Human Rights

[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 […]

[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 […]

[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 […]

[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 […]

“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 […]

[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 […]

[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 […]

[1] Modern Christian notions of the family have foundational roots set in the nascent period of Christianity’s earliest developments. At a time when the ELCA is currently revisiting and revising the church’s social statement on sexuality, it is fitting to return to the early roots of the family and the heart of our most foundational […]

Introduction [1] Thank you for inviting me to join you today to discuss American exceptionalism and international human rights. It is a pleasure to be here. [2] The U.S. repudiation of international human rights legal standards in the post-9/11 “war on terror” has been widely documented, passionately condemned and legally challenged. Torture at Abu Ghraib, […]

[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 […]