Poverty/Income Inequality

Imagining Whole Cities: The Church’s Role in a Gentrifying Neighborhood

What does gentrification look like to a community living inside of it? Brau and Vasquez from Luther Place Memorial Church explore the congregation’s response to gentrification in Washington D.C.’s Logan Circle neighborhood. N Street Village ministries was founded out of the congregation to respond to the needs of the neighborhood. How does a congregation respond when poeple who are not impoverished move in, potentially forcing the poor out?​

Editor’s Introduction: Poverty

According to reliable information, 20% of American children and 13% of all Americans live in poverty. Globally, nearly one-half of the world’s population or approximately 3 billion people live on less than $ 2.50 a day. Given the tragic and widespread reality of poverty, how should Christians respond and how shall we live? This issue […]

Timeless Duties towards the Hungry Poor

Brattston acknowledges that Christians have an obligation to care for the poor because of Scripture. However, he points to the first two hundred years of Christian community, before debates of doctrine created a splintered church, as a further sign that all Christians share these forebears and therefore should listen to their counsel to care for the poor. In the spirit of the early church fathers, Brattston urges Christians to pray for justice and contact their political representatives to enact policies that will support sustainable and sufficient standards of living.

“Poor People” as Other: Changing the Subject to “our” Challenges of and Living with Poverty

As Christians, we are called to serve the poor. However, how do we do so justly and effectively? Green notes that by identifying the poor as “other”–as something outside of “us”–we do a disservice to the community and often do not help those in need. Christians should stand in solidarity with those in poverty as members of the body of Christ.​

A Black Lutheran Perspective on Poverty and Plenty


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Excerpted from the official statement of the Conference of International Black Lutherans’ second meeting, “A Message from Bulawayo,” this piece discusses the complex social, economic, and political forces that create the crisis of poverty worldwide. Though the message was published in 1997, its contents are still frighteningly relevant today. ​

By Bread Alone: The Bible through the Eyes of the Hungry (Fortress Press, 2014)

Shiela E. McGinn, Lai Lang, Elizabeth Ngan, Ahida Calderon-Pilarski, eds. By Bread Alone: The Bible through the Eyes of the Hungry. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014, 257 pages, $29.00

Providing for the General Welfare: The Goal of Tax Reform

Scripture calls us to aid the poor. Why should that be limited to only the private sphere? Lanoue explores the secular and religious arguments regarding tax reform and how it can help those who truly need it.

​Editor’s Introduction: Economic Equity and Justice

A persistent and unfortunate reality in our world today is that, in relative terms, the rich get richer even as the poor get poorer. Is this just the inevitable and tragic nature of life or are there certain economic, market and other forces that combine to produce such a result, namely, marginalization? In the wake […]

Money, Religion and Tyranny: God and the Demonic in Luther’s Antifragile Theology

​We very often associate capitalism with the modern Occupy Wall Street movement, or Marx writing in the 19th century. However, Hansen argues Luther himself witnessed the emergence of capitalism in Europe. What did he have to say from a theological perspective about markets and debt?

Neighbor-love’s Moral Framework: From Markets That Concentrate Wealth to Markets That Serve Abundant Life for All

Love thy neighbor. We all know that verse, but what does it mean in terms of the global economy? For instance, how do we love our neighbors in the Global South if we do not know, or ignore, how our economic choices impact them every day? Furthermore, in an age of environmental harm, how do we redefine who our neighbor is? Moe-Lobeda explores these questions while envisioning the possibility of a moral economy.