Issue: December 2013: Immigration

Volume 13 Number 8

Editor’s Introduction

Immigration reform continues to be a major issue confronting the United States of America. This issue of the Journal of Lutheran Ethics provides information on comprehensive immigration reform thanks to the ministry of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. In addition, the authors of the two articles explore and suggest what the church needs to do […]

Exploring the Role of Unconscious Bias in the Immigration Debate and the Transformative Power of the Church

Imagining Undocumented Immigrants [1] What does an undocumented immigrant look like? What images do those words elicit in your mind, and what feelings and emotions do those images evoke? Compassion? Pity? Anger? Puzzlement? Anxiety? Admiration? Indifference? Those are probably not easy questions to answer, even if you happen to be an undocumented immigrant yourself! However, […]

Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service 12/14/2013 This piece is from Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and is reprinted with permission. To see it in its original form, click here. For more information about the work of this great organization, check out their website lirs.org. [1] An estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants currently reside in the […]

Beyond Hospitality

The Dilemma [1] In my last congregational ministry, prior to my election as a synod bishop, the congregation I served was standing on the brink of a crisis faced by hundreds of ELCA congregations now. We were a vibrant, growing, intergenerational, mission-driven, middle-class, white, English-speaking faith community, living and working in a mission field that […]

Book Review: Volker Küster, A Protestant Theology of Passion: Korean Minjung Theology Revisited

[1] Christian minjung theologies arose in the 1970s and 1980s in South Korea. They were articulated by a small group of Protestant pastors and intellectuals who became part and parcel of the late 20th century minjung movement—a cultural phenomenon led by artists, students, labor organizers, and intellectuals—that included a retrieval of traditional artistic forms, a […]

To Tell or Not to Tell?: Autobiography and its Role in Theology in “Theologians In Their Own Words”

(Review: Theologians in Their Own Words. Edited by Derek R. Nelson, Joshua M Moritz, and Ted Peters.) [1] Teacher, social activist and womanist author bell hooks writes, “When professors bring narratives of their experiences into classroom discussions it eliminates the possibility that we can function as all-knowing, silent interrogators. It is often productive if professors […]