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.
In this both-kingdoms case and an evident recognition of at least some role of natural law in the left-hand kingdom, Judge Richard J. Leon of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia has ruled that employers do not need to provide insurance coverage for contraception even if their objections are moral rather […]
S. 1598, the First Amendment Defense Act, sponsored by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), prohibits the federal government from taking discriminatory action against a person on the basis that such person believes or acts in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction that: (1) marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one […]
Religion and the Risk of Divorce: this update on the numbers parses the GSS data and all the respondents in the 2010, 2012, and 2014 surveys and finds the divorce rate among religious Americans for the whole sample is 45 percent—quite close to the “half of all marriages end in divorce” statistic that is widely passed along. […]
A coalition of international religious freedom groups is urging the Senate to approve a six-year re-authorization for the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and reject attempts to alter the nature and scope of the organization.
Introduced in 1875, the original Blaine Amendment was an attempt to amend the U.S. Constitution by explicitly banning any government funds from going to “sectarian” institutions, aimed chiefly at Catholic and Lutheran schools. Today, 38 state constitutions have Blaine amendments that restrict government aid to “sectarian” organizations. Although many of the amendments have lain relatively dormant for decades, […]
LifeWay Research found 39 percent say divorce is a sin when an individual’s spouse commits adultery; 38 percent when the couple no longer loves one another; 38 percent when a spouse abandons the other; 37 percent when a spouse is abused; and 35 percent when a spouse is addicted to pornography; and 37 percent say […]
Four Roman Catholic nonprofits in New York, including two high schools, must allow employees access to contraception, a federal appeals court panel ruled on Friday, reversing a decision by a lower court that allowed the organizations to get around a requirement in the Affordable Care Act. A spokesman for the archdiocese said its lawyers were reviewing […]
California Gov. Jerry Brown has signed Assembly Bill No. 1266 into law, allowing transgendered students to choose which school bathrooms and locker rooms to use and which sport teams to join based on their gender identity. The law is the nation’s first that specifically requires equal access to public school facilities and activities based on gender […]
From the WaPo: Maryland’s largest school system is considering a policy to guide decisions about its annual school calendar, a move that comes nine months after officials set off a wave of public anger by scrubbing the calendar of religious holiday names, including Christmas.
From The New York Times: It’s as if Jesus’s parable about the workers in the vineyard—where latecomers got the same pay as those who worked all day—has come to life. Earlier this year, Dan Price, a graduate of Seattle Pacific University and CEO of Seattle-based Gravity Payments, made headlines nationwide after announcing plans to raise […]
