Human Rights

Editor’s Introduction: Protecting Children: What Is the Role of the ELCA?

[1] This issue of JLE, which publishes the papers given at this year’s Gathering of Lutheran Ethicists, is a call to action to the ELCA on behalf of children.  We feature two renowned experts on this topic, Victor Vieth and Marcia Bunge, who were the speakers at the gathering in January. [2] In December, our […]

Lutheran Foundations for Promoting Child Well-being and Addressing Child Maltreatment

[1] Children and young people today face a host of ongoing and newly emerging challenges.[1] In countries rich and poor, many experience poverty, malnutrition, maltreatment, abuse, and a lack of adequate education and health care. Children and families struggle to meet even their basic needs under difficult circumstances when they are fleeing political unrest or […]

The Humanity of Transgender and Nonbinary People

[1] I remember speaking at the microphone in a convention center in downtown Minneapolis on August 18, 2009. More than 1,200 people sat in the ballroom as the ELCA Churchwide Assembly debated the Human Sexuality Social Statement.[1] I felt nervous as I told my story of finding myself in Scripture. As a person of color […]

Editor’s Introduction

[1] Gender is at least one of the major theological, philosophical, and ethical issues of our age. On one hand, the issue’s complexity means that conversation and study is often difficult. Some congregations and individuals have simply chosen not to discuss questions that pertain to gender identity, expression, and sexuality out of fear that such […]

Reimagining Vocation: Queer, Lutheran, with Room for All

“We do theology because we want to collaborate fundamentally in bringing about a different kind of world in the here-and-now.”   –M. Shawn Copeland   Vocations and Challenges to Vocation  [1] Can you recall a time when you felt truly welcomed and accepted? Can you remember a moment when you brought the fullness of yourself to […]

A Case Study in the Ethics of Dialogue: ELCA Sexuality Study 2002-2005

[We] need a positive moral vision that would start by rejecting the idea that we are locked into incessant conflict along class, cultural, racial and ideological lines. It would reject all the appurtenances of the culture warrior pose — the us/them thinking, exaggerating the malevolence of the other half of the country, relying on crude […]

Luther Scholarship Under the Conditions of Patriarchy

[1] Martin Luther’s doctorate in theology, earned at the University of Wittenberg on October 19, 1512, granted him, as it did to all who earned the degree, the license to uphold church teaching and preside over disputations by either writing the theses in one’s role as “opponens” or to participate in them as “respondens.” Luther […]

Human Rights and Family

[1] This double issue of JLE focuses on both human rights and family. The set of articles on human rights was occasioned by observance of the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. The set of articles on family is occasioned by the discussion of family in the […]

A Report on the Outcomes of the Consultation: The Churches and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Marking 60 Years and Enhancing the Future

[1] This consultation was organized by the Inter-unit Task Force for the Decade for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence, and took place October 30-31, 2008 in Chicago, IL. The goal of the meeting was to observe the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Right, and spur a deepening and broadening of the […]

A Faith Basis for 60 Years of Human Rights Work by Churches

Introduction [1] I want to thank you for this opportunity to be with you again and to address the question of “The Faith Basis for 60 Years of Human Rights Work by Churches” during this consultation to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the United Nation’s Universal Declaration on Human Rights.[1] [2] The international order has […]