Items included on this page 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.
Thou Shalt Not Toss Food: Enlisting Religious Groups To Fight Waste: Separation of church and state? When it comes to fighting food waste, the U.S. government is looking to partner with the faithful. The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday launched the Food Steward’s Pledge, an initiative to engage religious groups of all faiths to help redirect the […]
Modern Bioethics: Denying Life-Sustaining Treatment to a Patient Who Wanted to Live — This case study involves a Texas state law and a hospital ethics committee which determined to end life-sustaining treatment for a patient dying from undetermined causes. The Houston Chronicle link covers the story of the patient’s death. The Public Discourse article analyzes […]
Chance to get ID cards draws hundreds to Winston-Salem event: The Forsyth County, NC, Sheriff’s Office, Winston-Salem Police Department and Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center’s Division of Faith and Health Ministries have asked the local social ministry group, FaithAction,to provide an ID card service in Winston-Salem. “This is a local answer to a national issue — a broken […]
An Open Mind? — Do the wonders described by contemporary neuroscience require us to affirm a radical materialist conception of human nature? The question is not whether neuroscience offers exciting new evidence about human behavior. Rather, it is how we interpret the evidence. Students can use this essay to examine the perennial mind/body question and […]
Pharmacists to Supreme Court: Protect our religious conscience: A family-owned pharmacy and two female pharmacists asked the U.S. Supreme Court today to stop a new Washington State law that would force them to sell abortion-inducing drugs in violation of their religious beliefs.
Religious Health Care Ministries Show Growth: The Wall Street Journal reports that the number of participants in religious health-sharing arrangements has grown from 200,000 to 500,000 since 2010 and after enactment of the ACA. According to the report, gov’t officials are concerned both about the risk to participants from the unregulated operation of the arrangements, and about their impact […]
“Concussion” Makes a Christian Argument Against Football: Students across several areas of study and interest may find the arguments within and about this film worth exploring. “The movie’s moral arguments are framed less as matters of medicine than of religious faith. It’s not a sports movie, or a medical thriller, so much as a Christian […]
In this assessment of ethical theory in current bioethics, David S. Oderberg, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading, UK, discusses six current confusions and errors in agenda-driven bioethics studies and reports: “You could say they misunderstand the function of argument, which is to get to the truth, not to advance a previously-adopted policy.” […]
From KUOW.org in Seattle, this in-depth human-interest analysis can serve as a case study for issues of law and religion, adolescent age-of-consent, health care decisions, and similar two-kingdoms tensions. Dennis Lindberg was 14 when he was diagnosed with leukemia. He refused to received blood transfusions, which ultimately led to his death three weeks after he was […]
Belgian doctors call for end to euthanasia for mental suffering: a group of psychiatrists, psychologists, philosophers and others are asking the government to remove the option for euthanasia on the basis of psychological suffering alone. For the first time since the adoption of the law in 2002, a decision to allow euthanasia –the De Moor/Van Hoey case […]
