Education

[1] In February, President Bush announced the “American Competitiveness Initiative.” The Initiative includes efforts to “strengthen education” so that American students and workers can “compete with the best and brightest around the world.” Our President is not alone in casting education as the handmaiden of competition. Competitiveness permeates education. It starts early and continues throughout […]

[1] Our Calling in Education (the Draft Social Statement) has many excellent points and is on the way to being a valuable statement for use in the ELCA. I make a few suggestions below that I believe could strengthen the statement, but basically applaud the work of those who have produced the document. The church […]

[1] First of all, I give thanks to all who have served to draft this social statement. This work is both important and urgent. I won’t comment at length about its importance. That should be obvious to all who take the time to read it. Its urgency is apparent to me because I have, in […]

[1] One of the stated purposes for this draft social statement of the ELCA, “Our Calling in Education,” is as a teaching document for the church. This evaluation attempts to examine that purpose, but it does so from the background of the Lutheran Church of Australia and hence from a context somewhat different from that […]

This article will appear in the KIATS Theological Journal 2005 I.2 (2005 Fall). It is reprinted here by permission. [1] In the last fifteen or twenty years, American church-related colleges and universities have been engaged in diligent reflection about their identity and mission. A Lutheran institution won’t answer questions of identity and mission in the […]

[1] I have a confession to make. For the past decade, I have been teaching Lutheran ethics to the students of George Washington University Law School. This confession will come as something of a surprise to my students and colleagues. GW is not, after all, a religiously affiliated law school, much less a Lutheran one; […]

[1] I wonder if church can be “church” if you are not face to face with other people gathered to be together as a believing community. I wonder if being together, physically together is mandatory for “church”? If your first reaction is to say being physically present is mandatory, then www.shipoffools.com is not church. [2] […]

[1] I have been invited to draft an essay regarding biblical perspectives on education. The specific context for this essay is the preparation of a social statement on education by the ELCA. Two qualifications need to be stated at the outset. The first qualification is that the communities that formed the Bible did not share […]

[1] Journey Together Faithfully: The Church and Homosexuality is the study series offered by the Task Force for ELCA Studies on Sexuality. The primary text provided is a study guide with instructions for six study sessions, plus appendices of pertinent ELCA documents, a list of resources, and frequently asked questions. The study is intended as […]

[1] In his Confessions, St. Augustine tried in vain to understand where his infancy went. Did boyhood overtake it? Or did infancy leave of its own accord, and if so, “where did it go?”1 Were Augustine to write today, he would have only been more confused. Children like Jon Benet Ramsey sport grown-up costumes and […]