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.
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 […]
The Becket Fund has launched a site for understanding the various RFRA laws, cases, and issues. The site represents the Becket Fund’s views and case load with attention to religious minorities such as Native Americans, Sikhs, Muslims and Buddhists. Students can examine the contents, pro and con, for perspective and case studies.
Students and instructors can examine these views, recommendations, and the framing of topics as a way to assess–pro and con–many of the transgender issues. The author, Austen Hartke, is a graduate of Luther Seminary’s Master of Arts program and a writer, speaker, and creator of the YouTube series Transgender and Christian, “which seeks to understand and […]
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 […]
Faith Groups and Corporate Social Responsibility: an 8 min. video on the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, a coalition of long-term stockholders who have used their influence as investors for decades, pressing major corporations to divest from apartheid South Africa, end human trafficking, abolish modern slavery, and support human rights. Students in business, economics, […]
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.
George Yancey: From Racial to Religious Bias — This 10 item Q&A from George Yancey (So Many Christians, So Few Lions, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014) provides a starter piece for students on why academia and pop culture recognize some forms of bias and are blind to others. WM: Many secularists want to exclude Christians from the public […]
“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 […]
The Quietly Dangerous Suburban Church — How three architects in the 1950s tried to meld religion, modernism and suburbia: The marks of the church are word and sacraments (AC VII); thus, here is a study for the-spiritual-and-the-material, a key Reformation insight about the Gospel. To what extend are other spatial elements important and edifying? The 1950s and ’60s […]
An empirical analysis of emotional language in legal briefs before the Supreme Court: Supreme Court opinions employ controversial emotional language aimed to tug at the heart strings and to provoke ire, yet the Justices counsel lawyers to avoid such emotional language. “Our model predicts a 0.61 probability that the petitioner wins a Justice’s vote when […]
