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.
Hijacking Science: How the “No Differences” Consensus about Same-Sex Households and Children Works — Prof. Mark Regnerus at UT Austin takes issue with some of the research claims about same-sex parenting. The article could be used for introducing students to the cultural, policy, or research issues.
Accidental Tools: A Difference In Our Ancestors And Monkeys — A set of brief essays that can provoke students with the “and then God said” discussion: Capuchin monkeys are tool users par excellence. They use tools to dig, to open fruit, and to smash rocks together. Whatever we say about this, it is striking that the […]
What endures in Wittenberg: Despite its nearness to arms-producing factories, Wittenberg was largely spared the bombing that destroyed so many other German cities during World War II. Ordinary American Lutheran soldiers, it turns out, pleaded with their generals to go easy on the geographical source of their religion. Even for Protestants, supposedly free of saints and […]
“Freedom” vs. “Liberty”: Why Religious Conservatives Have Begun to Favor One Over the Other: Etymology is not usage, and language is fluid. This article can help students consider definitions and applications of the concepts of two important words in the public square. And consider the claim of the last quotation.
Desanctification of Law and the Problem of Absolutes: (Note: one free download allowed) Legal Scholar Jeremey Waldron reflects on the current breach between the application and practice of positive law and any of its sources in moral absolutes and in the sacred. “I am talking about modes of critical moralizing that seem natural, appropriate, and […]
Death Rights: This carefully written article assesses the difference between Canada’s judicially determined right to assisted suicide with Germany’s legislative allowance for narrow instances of assisted suicide without prosecution for family members: “Laws forbidding suicide assistance are based on the moral conviction that all killing of innocent life is wrong. If liberal democracies today can no […]
Civil Righteousness, and the Gospel in the American Church: This brief essay can assist students with distinguishing moralism from the Gospel. The writer notes the tendency of American culture to assimilate Christianity into its civil religion: “It’s one thing for the American political regime to value Christian churches because they help supply the moral requisites […]
Martin Luther as history’s first tweeter? An ongoing legacy, 500 years later: Three artifact shows demonstrate how Luther’s legacy is also as relevant and immediate as a Facebook feed. The Morgan Library exhibition in New York, “Word and Image: Martin Luther’s Reformation,” includes an extensive display of Luther-related materials. An exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art focuses on the cultural and […]
Constitutional Exceptionalism: (Note: one free download) This article argues that the legal doctrine of religious exceptionalism carries dangers of excess and potentially does harm. Students can study it as a position for limiting the scope of legal exceptions and for its interpretation of harm and who defines harm.
Opening up some legends: Mormons reveal founder Joseph Smith’s ‘theocracy’ plans — Church Historian’s Press has issued an annotated volume in its ongoing Joseph Smith Papers series: “Administrative Records: Council of Fifty Minutes, March 1844–1846,” ($59.95). These legendary texts have been kept ultra-secret the past 170 years. And for good reason, writes Richard Ostling.
