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.
Old Languages Never Die; They Just Fade Away: The preacher speaking aloud in Latin in the middle of the first millennium may have been producing sounds that were startlingly at variance with the spellings in his written notes. This can explain how it is that congregations could understand St. Augustine’s sermons, though written down and […]
A steady stream of news stories has emerged over the past few years regarding the free speech of Christians on campuses. A simple Google search of student free speech news on their Web search page and their News search page will produce many case studies that students can sort and sift for issues in religious […]
Meet America’s Most Important Christian Writer. Thornton Wilder once wrote: “The revival in religion will be a rhetorical problem – new persuasive words for defaced or degraded ones.” These overviews from The Dish and from First Things (The Craft of Christian Wiman) consider how Chris Wiman reflects the moment we’re living through as much as he […]
What might medieval Catholic poet Dante Alighieri teach Protestants today? Dante’s masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, has been rightly called “one of the essential books of mankind.” While The Divine Comedy most clearly reflects the Catholic faith of the poet and his medieval world, it hints at some principles the Reformation would bring to bear on the church two […]
OT scholar David Lamb notes that the Old Testament is full of sexual violence. We read of rapists, pimps, and other perpetrators of sexual exploitation. Every day we hear about sexual assaults on college campuses, in the military, and even in churches. Sadly, many of us are no longer shocked when we hear such horrific news. Stories […]
The Columbia Journalism Reviews examines “Why the religion beat poses unique challenges for some reporters.” The article may serve as a discussion piece for students in journalism and writing. This first person account considers the issues reporters may sometimes face when covering news related to religio: “A unique challenge facing many religion reporters involves the need to be […]
Christian belief and the 325th anniversary of American newspapers: America’s first newspaper was published 325 years ago in Boston. Publications in the 17th century usually put out only news that would make the king or his officials look good, but New England Puritans encouraged the reporting of bad news because they saw everything, good and […]
“United in Suffering” is a essay that can help students reflect on several views of martyrdom, past and present. From the article: “Christians look with horror at the martyrdoms of Christians in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. But we are not horrified enough. We cannot bear to ask what these martyrs might demand of […]
A teacher’s plea for the church to give the gift of literacy: The alarmingly high rates of illiteracy in our country hold troubling implications for us as Christians. Reading and writing are deeply woven into the fabric of our faith. The truths underpinning our faith, the foundation of what we believe, come from a book […]
The essence and art of spiritual memoir serves as a kind of reality check for our own, less literary lives of faith. The art of memoir imaginatively reprises the language and experiences of ordinary Christians and their communities—prayer, testimony, praise, confession, doubt, and lament. When Dorothy Day begins The Long Loneliness by evoking the smell […]
