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.
Dizzying New Evidence In Human Evolution Provokes Debates: Fossils found over the past several decades have increasingly complicated our understanding of human evolution. Our early ancestors did not simply become bigger brained and more upright over time. New information coming out of the Rising Star dig includes the excavation of a second chamber with more Homo […]
American Views on Morality: A 30 min. audio program on culture’s continued divergence on what is moral. Morally, people are coming from different places, and this is why we run into indignant people every day who can’t believe that we’re thinking something completely different. 8 out of 10 Americans are concerned about the moral behavior […]
Five rational arguments why God (very probably) exists: Robert H. Nelson is Professor of Public Policy, University of Maryland, and author of God? Very Probably: Five Rational Ways to Think about the Question of a God (Cascade, 2015). This article begins with mathematics and offers a brief summary of the content, and can serve as a starter piece […]
Trafficking in Priceless Goods: The Invisible Epidemic of Modern Day Slavery: The author, Wendy L. Patrick, J.D., is a career prosecutor in the San Diego District Attorney’s Office with years of experience prosecuting human trafficking cases and sex crimes. She has a MDiv degree and a PhD in Theology, is an ordained Baptist minister, and is […]
The changing nature of sacred spaces: While for the present time congregation-based religion is contracting, the desire for sacred or devoted space continues. Students can use this article and photo spread to consider the Reformation’s themes on incarnational theology and a biblical anthropology of space and location as well as our incorrigibly human inclination toward the transcendent […]
What Good Is Religious Freedom? Locke, Rand, and the Non-Religious Case for Respecting It — From the Introduction: “I am not a religious believer, yet I regard religious freedom as a critical component of a proper legal system. What religious freedom is, however, is widely misunderstood in contemporary debate; it does not entail all of the […]
Lectures on Inhumanity: Teaching Medical Ethics in German Medical Schools Under Nazism — Students should learn that comparisons and analogies to Nazi Germany are often tenuous. Nevertheless this study from the Annals of Internal Medicine offers an informed examination of ethics gone awry in one of the most advanced cultures in history: “Course catalogs and […]
A polygamy trial in Canada tests the limits of conjugal freedom: As the institution of marriage continues to change in a changing culture, students can use this article, the trial, and the issues to begin sorting out the social, cultural, religious, theological and biblical distinctions at work among these parties and other claimants in church […]
An extra-uterine system to physiologically support the extreme premature lamb: Scientists have created an “artificial womb” in the hopes of someday using the device to save babies born extremely prematurely. Study research Dr. Alan Flake says his team has no interest in trying to gestate a fetus any earlier than about 23 weeks into pregnancy: “I […]
Cheese State Reality Check: On the Wisconsin Idea and the Social Gospel — This essay presents some background on Abraham Lincoln, the slave state controversy, and the founding of the Republican party in Ripon, WI, in 1854 as the radical religious left. Students may be interested to consider how movements begin and change over time […]
