God’s Theologian for the World: A Picture

What a true theologian looks like; God’s theologian for the world. The theologian’s posture doing the will of the Father. Vasily Perov circa 1878 Athanasian Reformed

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Incarnating Peace in Political Anxiety

by the Rev. Amy E. Reumann, Senior Director, ELCA Witness in Society High anxiety around the possibility of political violence has been with us before, during, and likely following the 2024 National Election. The images of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol are fresh in our minds, making calls by public figures for violence against political opponents or disruption of election processes even more worrisome. Election activities that used to go largely unnoticed, such as election certification or routine actions by poll workers, could now be targeted as high-risk moments. Polling reveals that two-thirds of Americans fear violence…

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Blog Series: Parents, pressure and passing on faith (or not)

This blog post is part of a series designed to spark conversation! To read future posts in the series, you can view all ELCA Innovation Blog posts here. Parents under pressure This past summer, the U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy released an advisory on the mental health and well-being of parents. A Surgeon General’s Advisory is “a public statement that calls the American people’s attention to an urgent public health issue and provides recommendations for how it should be addressed. Advisories are reserved for significant public health challenges that require the nation’s immediate awareness and action.” In short, an…

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A Brief Soliloquy on the Phantom of the Lesser of Evils

The “lesser of two evils”–on a slippery slope–reduces to utter chaos and travail. At some point on that slope, the Christian in particular, must step off before oblivion hits. At some point the realization must hit that within the current framework–whatever that is at the time–there must be a “redline,” which indicates that the most prudent thing to do is to jump off the slippery slope onto the solid ground of Christ’s kingdom. Canaan kept devolving, devolving, devolving, and on the logic of the “lesser of two evils” Christians would continue on with compromising, compromising, compromising, to the point that…

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Honoring Indigenous Peoples and Alaska Natives in November

In the United States, November is Native American Heritage Month. Racial Justice Ministries would like to elevate the voices and work of our Indigenous siblings by bringing attention to the multitude of events by the ELCA’s Indigenous Ministries and Tribal Relations. A full list of offerings for this month can be found here, but there are three events that we would especially like to highlight: Toward Truth and Healing: How Churches Face Accountability for their Indian Boarding Schools Sunday, November 10, 2024 – ONLINE 7 – 8:30 p.m. Central time Hosted by the Quaker Church’s Friends Peace Teams, Vance Blackfox…

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November 3, 2024–Do This to Remember

Warm-up Question What are some of the easiest things for you to remember? This might be something like information on a certain school subject, pop culture trivia, or peoples’ names. Why do you think you remember these things so easily? Practicing Remembering There’s a glut of information online about memory improvement. Some articles, like this one, detail the value of certain games to increase your brain’s health. At other times, phone applications promise a boost in your capacity to remember information. Websites like Quizlet offer resources to reinforce data memorization for school or work.  Everyone, it seems, knows that memory…

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The Bible’s Meaning as Near as Your Next Prayer: On a Biblical Hermeneutics

For some reason there are many Christians, through the centuries even, who want to make an attempt at reading Holy Scripture without reading it from its God-given context in Jesus Christ. That is to say, there are Christians who want to read the Bible from a christologically contextless frame wherein the Bible becomes a wax-nose given shape by their wits and capacity to marshal the latest reading strategies of the day. But the Bible isn’t a book like that. It isn’t open to naturalist or immanentist frames of reference. It has its whole and its parts altogether, in regard to…

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**TOMORROW** Free Class: Indigenous Thought & Theology

Class: Indigenous Thought & Theology Indian people have unique and beautiful ways of understanding the world. Indigenous wisdom – as it relates to living in relationship with the Creator, Mother Earth and other created beings – should be centered if we want to provide better care for our home and all our relatives. Indigenous Thought & Theology introduces participants to this wisdom and examines Indigenous ways of understanding, respecting and interacting with this wondrous world we inhabit. No pre-registration is required to participate. Just click “join the class” to attend. Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024 Class: Indigenous Thought & Theology 2…

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October Updates – U.N. and State Edition

Following are updates shared from submissions of the Lutheran Office for World Community and state public policy offices (sppos) in the ELCA Advocacy Network this month. Full list and map of sppos available. UN | ARIZONA | COLORADO |MINNESOTA | OHIO | PENNSYLVANIA | TEXAS | VIRGINIA | WISCONSIN Lutheran Office for World Community, United Nations, New York, N.Y. – ELCA.org/lowc Christine Mangale, Director Summit of the Future/Pact for the Future: Lutheran Office for World Community (LOWC) was a strong presence at the Summit of the Future, which occurred in September, where a Pact for the Future was produced. The Pact…

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On Living the ‘Confessional Life’ from the Life at the Right Hand

Being a confessional Christian is the way. Some might read this and think I am referring to being ‘Reformed.’ But that would be mistaken; the Reformed might think they have a corner on this language, but they don’t. What I mean when I say ‘confessional’ is being a Christian in the Christian existence who lives and breathes and does theology based on the confession that Jesus is Lord. Doing theology based on the premise that God has spoken (‘Deus dixit’), and only after that fact, that reality can a genuinely Christian theology obtain. Being confessional is to live life in…

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