Preface by Kaari Reierson
I have to admit that I was surprised to learn that George W. Bush is a small dog person, but John Kerry did move up a few notches in my estimation when it was revealed that he has a German Shepherd.
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Response to Mark Noll's Editorial: None of the Above: Why I Won't Vote for President
by Robert Benne
Though I disagree thoroughly with the thrust of Mark Noll’s recent editorial in The Christian Century, there is one important comfort I derive from it: one can share with fellow Christians the core of Christian faith and morals and yet disagree sharply on matters of public policy. [read article]

A Few Thoughts on Temporal Authority and Why it Should be Obeyed or Mark Noll Needs to Vote!
by Helmut David Baer
What's a Lutheran to say about Mark Noll’s essay None of the Above: Why I’m not Voting for President?  Since Noll’s political convictions are represented sometimes by Republicans and sometimes by Democrats, he can’t in good conscience vote for either of them.  Noll says he's not voting. [read article]

Response to None of the Above
by Thomas Kennedy
I admit to being something of a partisan of lost causes, and voting for none of the above is surely a lost cause. [read article]

The Scope of Our Democracy: A Response to Mark Noll
by Jonathan Sorum
The obvious response is that democracy nearly always involves compromises.  The give and take that goes into creating political platforms virtually assures that not even the most partisan supporters of a particular candidate are completely happy with all of that candidate’s positions.
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Elections, Lutherans, and Ethics: The History of the Church's Involvement in Politics
by David Settje
Elections present a host of questions that pertain to Lutheran involvement in politics.  Given Luther’s emphasis on following conscience but the reality of political differences causing undo tension within the church, what exactly should Lutherans do?
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Forgotten Issue and Major Candidate Concern: The United Nations and “Publicity” by Gary Simpson
The coming decade looks to be a time of testing for the United Nations and for the U.S. relationship to it. [read article]

Penultimate Answers: Lutheran Theology, Politics, and Dissent
by Philip Meckley
A basic difficulty in the application of Lutheran theological insights to the current political scene is the fundamentally static nature of much of Luther’s thinking about the relationship of state and citizen. [read article]

What Has Been Overlooked?
by Mary Gaebler
Over these past weeks of campaigning, the middle class has been front and center. But where are the poor? [read article]

What are the Forgotten Issues in this Election?
by David C. Ratke
I asked students in a course I teach that is required of all students at Lenoir-Rhyne College about the major election issues. Their responses were fairly uniform: the economy (and unemployment), the war, and education. [read article]

Lutheran Tradition and Politics
by Paul Jersild
The two-realm teaching in Lutheran social ethics is something quite different from the notion of separation of church and state as it has evolved in the United States political tradition.
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Major Concerns of the Candidates in the 2004 Election
by Carol A. Jensen
In our upcoming elections, these are three broad commitments that I would like all candidates to make. [read article]

What's NOT Being Discussed this Election Season
by Kelly Denton-Borhaug
After JLE invited me to consider the question above for this special election issue, I decided to frame my own reflections by way a broader conversation with a few colleagues from my institution, Goucher College in Baltimore.
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Elections 2004 and Theology of the Cross
by Christian Scharen
What I am pointing to here is a general public perception that we are unable to expect public discourse and public leaders to be truthful. [read article]

The Politics of Fear in a Season of Campaigning
by Martha E. Stortz
On November 2nd, we won’t vote our party or our values; we won’t even vote our head or our heart.  We’ll vote our fears, and whichever candidate manipulates them most cleverly will have won.
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Urgently Needed: Some Lutheran Accents in American Political Life
by Karen L. Bloomquist
Coincidentally, the U.S. election comes just two days after the 5th anniversary of the signing by the Catholic and Lutheran churches of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification.
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What are the Forgotten Issues in this Election?
by Dan Lee
A substantial number of the forgotten issues in this election involve questions of intergenerational justice. Consider the following examples.
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Neglected Issues in this Political Campaign
by Edward D. Schneider
It has become commonplace to observe that in this television age political campaigns tend to be reduced to sound bytes and thirty-second ads designed to project an image of the candidate or of his or her opponent.  Any serious discussion of issues thus tends to be constrained by these requirements of campaign methods.  [read article]

Jean Bethke Elshtain responds to each review of her book individually, and comments on last months' articles. [read article]

An Introduction to Jean Bethke Elshtain and to reviews of her book, Just War against Terror
by Michael Shahan
Jean Bethke Elshtain is not a novice to the disputes surrounding our culture wars.  Hers is a steady, sober, and prevailing voice in today’s debates over the trials of democracy, the relationship of ethics to international politics, and the place for patriotic allegiance in a pluralistic world. [read article]

A Review of Jean Bethke Elshtain’s Just War against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World
by Brent Adkins
Elshtain’s analysis is pursued from the perspective of “just war theory,” a theory that finds its origin in the theology of Augustine, particularly in The City of God. [read article]

Review of Jean Bethke Elshtain, Just War against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World
by Daniel M. Bell
This book was a disappointment to me, and therefore a missed opportunity. It is a disappointment in the sense that those looking for a sustained and informative treatment of the struggle against Terrorism illuminated by the just war tradition will be let down. [read article]

Review of Just War against Terror, Jean Bethke Elshtain
by Jeffrey K. Swanson
Jean Bethke Elshtain opens Just War against Terror by asking a simple, but crucial question.  “What Happened on September 11?” is the title of the opening chapter, where she challenges her readers with two different interpretations of that terrible day in New York, Washington, D.C. and western Pennsylvania.
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Turn Abu Ghraib Inside Out? by Stewart Herman
What if by torturing one person you might extract information that would prevent a major terrorist attack?  Torture is ineffective because it is unlikely to yield the information that the U.S. interrogators want.  Can we be both humanitarians and realists—that is, fully open to both kinds of arguments? [read article]

The Emperor Has No Clothes On: Lutheranism towards a Multicultural Landscape
by Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan
Kirk-Duggan explores a prophetic response in answer to the Lutheran desire for, yet dilemma regarding, heightening the multicultural and diverse landscape of Lutheranism in America. [read article]

by John Wickham
After attending a study group using the ELCA study guide Journey Together Faithfully: The Church and Homosexuality, I felt as Dennis Bielfeldt (2003) did when he wrote: “While I believe Journey Together does fairly describe the different voices and positions within the ELCA on this controversial issue, I find it neither particularly helps readers arrive at justifiable views, nor effectively aids the institution of the ELCA in coming to a responsible and defensible position.” [read article]

Congregations as Communities of Moral Deliberation?
by Jonathan R. Sande
Various dimensions of the status and rights of homosexual persons in the United States are increasingly in public view, from secular discussions of the status of gay marriages in San Francisco and recent court decisions in Massachusetts to discussions within various religious denominations regarding the status of gay marriages and whether or not gay persons might be ordained. [ read article ]

Journey Together Faithfully at First Lutheran Church, Duluth, Minnesota 
by David Benson
We decided to offer the studies at First Lutheran because we thought it was a good idea to begin discussion of the issue well in advance of the 2005 Assembly.
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Sexual Intimacy, Spiritual Belonging, and Christian Theology
by Michael Stoltzfus
Sexual intimacy can serve as a resource for spiritual transformation. At its best, sex is a positive, empowering, joyful, creative, life-giving force wherein the grace of God is revealed and embodied in human affection. This article addresses the issue of whether or not the Christian tradition will recognize the spirit of God through the gift of sexual intimacy.
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