Denise Rector

[1] I remember what a shock it was, when I was pregnant, to find that my body no longer possessed its familiar boundaries between public and private. After I said no thanks to BUN testing and amnio despite my advanced maternal age, the doctor who conducted the ultrasound for my second child clearly thought I […]

[1] Martin Luther King, Jr. was the most celebrated and honored African American in the latter half of the 20th century. Streets named after him and scholarships bearing his name have immortalized the contributions of this Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning, American Christian minister. Moreover, a national holiday was established to celebrate King’s birthday as a way of signaling […]

The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child will put his hand into the viper’s nest. – Isaiah 11:8 If your ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step you take gets you to the wrong place faster.1 – Stephen R. Covey [1] Though Covey is not […]

[1] To begin with, I would like to express my appreciation for the kind invitation to respond to the ECLA Social Policy Resolution Toward Compassionate, Just, and Wise Immigration Reform. It is a privilege, and a somber responsibility, to speak into the tradition of Christian communities other than one’s own. The Lutheran Church has a […]

[1] Denominational statements such as the ELCA’s recent one on immigration are, to be honest, rarely very interesting. The constraints of the genre are simply too restrictive — one can hardly, in a half dozen pages, produce both a sophisticated statement of theological principle as well as an appropriately careful policy analysis. One hesitates, therefore, […]

[1] In his 1535 Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, Martin Luther offers up the following set of judgments: For albeit that all men have a certain natural knowledge implanted in their minds (Rom. ii. 14), whereby they naturally perceive that they ought to do unto others as they would have others do […]

[1] Anyone who calls him or herself a Christian should seek compassionate, just, and wise immigration reform. Millions of undocumented aliens are forced to live in the shadows of the law hungering for someone to bring them the good news that they are more than objects of a hostile national debate. In spite of the […]

[1] The chocolate shop nearby is encouraging people not to give up chocolate for Lent. “Just give up something like red meat,” they say, “or your negative attitudes.” Over the years, I’ve been using Lent as a time to get my life back on track. I’ve given up things like desserts, drinking, and dining out […]

[1] Calvin dedicated a great deal of attention to the nature and scope of the Christian life, and even wrote a section of the Institutes dedicated to this theme (Inst. III.vi-x), which was often published on its own. However, rather than summarize the teaching of that section, I would like to raise up five themes […]

I’d like to begin by thanking all contributors to this symposium on natural law for their thoughtful papers. One thing those papers illustrate quite nicely, I think, is that “natural law” is not so much a position, but a group of positions. The term “natural law theory” designates a set of intellectual commitments together with […]