Denise Rector

[1] “Lutherans in Public” focused on how Lutherans have been, how they are or are not, and how they ought to be participants in the public realm, both as a church and as individual members of it. It was the theme of the 2006 Annual Gathering of Lutheran Ethicists in Scottsdale, Arizona, in January of […]

[1] In December 1944 the Norwegian Lutheran bishop Eivind Josef Berggrav (1884-1959) was featured on the cover of Time, becoming one of the few protestant religious figures to have been thus honored.1 In 1942, the New York Times chose him as one of the six religious leaders to be profiled in a series headlined “Churchmen […]

[1] In an article in JLE in March 2003, I argued that the looming invasion of Iraq was justified under just war criteria. Some Christian public intellectuals had taken that stand, but very few academic Christian ethicists did-at least not publicly. Most American and international church bodies spoke out against the war. Starting in summer […]

[1] This is the third JLE piece that I have been invited to write on the war in Iraq, the first two being written in October, 2001 and September, 2002. As I look back on the contents of those earlier articles in light of what has transpired since then, I am inclined to say (with […]

[1] As a prognosticator, I’d guess I have about a 50-50 track record in life. Looking back over what I published in JLE in December of 2002 as the Bush Administration beat the drums of war, though, I think I can claim to have nailed this one. I concluded my essay: “In this light the […]

[1] I supported the President and Congress in their decision to invade Iraq. It is now three years after that invasion. How does that decision stand up? (I have given reasons in other essays for my support of the war and will not rehash them here. Suffice it to say that those reasons draw upon […]

[1] It is commonly argued that a nation cannot or should not, in prudence, levy taxes upon transnational corporations because this will induce them to flee to more accommodating nations, resulting in the loss of jobs and income. In this article I argue, first, that global capital markets make the separate taxation of corporations and […]

[1] It has often been said that little is certain in life but death and taxes. In my last article on “Social Movements in Early Christianity,” I dealt at some length with death and burial in the ancient world. With April 15th looming, it seems only right to turn to the second half of the […]

[1] I hadn’t thought much about tax exemption and its implications for our organization and our society until asked to do this reflection. I had basically taken it for granted, even though in recent years our organization has joined others in protesting what seemed like assaults on this status from the IRS and Congress. [2] […]

[1] Ethical concerns about taxation typically cluster around two distinct questions. The first concerns the right of the government to tax individuals in the first place, while the second considers the ethical desirability of alternative tax schemes. Obviously, the first question needs to be settled, and in a particular manner, before proceeding on to the […]