Denise Rector

[1] The ELCA’s church council has approved an ELCA social message on mental illness entitled “The Body of Christ and Mental Illness.” The message seeks to raise awareness of the challenges of mental illness, offer reflection and direction, and inspire action. The message offers a definition of mental illness from the National Institutes of Health, […]

[1] The new social message on The Body of Christ and Mental Illness from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) begins with a cry from Jesus on the cross: “My God, my God why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? O my […]

Note: the typical civilian practice is to use all lowercase letters in the word “soldier.” However, in military contexts and writings, the Army now requires the use of “Soldier” instead as a sign of respect. The author uses this capitalized version throughout the article. [1] According to the ELCA Social Message on The Body of […]

[1] Nourish us, O God. This is a simple prayer of the church, of its people, of its leaders. Yet mental illness can draw us away from the belief and trust that God provides what we need for a balanced life. Dark emotions triggered by stressors that include social, biological, environmental, and relational factors can […]

[1] Mental illness can happen to anyone. Three years after my ordination as an ELCA pastor, I was diagnosed with an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in 1987. The OCD would manifest itself in washing my hands a lot and often checking to see if I had done everything correctly. It was controlled by medication and therapy. […]

[1] In 1973 I began a year of Clinical Pastoral Education at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Illinois. The director of the program, Rev. Ronald Leslie, told our group of CPE residents that if we spent a quarter of the year at the Alcoholism Rehabilitation Center (as it was called at the time), it […]

[1] Edward Adams has written an excellent introduction to the canonical Gospels. His introduction is at once easy to understand and yet sophisticated in its methodology. Building upon the emerging scholarly consensus that the Gospels, in terms of genre, are best understood as ancient biographies, similar to Plutarch’s Parallel Lives of Greeks and Romans, Adams […]

[1] On first glance, Ministry Among God’s Queer Folk seems dated (especially its title, doubtless inspired by the hip Showtime television series “Queer as Folk” running from 2000–2005). And perhaps unsettling is the term “queer people”—used constantly, almost interchangeably with “LGBTQ people.” Although the word’s use in our times is an attempt by sexual minorities […]

Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope and Justice Prologue I) The Church’s Vision of Creation God, Earth, and All Creatures Our Place in Creation II) The Urgency Sin and Captivity The Current Crisis III) The Hope The Gift of Hope Hope in Action IV) The Call to Justice Justice through Participation Justice through Solidarity Justice through […]

Copyright 2013, Lutheran University Press, reprinted by permission. This essay is one of the papers presented at the 2012 Convocation of Teaching Theologians. All papers are available in the Lutheran University Press book, Eco-Lutheranism. http://www.lutheranupress.org/Teaching-Theologians-books [1] The Lutheran tradition contains a host of theological perspectives that can and should form the foundation of a robust […]