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Editor's Comments |
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Public or Private?
by Kaari Reierson
I remember what a shock it was, when I was pregnant, to find that my body no longer possessed its familiar boundaries between public and private. After I said no thanks to BUN testing and amnio despite my advanced maternal age, the doctor who conducted the ultrasound for my second child clearly thought I was either misinformed or an idiot, asking me about every test I could have had but didn’t....
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On A Love for Life by Dennis di Mauro |
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A Love for Life: An Introduction to Three Reviews
by Michael Shahan
Often, the Church of Jesus Christ — and especially its individual members scattered across the world, including its apostolic leadership — think and act as though we are absolutely adrift upon the high seas of cultural dislocation and unrest. In our ethical deliberations and in our pastoral reflection and practice, it sometimes appears as though we have been left abandoned by our Lord, unarmed and inadequate for the daunting task of facing a seemingly godless world in the postmodern age.... |
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Review of A Love for Life: Christianity’s Consistent Protection of the Unborn
by James Guill
When I was asked to review Dennis R. Di Mauro’s book, A Love for Life: Christianity’s Consistent Protection of the Unborn, my first thought was, "Why a book about Christian teachings regarding abortion, or the sanctity of life?" I must, in the interest of full disclosure, admit to a strong bias in favor of the Unborn.... |
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Review of A Love for Life: Christianity’s Consistent Protection of the Unborn
by Rebecca Bartley Yarrison
The debate about the ethics of abortion is at once political, emotional, judicial and religious. Arguments in favor of one position or another often focus on the humanity or personhood (or lack thereof) of the fetus, the rights of both the pregnant woman and the unborn child, the constitutionality of various modes of abortion and so on.... |
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Review of A Love for Life: Christianity’s Consistent Protection of the Unborn
by Larry Bailey
This book is not for the reader already convinced of a woman’s “pro choice” in terminating a pregnancy. Nor is it necessarily for those who are strongly pro-life. Rather it is most helpful for those who do not quite see clearly where the Christian church has stood vis-a-vis abortion until the twentieth century.... |
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Responses to A Love for Life Reviews
by Dennis di Mauro
I want to thank Dr. Yarrrison for my first "pro-choice" review. I wish I had many more. I am confident that this type of dialog will lead us to the truth regarding God’s plan for human life. But I do need to correct a few problems in Dr.Yarrison’s assertions, however....
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On Paths Not Taken by Paul Hinlicky |
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Introduction to Hinlicky Book Review
by Michael Shahan
At an Ash Wednesday Service, a few years back, the Dean of an Episcopal Cathedral in the South began his sermon by apologizing for what he deemed to be a "conservative" element in his homily. I braced myself for a torrent of reactionary, Bible-thumping, “hell-fire and damnation” rhetoric, with women and children covering their ears and grown men cowering in guilt in the back....
Response to Hinlicky’s "Paths Not Taken"
by Mark Mattes
In Paths Not Taken: Fates of Theology from Luther to Leibniz, Paul Hinlicky seeks to retrieve a number of features from Leibniz’s philosophy for today’s theology, particularly his metaphysics, his doctrine of the compatibility of divine freedom and human freedom, and his theodicy (this world as the best of all possible worlds) in order to address current theology’s loss of public and theme....
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On the Coalition for Reform (CORE) |
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The Core of Lutheran CORE: American Civil Religion and White Male Backlash
by Jon Pahl
Empires divide to conquer. Christians have often been prevented from the fullness of our witness to the gospel, if not completely conquered, by internal bickering that resolves upon historical examination into causes that have less to do with central doctrines or practices of Christianity than with jockeying for position in relationship to imperial privilege....
A Response to "The Core of Lutheran CORE"
by Robert Benne
Ah, how to respond to a rant? Especially by an author (Pahl) who thinks his new book (Empire of Sacrifice) is so brilliant that it provides the analytical key to everything that Lutheran CORE is about. It is so bracing to have a profound seer tell you exactly what you have really been doing—defending the Empire and its civil religion, scapegoating, and holding on by our fingernails to the great power and privilege we once had—when you actually thought you were involved in a struggle over Christian teaching and practice.
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Cloud of Witnesses |
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Johann Sebastian Bach on the Christian Life
by Mark Bangert
Searching for an ethical tone in the life of Johann Sebastian Bach is difficult but not impossible. It is difficult because J. S. Bach wrote so little about himself, in fact resisted writing about himself, and because those closest to him — his two wives and surviving children — either found such reporting socially unusual or not important.... |