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[1] This issue of Journal of Lutheran Ethics focuses on the question of What the Church is, can be, and ought to be.   The following activities can be done in small groups in church communities and are meant to foster both discussion and action on the topics at hand.   Activity 1: The Church as […]

[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] Our first review asks the timely question: How do we “bring Americans together to bridge the partisan divide and strengthen our democratic republic?”  In I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Courageously Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times, journalist Mónica Guzmán urges us to “harness our innate curiosity to break down […]

For Congregational Dialogue: [1] In this retrospective issue, we are republishing two activities for adult education on these topics.  The first is a group activity from the October 2019 issue on deliberative dialogue. The second is a personal meditative activity from the February 2020 issue on Faith, Reason, and Climate Change.   [2] A Deliberative […]

[1] In a year seized by multiple pandemics, we seek wisdom and courage for the road ahead.  In the words of Rabbi Arthur Waskow, [2] “It is uncanny that the human race as a whole is at the moment struck with a viral disease that attacks most powerfully our ability to breathe.  And uncanny again […]

[1] Dr. Murray Haar of Augustana University is famous among his religion department students for the bold warning posted on his office door. “Think…That you may be wrong.” This directive might feel out of place in many Introduction to Systematic Theology texts—the goal of which often involves preserving the interpretations and debates of Western European, […]

[1] We’ve all seen them.  Those oh-so-charming news segments in which the expert is holding forth on international relations and in barges a rogue child.  In the viral video of the BBC interview with Professor Robert Kelly first one then a second child bursts in followed by a frantic woman ushering them back behind the […]

[1] We did it.   We crossed the quarter million mark in numbers of deaths due to Covid 19 in the United States.  And just before Thanksgiving.  Estimates now include being at over four hundred thousand by Inauguration Day.  Someplace in the middle for when Lutheran Social Ethicists gather?[1] [2] With over a hundred and eighty […]

FROM:            ELCA Authentic Diversity Advisory Team TO:                  Dr. Jennifer Hockenbery Journal of Lutheran Ethics, Editor February 18, 2021 Dear Dr. Hockenbery, I write on behalf of the Authentic Diversity Advisory Team, many of whom also served on the task force that developed the Strategy Toward Authentic Diversity which was overwhelmingly adopted by an 855-13 vote […]

[1] In 2016, the ELCA Churchwide Assembly overwhelmingly passed a “Repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery.” [1] Yet in the intervening years I have noticed that most people I come across have no idea what the Doctrine of Discovery is, or how it affects not only the lives of Native Americans, but also the lives […]