July 2012: Book Review Issue (Volume 12 Issue 4)
[1] I have two aims in this essay. First, I would like to respond to the self-confidence of the missional movement with a set of questions that raises the level of self-awareness and self-critique. [2] Second, I would like to bring to awareness in the professional ethicist community that there is a wide-open field of […]
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein [1] During the Easter season, I wander the halls of church and mutter on the bike trail, “He is risen!” I’m perennially hoping someone will overhear and respond. Often someone does. Even if I speak into silence, in the absence of others, I […]
[1] I begin these reflections by turning to selected passages in the Gospels, the book of Acts, and the Pauline letters, arguing the centrality of the Spirit to any consideration of Christian faith and life, or to biblical and Christian ethics. Then I address several hermeneutical issues in relating what I call “spirit ethics” to […]
[1] One of the most insidious aspects of the omnipresent advertising and branding that rule the lives of children and youth is the way it perpetuates a vastly diminished understanding of life in human society. Advertising portrays a world in which there is no poverty, there are no workers (and if there are workers, they […]
[1] At the University where I serve as campus pastor, an undergraduate named James1 has found himself a lucrative job. He works as a Red Bull Student Brand Manager, which means he gets paid to attend campus events and hand out free cans of Red Bull energy beverage, take photos at parties and write blog […]
[1] “Is that really what it’s like in the United States, Heidi?” asked an elderly friend as we sat around the kitchen table one afternoon. “Isn’t it true that everybody has their own bedroom and their own house? That everybody has cars and big televisions and internet in their houses? I’d never go myself; I’m […]
What goes into a young person’s sense of identity? [1] Far and away the most pivotal influence on a young person’s identity is their family. As kids mature they are influenced by how their parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, cousins define them. Kids are like sponges. They soak up how we describe them and live in […]
[1] If, as I did, you used to have a subscription to People magazine (before I had children and lost all access to leisure time), and watched Real Housewives of Orange County before it became a franchise, this is the book for you. If, on the other hand, you’ve been living under a rock, don’t […]
[1] It seems as though many systematic treatments of ethics take great pains to disabuse readers of their assumptions as to what constitutes ethics in the first place. Then they can move on to doing ethics “proper” in the mode set forth by their systematic meta-approach. One of the more remarkable examples of this is […]
October 2011 (Volume 11 Issue 6)
Copyright 2011 Lutheran University Press. This essay will be published by Lutheran University Press in a book entitled Sources of Authority in the Church. Exordium A poem inspired by Genesis 4, the story of humanity’s first child. It’s entitled “Without You.”1 Back before the dawn, east of envy, error or wrong, that’s where I wish […]
