How Christians Should Talk About Sex — This column uses it’s a point of departure a recent two-part piece from Rolling Stone on current sexual norms. The columnist’s perspective compares today’s Millennials with the culture Paul was addressing with the Gospel 2000 years ago.
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.
Sacred and Profane: How Not to Negotiate with Believers
Sacred and Profane: How Not to Negotiate with Believers — This article on the 1993 Branch Davidian disaster in Waco, TX, profiles religious-as-different and the gap between the secular outlook and certain religious persuasions that can lead to complete disconnect and possible tragedy. The case study is of particular interest in light of today’s same-sex […]
A New Series of Children’s Story Books on Evolution
A New Series of Children’s Story Books on Evolution — In delaying evolution instruction, we may miss an opportunity to leverage children’s natural curiosity about the biological world, and to establish the foundations for a more accurate scientific understanding before misconceptions become deeply entrenched. So here’s the challenge for educators (and parents): figuring out how […]
Dying in the Digital Age
Dying in the Digital Age — An active conversation and a hefty dose of outrage is swirling on social media about the proper boundaries between public and private when it comes to illness and death. Lisa Adams, a stage 4 cancer patient, has been tweeting her experiences with the disease. Writers Bill and Emma Keller […]
A Christian Musician with More Questions Than Answers
A Christian Musician with More Questions Than Answers — In the fluid domain of music, pop culture, and CCM, Morning Edition offers this 6 min. audio profile of Josh Garrels, who says his music is “trying to peel back layers and find out where is God in the midst of this city that I live […]
The Princess Bride, Revenge, and Justice
The Princess Bride, Revenge, and Justice — “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” From a movie known to many, here is a possible starter article on the Biblical theme of justice, Lev. 19:18, and the role–valid and invalid–of violence.
Malcolm Gladwell: the Unheard Story of David and Goliath
Malcom Gladwell: The Unheard Story of David and Goliath — A 16 min. TED Talk from popular writer and speaker Malcolm Gladwell who offers his take on the event from 1 Samuel 17. Possibly useful for content in literature, hermeneutics, the sciences, and the psychology of perception.
Faith in Fiction
Faith in Fiction While religion significantly matters in minor literary contexts today (as with the eccentric popularity of Amish romance novels) and in vulgar commercial contexts (as with Dan Brown’s books), serious literary fiction largely occupies its very own naked public square, shorn of any reference to religiously informed understandings of who and what we […]
On Reading Dorothy Sayers’s Play Cycle for Lent
On Reading Dorothy Sayers’s Play Cycle for Lent by Gilbert Meilaender — The Man Born to Be King is a series of radio plays, twelve in all, dramatizing the life of Jesus from birth to death and resurrection. First broadcast by the BBC in 1941–1942, they were published in 1943, together with Sayers’s notes for […]
