Denise Rector

[1] The advertising world has always been a bit of a mystery to me. I understand the concept of telling others about your product or service so that they might buy it. But the industry has exploded over the last several decades as I’ve crossed from my young adulthood of the 80’s and 90’s and […]

[1] One of the most insidious aspects of the omnipresent advertising and branding that rule the lives of children and youth is the way it perpetuates a vastly diminished understanding of life in human society. Advertising portrays a world in which there is no poverty, there are no workers (and if there are workers, they […]

[1]The debate over what constitutes and how to live “family values” continues and revolves primarily around the meanings and practices of marriage. Receiving less attention is how Christian families, in whatever form, strive to live with justice and compassion in a culture that is increasingly characterized by individualism, unsustainable patterns of consumption, and competition.1 Rather […]

[1] This edition of JLE is devoted to an ethical consideration of the relationship between consumerism, advertising and young people in the first third of life. Consumer advertising can be viewed from many different ethical angles. Perhaps the most obvious ethical questions relate to areas such as the social, political and environmental limits of consumerism, […]

[1] Viral marketing, product placement, and extensive consumer data gathering enable consumer advertising to reach its tentacles of influence deep into our lives. Disposable income and malleable social identity make youth a desirable demographic for commercial advertising. Unless they have the power to question and resist, youth can be formed into ultimate consumers. [2] Aware […]

[1] It was an average Tuesday morning. My mom drove me to school. I sat through homeroom, trying to ignore the obnoxious ten year-old who was swinging his feet into the back of my desk. After roll call and announcements, I left home room and went to my pre-algebra class. Mrs. T was talking about […]

William Schweiker, MDiv., PhD., is the Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of Theological Ethics in the Divinity School and the College at the University of Chicago, and Director of the Martin Marty Center. His work focuses on the global implications of theological ethics. JLE recently met up with Dr. Schweiker to discuss the project […]

In St. Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth we read the following: For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This […]

[1] In this volume the English-language-preferred reader of things theological receives a distinguished German scholar’s summation and appropriation of the fruits of some forty years reading Martin Luther. The book’s immediate source was a series of fifteen double hour lectures given at the University of Tùbingen in 2001-2002. Thus there is here a freshness that […]

See Part I of this article by Maria E. Erling Copyright 2011 Lutheran University Press. This essay will be published by Lutheran University Press in a book entitled Sources of Authority in the Church. [1] In part one of this presentation, Dr. Maria Erling has discussed the emergence of the Lutheran Council in the U.S.A. […]