an “ongoing competition for legitimacy – for the right to claim for oneself and […]

[1] Upon finishing Sermons: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living, a collection of forty sermons preached by the Reverend Professor Peter J. Gomes, to the multicultural, cosmopolitan congregation of Harvard’s Memorial Church, my soul spoke to me saying, “Peter Gomes may be a twenty-first century Don Quixote, daring to ‘Dream the Impossible Dream,’ of the coming […]

[1] During the Civil War, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman marched through Georgia. In his wake he left ruined fields, pillaged plantations, looted businesses, and casualties in the thousands. “War is hell,” he shrugged. With these words he situated war outside the realm of moral experience. The judgment justified the carnage. [2] “War is hell.” […]

[1] Scott R. Murray, currently a Lutheran Church Missouri Synod pastor in Houston, Texas, began this book as a dissertation at New Orleans Baptist Seminary. His work was motivated initially by what he perceived as an ethical libertinism in the ELCA’s human sexuality studies of the early 1990s. The goal of this book is to […]

©2002 Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. (This article originally appeared in the September issue (Vol. 30, No. 7) of the Corporate Examiner, a publication of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility.) For more information, please visit www.iccr.org, or call 212-870-2295. [1] To say that 2001 and 2002 have been watershed years for corporate governance would […]

[1] This article inaugurates a column that will appear three or four times during the coming year. Its purpose is to review books addressing genetic engineering and its implications for the future of humanity. I’m using several criteria in selecting books to be discussed: 1) They will be directed to society at large, which means […]

This address was given at Trinity Lutheran Seminary’s Commencement in May of 2003. Used with permission. [1] Exhausted faculty, indebted graduates, anxious development officers and president, relieved partners, children, parents, and friends, I am delighted to be your commencement speaker. [2] Such is the manner of a concocted commencement address by Garrison Keillor, who, after […]

[1] During the last decade, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, its theologians, its pastors, and many of its lay leaders have been preoccupied with a number of critically important issues: the calling and status of bishops and, behind that, the relevance of the historic catholic tradition; the interpretation of sexual identity and, behind that, […]

[1] As 16 invited individuals gathered in Chicago in autumn of 1989, it soon became apparent that this group of Lutherans was very special. Several members of the Department for Studies selected members of the task force for the Division for Church in Society based on prior knowledge of potential candidates, telephone interviews, and recommendations […]

[1] Ten years have flown by; it was such a great experience to be part of the task force. I think often of the people I met. I keep in touch with Lisa Lundgren. [2] Living in South Central Nebraska farming is my main concern. Farmers are going to minimum tillage (preventing the erosion of […]