Politics

[1] 2025 marked 1,700 years since the Council of Nicaea (325 CE), where bishops gathered—including from Bichvinta in what is now occupied Abkhazia to articulate the Church’s faith. Yet, in the last century, neither together nor separately did the Christian churches, East or West, protect humanity from the Holocaust and the Gulag. Today, the occupying […]

[1] Successful social change movements begin with persistence in bearing witness from a minority position with regard to the status quo. “To what should I compare the Kingdom of God? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened” (Luke 13:20-21). So […]

What is polarization?   [1] As befits a preacher, I begin today with a quote from a great theological authority in these matters, Rabbi Leonard of Montreal, who wrote:   I’m sentimental if you know what I mean I love the country but I can’t stand the scene And I’m neither left or right, I’m […]

[1] There are three questions I would like to explore, working from a different angle than that Christine Helmer examined regarding the relation between the theological doctrine of justification by faith and ethics. While she critiqued a separation between theology and ethics, I will ponder questions that address temptations to conflate theology and ethics. First, […]

November 5, 2024 [1] Something substantive on the cultural-political landscape changed on the morning after the November 5, 2024 U.S. elections. When Professor Amy Carr and I were writing Ordinary Faith in Polarized Times: Justification and the Pursuit of Justice (Baylor University Press 2023) in 2022-2023, the political state in the U.S. seemed stuck in […]

Note: From the Editor It is the practice of the Journal of Lutheran Ethics to consider for publication letters written to the Journal about current or past issues or in regard to current events. Letters to the editor should be sent to the email address linked here for consideration by the editor. Authors will be contacted by the editor if the letter […]

[1] The Journal of Lutheran Ethics hopes to provide reading material to stimulate thinking and conversation among academics, clergy, and laity. To this end, this section is included in each issue of JLE in order to encourage constructive discussion within congregations about the topics discussed in JLE.  Consider using this section in formal adult education […]

[1] This issue of JLE publishes the papers given at the January 2025 Lutheran Ethicists Gathering held in Chicago. The theme of the Gathering was constructive use of Lutheran theology and practice to resist polarization–to resist the pull of separation from our neighbors in a political situation which is designed to destroy common community. The […]

[1] In the aftermath of the 2024 United States Presidential Election, Christians are wrestling with more constructive ways of living out their faith-life and civic duties. Unfortunately, political discourse of late has created a gulf within the church catholic in the United States as Christians are drawn into the culture wars and hyper-partisan politics. There […]

[1] In Ordinary Faith in Polarized Times: Justification and the Pursuit of Justice, Amy Carr and Christine Helmer are concerned with the polarization that runs through our country and congregations.[1] Though this polarization’s content is most often political—think of the red-blue state divide, or our siloing mediated by social media and cable news—Carr and Helmer […]