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Editor's Comments |
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Liturgical Ethics
by Kaari Reierson
Christians look to the liturgy, the work of its people, to find the answers. Confession, praise, prayer, Word, sacrament, and blessing form us even as we decide what musical setting to use and choose (or do not choose) which version of the Lord’s Prayer to speak, and shape them in return.
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Featured Articles |
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Recognizing the Other in Liturgical Acts: Religious Pluralism and Eucharist
by Gregory Walter
A major difficulty facing contemporary life is the misrecognition of persons. This is the social pathology whereby we can improperly recognize the religious other and thereby do violence to another. Misrecognition denotes a variety of processes. In general, it marks the way that a person can ignore another, treat a person as a thing ('it' rather than 'thou’', or fail to attend to the other’s differences, particularity, and self-representation. Misrecognition goes beyond simple insult, social status, or loss of dignity. |
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Liturgical Practice as the Model for Justice
by Melinda A. Quivik
At the January 2001 annual meeting of the North American Academy of Worship, Vice-President Gabe Huck's address laid out the importance of worship for learning the ways of a just society. He told of a seven year-old girl who had gone to Hebrew School for years and knew the holidays and scriptures. She had a classmate who was not part of any one worshipping community. |
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Midwives of Word and Sacrament
by Jennifer Phelps Ollikainen
The currently commended worship resource in the ELCA, Evangelical Lutheran Worship, describes the pattern for the weekly gathering of believers around word and sacrament centered in God’s action: "The Holy Spirit calls us together as the people of God. God speaks to us in scripture reading, preaching, and song. God feeds us with the presence of Jesus Christ. God blesses us and sends us in mission to the world."
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Beside the Point |
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Branded: Preaching the Law (and Sex) to Youth
by Anna Mercedes
In Galatians, Paul gives us an impassioned lesson on law and bodies. I was preparing a sermon on Galatians when I was asked to write this piece about preaching the law to youth, especially in regards to forming sexual ethics in youth. I offer here that the “brands” of Christ, invoked by Paul in Galatians 6, offer a symbol of the way law and gospel function for our bodies: for our life as bodies and for our bodily ethics, which are indeed the only kinds of life and ethics we know. |
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The Jebeliya: Reflections on Development
by Stewart W. Herman
This past May, six students and I experienced some Middle Eastern "development" in the raw. Under a vividly blue, sheltering, desert sky, we worked with local residents to build a small dam not far from Mt. Sinai. All was done by camel and by hand — carrying boulders, scooping sand, mixing mortar, and carrying all of the above in a high and narrow gorge where skilled Jebeliya and Egyptian masons pieced together a gracefully curved dam some ten feet high. |
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Prolific Consumption of Tech Goods Harms People and the Environment
by Jeff Fitzkappes
Delores S. Williams, a preeminent womanist theologian, roots her theology in the belief that God assists oppressed people by offering ways to bring liberation, survival, and quality of life to all people in the world that are made to suffer at the hands of those who have, and wish to maintain, power. As a womanist, this begins within her own Black community and extends outward, for "womanist theology opposes all oppression based on race, sex, class, sexual preferences, physical disability and caste."
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Preaching on Social Issues |
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The Return of Eschatological Economics
by Clint Schnekloth
Easy parables are all alike; every difficult parable is difficult in its own way. In the case of the unjust steward, much of the difficulty lies in trying to distinguish what precisely is praiseworthy in the unjust stewards actions. The traditional interpretation has been that the steward’s wisdom is praised rather than his dishonesty. This helps, at least to a degree; and it will preach, but it leaves a few questions unanswered.
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Cloud of Witnesses |
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Gustaf Wingren on the Christian Life
by Marc Kolden
The year 2010 marks the centennial of the birth of the Swedish theologian Gustaf Wingren, who died in 2000. For nearly all his academic career Wingren taught Christian theology at the University of Lund. Between 1940 and 1980 he published numerous books and articles that were influential (and often controversial) not only in Scandinavia but also on the continent and in English speaking nations. He also was actively involved in the international organization of Luther scholars and in the Lutheran World Federation.
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