Issue: February 2017: Student Debt

When approached about finding contributors to the Journal of Lutheran Ethics around a topic which was and remains particularly relevant to millennials, student debt emerged as perhaps the most important distinguishing criteria setting this generation apart from predecessor generations. Sure, many theological topics remain high priorities in the life and witness of most millennials, yet there remains a deep concern about the sustainability of these priorities given the immense debt that so many have accrued. I will be the first to recognize that I am not a financial expert, nor a person particularly fraught with debt myself. As I remind myself, this is not my own doing, it remains a gift from God. With that quite Lutheran recognition, I found two lenses that should be helpful in discerning this topic—though I recognize this topic is not new to many.

HIGHER EDUCATION AS A PUBLIC GOOD [1] At the 2014 Laurier University Governance Dinner, Andrew Newman, an Audit Partner with KPMG’s Public Sector Audit Practice in Ottawa, described how his grandfather had gone to school through to grade eight and then went out to work. He then recounted how his father went to school through […]

Students who enter seminary typically have experienced a call to ministry. However, pursuing that call professionally can be expensive. Melissa Curtis Powell, Director of Financial Aid at Trinity Lutheran Seminary, shares her expertise on the problems of student debt and ways to prevent students from being overly burdened.

[1] Kevin Considine’s new book, Salvation for the Sinned-Against: Han and Schillebeeckx in Intercultural Dialogue, aims at reimagining a catholic (universal) soteriology within world Christianity, with an emphasis on the ‘sinned-against’ drawn from the particularities of Korean and Korean-American theological insight. But the how within the what, or the methodological approach within his aim, are […]

[1] This is the second edition of Rutledge’s excellent Handbook on Politics and Religion by Jeffery Haynes. Haynes is Director of Research at London Metropolitan University in the U.K. The first volume was published after the events of September 11, 2011, looking at the implications of “religious terrorism” and “extremism.” Haynes asked some of the […]