ELCA Social Teachings

Other responses to Hearing the Cries James Samuel Logan Kathryn Getek Soltis Bradley R. E. Wright Wayne N. Miller [1] This study, written by the Criminal Justice Task Force of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is an “invitation to join this church’s moral deliberation.” Aiming toward a social statement on criminal justice, this study […]

[1] “I don’t understand why you care about those people. They’re just trash, and we should throw them away. I don’t want anything to do with them.” I have become accustomed to hearing statements like these from people whom I love, who are Christian, but who do not see my work critiquing criminal justice systems […]

[1] Bodies are eloquent.1 They do, of course, literally speak out, communicating a range of experiences and perspectives; but they also “act out,” with seemingly infinite communicative potential. Much body “talk,” however, is unintentional, consisting of non-verbal action, expressed in one’s overall manner or way of doing things. Reading such body language, whether dealing with […]

[1] Hearing the Cries:Faith and Criminal Justice opens the door to a long overdue conversation about beliefs, values, experiences, practices, and policies that profoundly affect all of us. I approached my reading of Hearing the Cries with a deep sense of gratitude for the work of the task force and staff, and a feeling of […]

[1] Years ago when I was a graduate student at Union Theological Seminary in New York, my wife Ellen appeared breathlessly in our apartment doorway at noon; she regularly would walk home from work at the “Godbox” (the National Council of Churches headquarters) to join me for lunch. She had just been robbed at knife […]

[1] Hearing the Cries: Faith and Criminal Justice (hereafter HtC) provides an important contribution to theological reflection on the current penal crisis. The ELCA Criminal Justice Task Force deserves considerable praise because their document is theologically robust, pastorally-driven, and instructive for Lutheran congregations as well as all persons concerned about the state of criminal justice […]

Introduction [1] Since the time of David Hume (1711-76), philosophers have been struggling with the question of whether “ought” can be inferred from “is.” Famously, Hume held that it “seems altogether inconceivable how this new relation [ought] can be a deduction of others [is] which are entirely different from it.[1] For Hume, propositions of how […]

What follows is an excerpt from my forthcoming Luther and the Beloved Community: A Path for Christian Theology after Christendom (Eerdmans, Spring, 2010). Since I have elsewhere made my sharp and fundamental critique of the draft Social Statement and its accompanying Recommendations on Rostered Ministry. I am thankful to Kaari Reierson for the invitation to […]

[1] A few months ago, I taught a class on sexuality for our 9th grade confirmation students. As the class began, I asked them to write on an index card what they believed the bible said about sex. To a student, all 22 responses were the same: “if you have sex before marriage, you’ll go […]

[1] Thank you to the Journal of Lutheran Ethics for this invitation to reflect on the proposed social statement. Thank you also to the ELCA Task Force on Human Sexuality for their work. I imagine it has been a long and difficult journey. It is my prayer that their journey together has built them up […]