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[1] The ELCA is fast approaching its twentieth year and, having been there from the beginning, John Stumme is fast approaching his twentieth year of ELCA leadership, first as the Associate Director for Studies of the ELCA’s division for Church in Society and eventually as the Director for Studies. His imminent retirement provides an opportunity […]

[1] I worked with John Stumme only since 1999, during the six years that I was on what until recently was called the Division for Church in Society board. Our biannual meetings gave me brief but striking glimpses into the workings of the Division, with its overwhelming polyphony of projects and agendas. Add to this […]

[1] One of my first tasks as associate director for studies was to work with John to research and write what became the ELCA’s message on commercial sexual exploitation. I’d been working at the ELCA all of about three months before I found myself being driven around the seedier parts of Minneapolis by a member […]

[1] If one were to live solely in the rarified air of most college campuses today, the overwhelming impression would be of a universe wholly devoid of continuity with the past. Linkage to tradition, much less voluntary servitude to something labeled “the Word of God” or the Great Tradition of Christianity, is anathema to the […]

[1] Every once in a while I pull a slim volume from my shelf and leaf through it. The book is Helmut Thielicke’s A Little Exercise for Young Theologians, translated into English and published in the United States in 1962.[1] This go round, I turned my attention to Martin E. Marty’s introduction to Thielicke’s work. […]

[1] Martha and I and our two sons arrived in Buenos Aires on a cold September day in 1978. The military government was an immediate reality as we walked through a line of armed soldiers and were greeted with incredulous stares at the immigration desk. Informed that our luggage had not arrived, we were given […]

[1] My acquaintance with John Stumme goes back to his days when he was a student at the Lutheran School of Theology and I was a young professor there. As I recall, he was a serious and excellent student who was particularly drawn to Carl Braaten’s teaching and work. He then went off to graduate […]

[1] First, thanks go to John Stumme. It was his foresight which concluded that there would be a place for an internet journal centered around such a topic as Lutheran ethics. His wisdom and scholarship have guided what is right and good about the journal. All that falls short is my responsibility. My other colleagues […]

[1] Journal of Lutheran Ethics was originally scheduled to be launched on September 15, 2001. The pages were all set to go, only our web editor had a vacation in California in early September. This meant that when airline traffic was shut down after 9/11, he had to make his way back via rental car […]

[1] During discussions by JLE’s editorial council this past summer, I rashly suggested that contributors to this focus section might want to articulate one global challenge, one local challenge and a hermeneutic challenge to Lutheran ethics. Swallowing my own medicine, therefore, let me identify three such challenges from the admittedly limited vantage point of the […]