Book Reviews

[1] In his 1990 classic, The Restructuring of American Religion, sociologist of religion Robert Wuthnow observed that a seismic restructuring occurred in American religion during the decades following World War II. In his estimation, denominational identities during that time were diminishing in salience, giving way to a realignment of American religion into conservative and liberal […]

[1] I am grateful to Book Review Editor Michael Shahan for the invitation to respond to Mark Mattes [see Response to Hinlicky’s “Paths Not Taken”, May 2010, Vol. 10, No. 5.], even as I am honored by the elaborate attention Mattes has paid to my recent book, Paths Not Taken (hereafter PNT). Shahan rightly says […]

This paper was originally presented at the International Luther Research Congress Porto Alegre, Brazil in July 2007. [1] In the later part of the twentieth century and continuing to the present day, there has been a resurgence of interest in the doctrine of vocation. Nearly all of these studies to a greater or lesser degree […]

[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, […]