Issue: June/July 2026: Summer Book Review Issue

[1] Esteemed readers of the Journal of Lutheran Ethics, this “Summer Books Issue” contains four reviews and recommendation of readings on the issue of Christian Nationalism. We include book reviews from a broad range of topics including travel, philosophy, ethics, and spirituality. It is our hope that these diverse reviews resonate and influence a decision […]

[1] Crossing Boundaries is the perfect book for this summer’s travel season.  Published during the pandemic, when traveling was all but closed, this book encourages travel as a path to personal growth and community peace building in a world marked by escalating conflict and division. Today, although the pandemic is over and the world even […]

[1] Richard Lischer invites us into a compelling story told by a wonderfully diverse cast of storytellers. Readers of the JLE would likely have already met many of the folks here, but probably not in this way, with the types of questions Lischer poses for them (and us) to ponder. As we read their stories, […]

    We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men   [1] This Lost Generation lament for selves in search of authenticity is taken up by Catholic University of America’s Angela Franks in a deeply researched elegy for “the identity crisis in the West: the crisis of the subject that resists being fixed.”  […]

[1] The ELCA social statement Faith and Civic Life: Seeking the Well-Being of All defines Christian Nationalism as:  A cultural framework that idealizes and advocates fusion of highly selected Christian beliefs with U.S. civic life. This nationalistic ideology holds, among other   things, that the U.S. Constitution was divinely inspired, that Christianity should be a […]

Select Bibliography on Christian Nationalism Recommended Books that Challenge Christian Nationalism (Including books written by evangelicals)   Ajoy, April. Star-Spangled Jesus: Leaving Christian Nationalism and Finding a True Faith, Worthy Books, 2024. (Written by a former Christian Nationalist who has repudiated it) Alberta, Tim. The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age […]

(Contact Book Review Editor William Rodriguez if you are interested in reviewing any of these books. We will get you a copy of the book for free.)   A History of Nihilism in the Nineteenth Century: Confrontations with Nothingness by Jon Stewart (physical copy available for mailing) A Guidebook to Progressive Church by Clint Schnekloth […]