Book Reviews

[1] Johann Michael Reu (1869-1943) was born in Diebach, Germany and trained for the pastoral ministry at the mission institute founded by Wilhelm Loehe in Neuendettelsau. He came to the United States in 1889, first serving as pastor at Mendota and then at Rock Falls, Illinois for ten years until 1899. Reu was next called […]

[1] Famously, Jesus said, “You will always have the poor with you.” Well, not if economist Paul Collier has his way. In The Bottom Billion Collier makes the case that a research-based, carefully applied set of instruments targeting specific traps that keep the global poor in poverty could actually work to eliminate poverty as we […]

[1] U2 singer Bono has become well-known in recent years for his tireless work to raise awareness of poverty through the “Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa” campaign. Fewer people are aware of the role economist Jeffrey D. Sachs has played in providing the economic grounds for Bono’s work. In his book The End of Poverty, for […]

[1] Stories. If there is one thing Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist for the New York Times, and Sheryl WuDunn, a former editor and bureau chief for the Times, know, they know stories. Kristof and WuDunn are the first married couple to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism. Through the deft journalistic documentation of real […]

[1] As the director of hunger education for ELCA World Hunger and a student of the Bible, I am always looking for books and resources that blend good history and theology with contemporary application. Reta Halteman Finger’s 2007 book, Of Widows and Meals: Communal Meals in the Book of Acts, in many ways succeeds in […]

[1] Our May issue of Journal of Lutheran Ethics (JLE) was one of our most-visited in recent memory. One particular article, in fact, was among the most-visited pages on the entire ELCA site for the second week in May. The corresponding number of emails about Jon Pahl’s article on Lutheran CORE in historical perspective has […]

[1] As an ordained woman who is a member of Lutheran CORE I find that I cannot remain silent in the face of Dr. Pahl’s florid and sprawling jeremiad against Lutheran CORE. [2] Dr. Pahl contends that Lutheran CORE is a bastion of angry, fearful American civil religionists, rotten to the core with a millennial, […]

[1] Firstly, I am grateful to Robert Benne for plugging my new book, Empire of Sacrifice. I don’t think it’s “brilliant,” but I do think its analysis of religious violence in America sheds some light on Lutheran CORE, and especially its Chapter 4, “Sacrificing Sex.” [2] More substantively, while my essay might appear to Benne […]

1] The Christian life hurts. God hurts. That theme is firmly embedded in Lewis’ writings, and it is, I think, the deepest reason for the power of his writing. “The Divine Nature wounds and perhaps destroys us merely by being what it is,” Orual reflects in Till We Have Faces. This theme — that God […]

[1] The debate about the ethics of abortion is at once political, emotional, judicial and religious. Arguments in favor of one position or another often focus on the humanity or personhood (or lack thereof) of the fetus, the rights of both the pregnant woman and the unborn child, the constitutionality of various modes of abortion […]