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.
Catholic Schools Need a Business Model: “The [Catholic] parochial school model is a dinosaur,” said the director of the Villanova Center for Church Management and Business Ethics. As neighborhoods have changed, as priests and nuns have dwindled, as charter schools have become competition, Catholic-school economics have long since stopped working. As parochial schools convert to charter […]
Princeton Seminary President Talks Tim Keller, Women’s Ordination, and How One Award Ignited Christian Twitter: This Sojourners coverage is one way to present a case study on how and how not to arrange presentations and awards among parties who may not hold like positions on issues in church and society. Students will find several matters […]
Dr. Daniel Siedell presentation, “Who’s Afraid of Modern Art”: In this 45 min. video Art Historian Dan Siedell presents both a perspective on the modern art scene and engaging its content by applying key Reformation themes such as justified-and-sinful, vocation, and the two kingdoms. The presentation may suggest some ways for other academic disciplines to locate […]
Civil Procedure and the Ministerial Exception: Courts should approach the procedural questions left open by Hosanna-Tabor in light of the underlying justification for the ministerial exception. The exception reflects a longstanding constitutional limitation on the competence of courts to resolve “strictly and purely ecclesiastical” questions. To conclude that the exception operates as an affirmative defense […]
The Three Myths of Cohabitation: Cohabitation has a notably deleterious impact on children. From the University of Virginia study, this fourth edition of the World Family Map project (an international study that tracks various indicators of family health) includes both some obvious and some surprising outcomes of cohabitation replacing marriage: kids who are born and raised by […]
Why Hundreds of Christian Faculty Members Have Signed a ‘Statement of Confession’: Many Christian faculties and members are signing A Statement of Confession and Commitment as a position of “common concern regarding the current social and political climate in the U.S.” Students and profs can consider the reasons, roles, and effectiveness of such public statements, pro and […]
In Judaism, Holiness Is as Holiness Does: The fire at the core of Leviticus — Students may find interesting Rabbi David Wolpe’s observations about Leviticus and Lutheran theologian Rudolph Otto on the numinous and the human condition. Leviticus would seem to lend itself to Otto’s approach. Not a rational or utilitarian pursuit, sacrifice required acknowledgment of […]
The Pearl of Great Wisdom: The Deep & Abiding Biblical Roots of Western Liberal Education — The rich tradition of liberal learning in the West has in fact remained at the most fundamental levels more biblical than classical. From the fountain of biblical study flowed not only a high order of widely applicable interpretative skills ( techné), […]
The Clash Between Religious Freedom and Equality Law: This review of a new book, Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age (Harvard University Press, 2017) by former ACLU lawyer Nelson Tebbe, considers his theme that “disagreement, both reasonable and unreasonable, is a fixed feature of constitutional politics.” Tebbe writes in a scholarly tone for colleagues in law and academia, […]
Supreme Incoherence: Transgender Ideology and the End of the Law — Agree or disagree with the author, this careful analysis will challenge students to think carefully about language, positive law, and the claims our words make to natural and revealed knowledge. This might be the essay to help students on any side of the gender identity […]
