Category: Ecclesiology and Ecclesial Life

Holt-Woehl describes the education practices of three congregations for children with developmental disabilities. All three are currently inclusive of people with developmental disabilities, both children and adults, in the education programs and life of their congregations. The author also contemplates, amid the complexity of congregational culture, how including people with developmental disabilities in religious education contributed to the creation of an inclusive congregation.

Social statements are social teaching and policy documents in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Created by task forces composed of ELCA members and supported by ELCA churchwide staff members, social statements are developed through a series of participatory steps. Contributors share divergent feedback on the “Draft Social Statement on Women and Justice” with embodied local and global perspectives.

In 2019, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America affirmed its thirteenth social statement, which is biblical and theological social teaching and policy. As an introduction to a collection of essays, Mary J. Streufert sets this ELCA social statement Faith, Sexism, and Justice: A Call to Action within the context of ecumenical and global Lutheran partnerships, seeing gender justice as a faithful, trusting response to God’s gracious call to serve neighbors in Christian freedom.