The Death of the Death Penalty — Upon the Nebraska legislature’s repeal of the death penalty, here is Time Magazine’s cover story on five reasons why the era of capital punishment is ending. The author focuses on the pragmatic problems of sustaining and applying death penalty laws but concludes with a discussion of the courts’ […]
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.
Social and Economic Life in Second Temple Judea
Social and Economic Life in Second Temple Judea — A book review by Walter Brueggemann of this book by Samuel Adams (Westminster, 2015) which asks economic questions about the post-exile period of the Bible rather than focusing only on theological-spiritual matters–to the neglect of material considerations—or imagining that texts can be understood apart from context. […]
Do Strong Religious Beliefs Stifle Innovation?
Do Strong Religious Beliefs Stifle Innovation? — Countries that are intensely religious are typically less innovative than those that aren’t, according to a new paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The study compares religious beliefs and belief in God with scientific innovation as measured by issuance of patents.
Race, Religion, and Criminal Justice
Race, Religion, and Criminal Justice — This summary article examines the PRRI Survey that indicates a deep public divide about police violence toward Black men. Among religious groups, white evangelical Protestants are the only major religious group in which a majority says the recent police killings of black men are isolated incidents.
Sex and Danger at UVA
Sex and Danger at UVA — An assessment of the chaotic sexual ethos on college campuses: “There are many ironies in the proposed remedies of surveillance and reeducation. One irony in particular stands out. The same persons who in their youth supported the liberation of the sexes from so-called Victorian inhibitions and morals are now […]
Richar Ostling on the Religious Press
Richard Ostling on the Religious Press — This veteran journalist presents his observations on religion in the mainstream press: Like science or medicine, religion is a highly complex news beat that suffers when a news organization lacks an experienced specialist. But newspapers, TV news and allegedly journalistic Web sites are instead tempted to single-source. You […]
Christ, Culture, and Thinking About Secularism
Christ, Culture, and Thinking About Secularism — Near Eastern Studies Professor Michael Brown looks back at the prescient essay on an advancing secularism written by Lutheran theologian Wolfgang Pannenberg twenty years ago: “In a secular milieu, even an elementary knowledge of Christianity, its history, teachings, sacred texts, and formative figures dwindles. It is no longer […]
Religion Complicates Calif. Vaccine Debate
Religion Complicates Calif. Vaccine Debate — The issue of religious exemption for vaccinating children has become a key theme in current legislation on the senate floor in Sacramento.
Newsfeed of Fear: An Editorial on New Editing
Newsfeed of Fear: An Editorial on News Editing — The news media’s addiction to spectacular violence might not be so insidious if it were accompanied by the kind of empathy and compassion that serve to reduce violence in the real world. Editors may feel caught in a system that has to balance public interest with […]
Nancy Pearcey: Youth Groups Depend Too Much on Emotionalism
Nancy Pearcey: Youth Groups Depend Too Much on Emotionalism — In this interview, Pearcey discusses the five principles detailed in her new apologetics book, Finding Truth (David C. Cook, 2015): identify the idol, identify the idol’s reductionism, test the idol’s validity, test the idol’s consistency, make the alternate case for Christian faith. Pearcey works from […]
