Book Review Introductions

This issue is published at a time when individuals, families, and communities are experiencing the upending of daily life.  COVID-19 dominates our consciousness as we grapple with its implications for  health, economics and social relations.   These book reviews may offer a brief respite.  They consider big picture theological questions of beauty and creation.  Diane Yeager […]

In this issue of the journal we highlight four books addressing animals and climate change. Dr. Stephen Crocco, Director of the Library at Yale Divinity School, reviews David Clough’s large two-volume work, On Animals, which brings both systematic theology and theological ethics to bear on the ways Christian human animals live with non-human animals who […]

The book reviews in this issue carry forward the theme of dialogue found in the essays.  First, Sarah Bereza reviews Preaching in the Purple Zone: Ministry in the Red-Blue Divide by Leah D. Schade.  Schade proposes a sermon-dialogue-sermon model for eliciting grace-filled conversations about divisive topics.   Next, we pioneer a new format for a Journal of Lutheran Ethics […]

​ [1] Summer reading is often wide-ranging.  We dip into genres outside our typical work to explore worlds beyond our everyday existence.  This book review issue honors that summertime trend as it explores ethical dimensions in literature, science, Buddhism, and Womanist Sass. [2] Diane Yeager takes us into the world of secular literature through the […]

n this issue our book and resource reviews are focused on climate change. In an interdisciplinary approach, ethicists review works prompted by science and produced by journalists and a natural historian. Stewart Herman reviews and compares two recent books, The End of Ice by Dahr Jamail (2019) and The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace Wells (2019). Herman brings an ethicist’s eye and a theological lens to these two works on climate change written by journalists.

[1] In this issue our book and resource reviews are focused on climate change.  In an interdisciplinary approach, ethicists review works prompted by science and produced by journalists and a natural historian. [2] Stewart Herman reviews and compares two recent books, The End of Ice by Dahr Jamail (2019) and The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace Wells (2019).  Herman brings […]

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.

The three reviews of books dealing with the work of H. Richard Niebuhr, Lutheran perspectives on contemporary legal issues, and the discussion of moral injury in the context of just war each in their own way address concerns that are potential issue on the agenda of the church as public church. H. Richard Niebuhr’s work […]

Regular readers of the Journal of Lutheran Ethics will recall that the July/August edition is the book review edition featuring reviews of a number of different works. This year we have the welcome opportunity to take a different tack and focus on one book, the latest and much discussed publication of Lutheran theologian and scholar, […]

Currently, the Recommended and Proposed Social Statement on Criminal Justice is circulating through the church. At the Churchwide Assembly this fall, members will have the opportunity to vote on its adoption. In recognition of the important conversations about this topic in the church, this annual book review issue of JLE features reviews of several texts […]