Denise Rector

Education matters considerably for the Lutheran movement. Consistent with the Reformers, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) teaches a dual calling “to educate people in the Christian faith for their vocation and to strive with others to ensure that all have access to high quality education that develops personal gifts and abilities and serves the common good.” “This calling,” says the ELCA social statement on education, “embraces all people in both Church and society.” Since April 2013, following Church Council action to establish a Theological Education Advisory Council (TEAC), ELCA leaders have undertaken actions that I believe could engender radical change to make education in the Christian faith essential and universal in this church. While yet unknown in the congregations, this work has moved from study and recommendations to early design that seeks a new church for new times. The Lutheran movement should become a network that serves a democratic turn to theological education for the whole people of God.

What is the future of theological education in the ELCA? That is the question that the authors in this issue wrestle with. This question has important implications for Lutheran Ethics because in our tradition, theology is supposed to be the sustained reflection on the faith with the intention to guide our proclamation, our praxis and our life together as a church. Without adequate theological formation the church runs blind and our ethics become reactionary or dangerously ideological. Additionally, theology is never done in a vacuum; if theology is truly incarnational then it is incarnated in concrete cultures, languages and communities. Unfortunately, for too long Lutheran theology has been myopically Eurocentric, dealing preferentially with concerns born of the White European and European decent experience. Both authors in this issue challenge us to reframe the way we understand diversity in the church and in theological education.

The Violence of Climate Change: Lessons of Resistance from Non-Violent Activists by Kevin J. O’Brien || Kevin O’Brien’s rich and stimulating new book The Violence of Climate Change: Lessons of Resistance from Non-Violent Activists evokes the North-American Christian tradition of non-violent activism as a resource for resisting the destruction and suffering brought about by climate change. How might the commitment, courage and ingenuity of iconic non-violent activists such as John Woolman, Jane Adams, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr., and Cesar Chavez help us achieve climate justice? Writing in a lucid, compelling style, O’Brien directs his book mainly at concerned people of relative privilege who feel defeated by the complexity of climate change, yet realize that they are contributing to destruction and suffering by simply living their day to day lives.

The Marvelous Mustard Seed by Amy-Jill Levine, Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, and Margauz Meganck || As a parish pastor I am constantly on the lookout for resources to support faith formation for the children in my congregation. Among my favorite resources is children’s literature. Children’s literature, good children’s literature, is a powerful way to engage children. Through literature, children are able to enter into realities far different from their own, contemplate ideas they have never before considered, or sometimes see their own lives from a different point of view. Just as Jesus’ parables lingered in the ears of his listeners, children can take ideas from books and live with them for a time. The challenge is finding the right books; books that demonstrate theological integrity and biblical accuracy with a developmental sensitivity. This is a tall order so I was delighted to discover The Marvelous Mustard Seed.

Jason Mahn places Luther’s theology of the cross, and accounts of discipleship in writings of Lutheran theologians Soren Kierkegaard and Dietrich Bonhoeffer in dialogue with what he calls the “Anti-Constantinian” writers John Howard Yoder, and Stanley Hauerwas. In doing so he wants to help American Christians think carefully about what it means to intentionally be a Christian in what some (but not Mahn) would call a “post-Christendom” culture.

Care for the Sorrowing Soul: Healing Moral Injuries from Military Service and Implications for the Rest of Us by Duane Larson and Jeff Zust || Our longest military conflict in U.S. history is still underway. Since 9-11 more than 4 million new veterans join the ranks of millions more who have preceded them. Veterans, families and professionals increasingly recognize that some veterans return with a variety of stress-related difficulties, including symptoms of depression, insomnia, withdrawal, isolation, chronic pain, marital strife or substance abuse. Unexpected sleep disorders, sense of regret, sadness, loss of purpose and direction become confusing for the veteran, their family, and friends. Some hurting veterans hesitate to share information, and through a sense of shame or guilt, hold these memories deeply hidden. Veterans silently and secretly carry this unexplained, unremitting, increasing pain and suffering.​​​

U.S. War Culture, Sacrifice and Salvation by Kelly Denton-Borhaug || I have been stunned by the careful discernment offered by Kelly Denton-Borhaug in her book of 2011, U.S. War Culture, Sacrifice and Salvation. When it comes to the service of the Christian church to the wider culture, this kind of theological and social analysis functions as a prophetic witness that reveals to ourselves just who we are as a people and as a nation. In what follows, I’d like to respond to Denton-Borhaug’s prophetic prompt within the framework of public theology in the United States.

Themes of theology and culture run throughout this issue, intersecting specifically in treatments of war, moral injury, climate justice, and faith/life formation for adults and children.

This issue begins with a focus on war. Ted Peters offers an essay inspired by Kelly Denton-Borhaug’s War Culture, Sacrifice and Salvation. The ethos and institutions of war have penetrated everyday life in the United States, taking the symbols of Christianity and repurposing them for nationalistic ends. In the process, what Americans consider holy has migrated from the sacred to the secular, from the church to the state. Peters challenges public theology with the task of discerning U.S. war-culture and constructing a prophetic response. This is a wake up call.

“How to face up—theologically—to climate change? And in particular, how to interpret the literature which deploys science to predict the Anthropocene future of our species? Two Biblical terms come to mind: “spirit” and “apocalyptic”. “Spirit” is that aspect of our whole selves which, in Reinhold Niebuhr’s concise formula, has the capacity of indefinite transcendence (The Nature and Destiny of Man, I:13). It is our capacity to reach for, and understand, the whole by which we are enlivened—or crushed. While our bodies will be overheated by rising temperatures, battered by storms, drowned by floods, and scorched by wildfires, it is our spirits which yearn to grasp the totality of what climate change means for us.”

“Thank you to Cynthia Moe-Lobeda for this thoughtful reflection on Luther and neighbor love within the context of our current economic systems. I agree wholeheartedly with most of her emphases in this essay, and so my brief response here will highlight a couple of aspects of the essay that I think are particularly salient for this conversation and reflect on ways these foci may be expanded further. Most crucially, I want to draw attention to Moe-Lobeda’s focus on collective responses to systemic problems. For instance, she mentions several times the importance of the church’s response, and not merely individual Christians’ responses, to economic ills. Similarly, at the end of the essay she notes the need for a new economy, a transfigured system as a whole, rather than focusing solely on Christians’ role within that system.”