Issue: December 2019/January 2020: Immigration: Moving Forward Faithfully

Volume 19 Number 6

Editor’s Introduction: Immigration: Moving Forward Faithfully

[1] JLE has had several immigration-themed issues in the past few years. As guest editor, I wanted to look at this pressing issue yet again. A fellow student of mine at Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, Pastor Betty Rendon, was deported in May, shocking many in the ELCA. Pastor Betty was an interim pastor […]

For Congregational Discussion: Immigration

For Congregational Discussion   [1] The Journal of Lutheran Ethics hopes to provide reading material to stimulate thinking and conversation among academics, clergy, and laity. To this end, this new section will be included in each issue of JLE in order to encourage constructive discussion within congregations about the topics discussed in JLE.  Consider using […]

Learning from the Barmen Declaration of 1934: Theological-Ethical-Political Commentary

19   [1] The Barmen Theological Declaration was crafted and adopted in May 1934 by a scholarly team whose guiding figure was Karl Barth. The context for this theological statement included the increasing machinations by the German Christians, supported in their efforts by the Nazi regime, to control and dominate the Protestant churches in Germany […]

A Pastoral Reflection of Congregational Response During a Family Separation Crisis

19   [1] I pastor a congregation in which the immigration crisis hit so close to home that we were no longer able to live unaware. We did not even realize that this crisis was a potential reality in an Appalachian city, let alone expect to have to respond to this crisis ourselves. Very few […]

Christ at the Border: Finding Courage to Resist in a Theology of the Cross

[1] Johana Medina Leon was taken into ICE custody in El Paso, TX after presenting herself to border security to request asylum. Leon, a trans woman, was facing violence and persecution in her home country of El Salvador and believed that the US would offer her the kind of protection and security she needed to […]

Welcoming the Stranger? Rethinking Our Language of Hospitality

[1] We face a country increasingly riven by racial, ethnic, and religious conflict, conflict that often revolves around the figure of the immigrant. The incarceration of children on the border and President Trump’s call for four U.S. congresswomen of color to “go back” to their countries (even though all are U.S. citizens and three of […]

Review: Migrants and Citizens: Justice and Responsibility in the Ethics of Immigration, by Tisha Rajendra

  [1] Kyle Korver, a shooting guard and small forward for the NBA’s Utah Jazz, drew some attention in April 2019 with an essay simply entitled “Privileged,” addressing racial inequalities in the NBA and American society generally. The essay discusses statistics regarding poverty, incarceration, and unemployment, but its motivation and energy arise from Korver’s friendships […]

Review: The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life, by Lauren Markham

[1] My “awakening” to the poor and oppressed of Central America and Mexico and the relationship of that to U.S., policy, is easily traced to my travel with the Augsburg College Center for Global Education to Mexico and Nicaragua, in 1982.  Almost immediately after, I sought a Tex-Mex border experience, and then found the local Overground […]

Recent Films Feature Migration Themes

[1] Four new films offer penetrating and personal looks into various aspects of migration, deepening our understanding of migrant worker vulnerability, environmental destruction from continued wall building, the courageous work of Dreamers, and the shocking and complex violence driving families to flee Guadalupe, Mexico. [2] The Infiltrators is the provocative and uplifting story of Dreamers who courageously […]