Christian Living, Discipleship, and/or Spirituality

[1] June 14, 2011, marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Her first novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, (henceforth UTC) converted thousands of readers to the anti-slavery cause. Stowe’s story ran as a serial in the anti-slavery paper National Era and then appeared as a book in 1852. It became the bestseller […]

[1] In July 2010, The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod Convention passed a resolution calling for a “thorough response” to the ELCA social statement Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust. In the justifying clauses of Resolution 3-05, the document asserts that the social statement “suggests a concept, namely the ‘bound conscience,’ as a ‘distinctly Lutheran’ principle of theology.” […]

[1] The great Louis Armstrong was reportedly asked once how he would define “jazz.” His famous reply was, “Man, if you’ve gotta ask… you’ll never know.” Some things seem intuitively clear to people who are familiar with them, and could never satisfactorily be described or defined by them. One wonders whether “conscience” might be just […]

See “Conscience-bound Beliefs” Rule and the “Conscience-bound-belief” Rule by John R. Stumme [1] John R. Stumme is right1: with “bound conscience” the ELCA has bought an unfocused concept with an undefined purpose and an unspecified scope of application, whose usefulness is uncertain and whose consequences are unknown, perhaps because its biblical origins are unstated. Stumme […]

[1] I’ve just returned from seeing Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and for the first time I understand what all the fuss is about. Well, maybe not ALL of it. [2] I understand the best seller sales. I understand how people of all ages have been captivated by the story. I understand why the […]

[1] Pages 18–21 of the 2009 ELCA social statement Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust, which consider same-gender relationships, have not gone unnoticed by members of the ELCA. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that, as the statement puts it, “We have come to various conclusions concerning how to regard lifelong, monogamous, same-gender […]

[1] What is striking about the ELCA’s August 2009 decisions about sexuality is that they changed policy without giving a scriptural account for the change. The policy change allows persons in publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships to be ordained, yet the change is not supported in any official church document on the basis of […]

[1] The final scene of Eric Till’s 2003 movie Luther silhouettes Luther and his wife against a green hill as horsemen gather ominously. The tension breaks when one of the riders gallops toward the couple shouting “They accepted our confession!” Melanchthon bears the good news. As the scene fades, words scroll across the screen praising […]

[1] The oracle in Isaiah 2:1–5 presents a vision of what life will be like when Zion is established as a worship place, and all the nations of the world follow God’s teaching.1 It is a picture of the world as it should be, as opposed to the world as it is. For Isaiah’s original […]

Preaching on Social Issues Articles The Silence of Easter by Clint Schnekloth Active Repentance: Getting beyond Guilt by Clint Schnekloth Getting Your Meta On by Clint Schnekloth Advent, Virtue Ethics, and the Telological Suspension of the Ethical by Clint Schnekloth Blessed are the Undocumented? A Reflection on Matthew 5:1-12 by Brian A.F. Beckstrom The Return […]