Book Review Introductions

[1] Summer is here, that wonderful season for working through the stack of books that has piled up over the year or for browsing the catalogs and shelves in search of new titles. It is also time for Journal of Lutheran Ethics’ annual book review issue, and this election year we have several titles pertaining […]

See also Daniel M. Bell, Jr.’s Liberation Theology after the End of History: The Refusal to Cease Suffering by Paul R. Hinlicky [1] Does life in twenty-first century America involve compromises of the soul unlike anything else in the history of the Christian faith? Is being Christian more difficult in an affluent, market-driven, consumerist society […]

[1] Of all the dispiriting signs of the times in Lutheran pastoral circles these days, the one I find most troubling is the anti-theological bias of so many clergy. Before I go any further on this track, I must confess that my research on this matter is constricted by my own small world of contacts, […]

[1] Often, the Church of Jesus Christ — and especially its individual members scattered across the world, including its apostolic leadership — think and act as though we are absolutely adrift upon the high seas of cultural dislocation and unrest. In our ethical deliberations and in our pastoral reflection and practice, it sometimes appears as […]

[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the essential Lutheran theologian for our dispirited post-modern age, reminds us that the field of ethics – the sometimes disciplined effort to understand and elect “the good” or “the right” – belongs to the realm of the penultimate in human affairs. Accordingly, the issues arising from and surrounding morality, justice, the good […]

[1] Why this book? As professor of systematic theology at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, Gary Simpson is not your typical “ivy halls” academic. With a rich background in parish and chaplaincy work – none of it transpiring in traditional Lutheran territory, (California and Oregon were his mission field) – he has brought to […]

[1] Jean Bethke Elshtain is not a novice to the disputes surrounding our culture wars. Hers is a steady, sober, and prevailing voice in today’s debates over the trials of democracy, the relationship of ethics to international politics, and the place for patriotic allegiance in a pluralistic world. [2] She has written 17 books, 340+ […]

Works reviewed in this month’s column: President’s Council on Bioethics, Beyond Therapy Brent Waters and Ronald Cole-Turner, eds., God and the Embryo Matt Ridley, Genome BEYOND THERAPY: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness A Report by the President’s Council on Bioethics (New York: HarperCollins Publishers [ReganBooks], 2003), 328pp. [1] The President’s Council on Bioethics was […]

The works reviewed in this issue approach migration through three different lenses — academic, artistic and activist. Professor Laura Alexander reviews Tisha Rajendra’s Migrants and Citizens: Justice and Responsibility in the Ethics of Immigration (2019). Rajendra addresses questions of political philosophy, arguing that Christian ethical thought can enhance global dialogue on migration and prompt Christians to understand […]