Ecumenical Advocacy Days – with Scholarships!
Ecumenical Advocacy Days (EAD) is an annual gathering of Christian advocates and activists. People attending EAD worship, review advocacy best practices, dive deeper into issues of their selection around the central theme, take Lobby Day action, and network with people of faith passionate about the difference policy can make in peoples’ lives. Lutherans in attendance have denomination-specific opportunities to get to know one another and vision what we can do together! #EAD2022 is a virtual gathering, held Wednesday through Friday, April 25-27, 2022. The schedule is posted to advocacydays.org. THEME IN 2022 This year’s theme, “Fierce Urgency: Advancing Civil…
On Being a New PhD student in Theology
I am now a PhD student “beginning” (in scare quotes, because I’ve been studying said subject matter since 2002 in earnest) research on a doctrine of grace in what I am calling the Protestant Church Fathers juxtaposed with the grace-ologies of Thomas Torrance and Karl Barth. I am somewhat riffing on this topic of research from TFT’s own PhD dissertation entitled A Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers. I am finally undertaking this venture of study through the Concordia Academic Theology Consortium: Martin Luther School of Bible and Theology; the same institution (of the General Lutheran Church) that recently awarded me with…
Situation Report: Eastern Europe Crisis
Situation: On Feb. 24, armed conflict broke out between Russia and Ukraine, causing a humanitarian crisis. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, more than 2 million people are seeking refuge in neighboring countries, including Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Moldova. There are major humanitarian concerns for both internally displaced people and refugees. Response: Lutheran Disaster Response is supporting these member churches through Lutheran World Federation: German Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ukraine Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Slovakia Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in…
Prompts for Prayers of Intercession – March 13, 2022
These prompts are provided for worship leaders as they prepare the prayers of intercession for weekly worship. The prompts are prepared by several leaders in the ELCA and reflect current world and national events. You are encouraged to adapt and add other concerns for your local context, including staying informed of events and concerns in your synod. Intercession prompts: For all in crisis as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues… With gratitude for the first combined heart and thymus transplant, for all advances in the field of organ transplantation, for all organ donors… For all who suffer in the wake of…
The Hellenic, the Neo-Thomist Origins of Modernity
When Divine grace is separated from its reality in God, when grace becomes a thing, a substance, a quality infused into the accidents of humanity, it is only one small step removed from being integrated into the essence of what it means to be human. If this step is taken, and it has been in the ‘modern-turn,’ the turn-to-the-subject, the Gifter of grace no longer remains necessary, in a transcendent sense, as grace becomes materialized, immanentized, horizontalized into an ‘immanent frame,’ as Charles Taylor grammarizes. Indeed, Taylor writes with reference to what it means to be human in a frame wherein…
Lent Reflection 2: Vulnerable in the Wilderness
ELCA World Hunger’s 40 Days of Giving Lent 2022 In English and en Espanol Week 2: Wandering in the Wilderness “I must be on my way” (Luke 13:33). Read Genesis 15:1-12;17-18 Psalm 27 Philippians 3:17-4:1 Luke 12:31-35 Reflect As we saw in the reflection for Week 1, Lent is a story of the journey of God’s people. It is our story, or more appropriately the story of “God with us.” During Lent, we remember the ancient Hebrews’ journey from slavery in Egypt and a generation spent wandering in the wilderness, as recounted in the offering of the “first fruits” in…
Lent Reflection 1: Journey in the Wilderness
ELCA World Hunger’s 40 Days of Giving Lent 2022 Week 1: Journey in the Wilderness “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor” (Deuteronomy 26:5). Read Deuteronomy 26:1-11 Psalm 91:1-2, 9 -16 Romans 10:8b-13 Luke 4:1-13 Reflect We have a curious set of readings for this first Sunday of Lent. Biblical scholars believe that Deuteronomy 26:5-10 is a script for someone making an offering of what was called the “first fruits,” a religious practice for farming communities. Following the first harvest that the Israelites reaped in the Promised Land, they were to gather a basket of select produce from the fields and…
The Depersonalization of God’s Grace by the Thomists Reformed and others
What they aren’t telling you is that when you receive Aristotelian Christianity, when you recover Thomist theology, particularly in the Protestant Reformed scholastic flavor, for our purposes, you’re getting a doctrine of grace, and thus God, that thinks grace as a quality, a substance. Grace is depersonalized in this frame, as such the person of Christ is ruptured from the work of Christ allowing for a ‘natural’ space to obtain within a God-world relation. This is the combine of ‘grace perfecting nature’ ‘revelation perfecting reason.’ This is what the scholastic Reformed are pushing onto the “unbeknowing” masses, particularly the younger…
Prompts for Prayers of Intercession – March 6, 2022
These prompts are provided for worship leaders as they prepare the prayers of intercession for weekly worship. The prompts are prepared by several leaders in the ELCA and reflect current world and national events. You are encouraged to adapt and add other concerns for your local context, including staying informed of events and concerns in your synod. Intercession prompts: March 6, 2022 For the people of Ukraine, for conscripted Russian soldiers, for war zone reporters, for the leaders of the nations…that all your beloved might live in safety and freedom from fear… For bold, adaptive leadership in the face of…
Again Asking and Finding Steadfast Love in the Gloom of War
By the Rev. Amy E. Reumann, ELCA Senior Director for Witness in Society “Why should it be said among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’” (Joel 2:17) The prophet Joel doesn’t hold back when sounding the alarm about the coming Day of the Lord in today’s Ash Wednesday reading. It will be “a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness spread upon the mountains a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from of old, nor will be again after them in ages to come.” Joel goes on to remind…