Items included for this subject area come from a variety of sources. The perspectives conveyed may or may not express a Lutheran ethos. They can serve our instruction as discussion-starters, examples (positive and negative), and illustrations of intersections between God’s two kingdoms, intersections sometimes characterized by tension, sometimes by congruence. Inclusion does not imply endorsement.
Debate on Religious Liberty in the Public Square: Four panelist conduct this lengthy 2 hr. video debate, not resolving the issues but airing them in sometimes contentious ways that students can compare and contrast. The session will indicate for students the need for further study of the issues.
What Good Is Religious Freedom? Locke, Rand, and the Non-Religious Case for Respecting It — From the Introduction: “I am not a religious believer, yet I regard religious freedom as a critical component of a proper legal system. What religious freedom is, however, is widely misunderstood in contemporary debate; it does not entail all of the […]
Lectures on Inhumanity: Teaching Medical Ethics in German Medical Schools Under Nazism — Students should learn that comparisons and analogies to Nazi Germany are often tenuous. Nevertheless this study from the Annals of Internal Medicine offers an informed examination of ethics gone awry in one of the most advanced cultures in history: “Course catalogs and […]
How Two Mississippi College Students Fell in Love and Decided to Join a Terrorist Group: Says Bobby Ross at GetReligion about this indepth account, “Readers learn how a young Christian woman raised in a church where her mother teaches Sunday school converted to Islam and quickly became radicalized, and how a young Muslim man who […]
Synod, other advocates speak for religious liberty in secularized military: The LCMS and other groups are speaking up for the rights of U.S. service members to live faithfully amid continued U.S. Defense Department infringements on religious freedom in the military. Despite the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) claims of accommodating religious expression in the military, a heavily secularized […]
Take and Rread: Ethics, an annotated list of the best new titles selected by Jonathan Tran April 24, 2017 — Ten newer books on ethics and agency including Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity by Alasdair MacIntyre, Brent Waters’ book on Christians and capitalism, a title on the Stoics and the early Christians as rival traditions, and […]
Whatever Is Pure: Cedarville Requires Professors to Apply Philippians 4:8 — Cedarville University (Baptist) enacted new curriculum guidelines inspired by Philippians 4:8 and aimed at purifying coursework of erotic and graphic content. Faculty have pushed back against stricter standards keeping curse words, R-rated movies, and sexual content out of their curricula.
Should Christians Abandon Public Schools? This commentary advocates Christians remaining involved in public education: Influential thought leaders are advocating withdrawal from public life in order to preserve historical Christian beliefs. That includes withdrawal from public schools and other public institutions. But what would a large-scale Christian withdrawal from civic life look like?
Do Discretionary Religious Exemptions Violate The Establishment Clause? (Draft, University of Missouri School of Law, Research Paper No. 2017-13) The Establishment Clause is not violated when government enacts regulatory or tax legislation but provides, concerning these new burdens, an accommodation for those holding conflicting religious beliefs or practices. In an unbroken line of cases now spanning a century, […]
Loving the Sinner: Evangelical Colleges and Their LGB Students — From Quinnipiac Law Review 35:147 (2017), 70 pages. In his Obergefell dissent, Chief Justice Robert wrote: “Hard questions arise when people of faith exercise religion in ways that may be seen to conflict with the new right to same-sex marriage.” This article looks at one […]
