Items included for this subject area 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.
Children at the Grave — a pastor at her daughter’s public elementary school career day notes that the kids were mostly interested in the pastoral ministry at funerals: “Do you have to dig the hole to bury them?” “What happens when you die?” “Someone told me that dead people go to heaven. Is that true?” […]
A Conversation on Character, Flourishing & the Good Life: Though previously this question came pre-answered by culture, by religion, and by tradition, these days we each have to ask and answer for ourselves: What is the good life? What does it mean to life a flourishing life? This hour-long video from the Yale Center for Faith and Culture […]
The Rule of Law, The Way of Love: The animating conviction of this issue of Comment is that if we want to understand and prophetically critique how law is legislated, enforced, and administered, we need to see the law-like nature of creation itself.
Should Christians Vote for the Lesser of Two Evils? Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, asks what happens in a race where Christians are faced with two morally problematic choices. Should voters cast a ballot for the lesser of two evils? “When Christians face two clearly immoral options, we […]
The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational Account of Providence (IVP, 2015): This review of a new book from Thomas Oord, professor at Northwest Nazarene University, considers Oord’s thesis “that evil exists, quite simply, because ‘God cannot unilaterally prevent genuine evil.’ Theologians have long recognized that God can’t do all sorts of things—like create […]
Title IX Religious Exemption Does Not Bar Retaliation Claim Against Catholic High School: A Maryland federal district court refused to dismiss a former high school librarian’s Title IX retaliation claim against the Catholic high school from which she was fired. Librarian Annette Goodman reported to the school’s administration evidence that another faculty member was having a […]
From Douglas Laycock who argued the Hosanna-Tabor Case: It is one thing if religious believers change their minds about a moral issue. It is a very different thing if those who cannot change their mind are sued, fined, forced to violate their conscience, and excluded from occupations if they refuse. The increasing public perception that […]
Why Global Churches Struggle Over LGBT Rights: Some African church leaders who refuse to accept gay rights have described the assumption that they’d fall in line with American and European evolving understandings of sexuality as being akin to a colonial-era decree to “civilize” the benighted darker races. The debate over whether to accept LGBT Christians as full […]
Mount St. Mary’s and the future of Catholic higher education: Over the past two decades, Catholic colleges have found themselves at the center of an intense discussion about what it really means to be a Catholic institution of higher education. And there remain numerous approaches to this question. This essay from a Religion prof at […]
Court Rules Against Fontbonne Academy Constitutional Claim: In a decision being called the first of its kind nationally, a state judge has ruled that an all-girls Catholic school in Milton discriminated against a gay man when it rescinded a job offer after learning he was in a same-sex marriage. This case is emerging as the […]
