Issue: August/September 2022: Gender Identity, Gender Expression, and Sexuality

[1] Gender is at least one of the major theological, philosophical, and ethical issues of our age. On one hand, the issue’s complexity means that conversation and study is often difficult. Some congregations and individuals have simply chosen not to discuss questions that pertain to gender identity, expression, and sexuality out of fear that such […]

[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 […]

“We do theology because we want to collaborate fundamentally in bringing about a different kind of world in the here-and-now.”   –M. Shawn Copeland   Vocations and Challenges to Vocation  [1] Can you recall a time when you felt truly welcomed and accepted? Can you remember a moment when you brought the fullness of yourself to […]

[1] What will they call us? There is a micro-generation of women whose entire reproductive lives were carried out under the protection of Roe v. Wade. Those of us who came of age with the knowledge that we were (more or less) trusted to make our own decisions about when and how to parent. We […]

[We] need a positive moral vision that would start by rejecting the idea that we are locked into incessant conflict along class, cultural, racial and ideological lines. It would reject all the appurtenances of the culture warrior pose — the us/them thinking, exaggerating the malevolence of the other half of the country, relying on crude […]

[1] Martin Luther’s doctorate in theology, earned at the University of Wittenberg on October 19, 1512, granted him, as it did to all who earned the degree, the license to uphold church teaching and preside over disputations by either writing the theses in one’s role as “opponens” or to participate in them as “respondens.” Luther […]

[1] This issue of Journal of Lutheran Ethics brings up a number of distinct topics for consideration and discussion all under the theme of Gender Identity, Gender Expression and Sexuality and the larger ethical question: How might we help our neighbor flourish as the person God intends them to be?  The following sets of reflection […]

Themes of sexuality and hope frame our book reviews this month.   In keeping with the topic of this journal issue, our first review considers sexuality in the context of aging. David Tiede offers a thoughtful and delightful consideration of Christian Faith and Sexuality in Later Life by Jim Childs. Sexuality among elders is a […]

”Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. So Sarah laughed to herself saying, ‘After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?’” (Genesis 18:11-12) Sarah needed to read this book. So do you, if you are […]

This past Pentecost, my pastor announced the imminent transformation of the world, with the elimination of all oppression.  I’d call it “skylight” hope—the light that comes from above, into the domes of our minds, reminding us of God’s ultimate sovereignty over history.  Biblically, it is rooted in the Magnificat and in the “new heaven and […]