Time to Reveal Yourself O Lurker!
I used to do these more frequently; especially back in the good ole’ days of blogging, when the blogosphere was actually alive. If you’re a reader of the blog who just lurks here, and even if you don’t just lurk (Richard ) this is your chance to reveal yourself. I always like to know who is reading here. According to my stats many still are, but you don’t let me know by saying hi. How rude ! As a heads up I have my comments set to moderate, which means I have to manually approve each comment (which is easy)….
Heads of churches in Holy Land voice objection to Mount of Olives being included in national park
After heads of churches in the Holy Land voiced their objections to a proposal to expand Jerusalem Walls National Park to include property owned by several churches in the city, Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority announced on February 21 that it was freezing the plan. The text of the Feb 18 letter from Patriarchs about the Mount of Olives can be found here. The Feb 23 World Council of Churches article about the situation can be found here. ELCA Blogs
Prompts for Prayers of Intercession – February 27, 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 peace to prevail, especially between Russia and Ukraine… For all firefighters working to contain destructive wildfires in Argentina… For all members of the LGBTQIA+ community, especially beloved transgender women and girls at the heart of recent legislation… For an end…
Without Grace Nature Cannot Be Perfect: Thoughts on an Irenaean Thomist Distinction
Helmut Thielicke offers an important anthropological distinction, one that stems early on from someone as astute as Irenaeus, and then becomes appropriated and modified by someone as seismic, in the Latin church, as Thomas Aquinas. If this is not understood as a basic theological-anthropological datum vis-à-vis some form of classical theism, engaging with the theological past into the present will become immediately unintelligible—which I would suggest is why so much of popular apologetics and theologics that we see pervasive, particularly in the online theological world, ends up being an exercise in futility. I digress. Let’s hear from Thielicke on this all-important…
February Update: Advocacy Connections
from the ELCA advocacy office in Washington, D.C. – the Rev. Amy E. Reumann, Senior Director Partial expanded content from Advocacy Connections: February 2022 2022 ELCA FEDERAL POLICY PRIORITIES | HOUSING IN FEDERAL BUDGET | AFGHAN REFUGEE ADVOCACY | FOREIGN ASSISTANCE | HOLY LAND CHURCH LEADERS’ CONCERN 2022 ELCA FEDERAL POLICY PRIORITIES: Our annual identification of policy priorities on the federal horizon for ELCA advocacy action is available. Find listing on the ELCA Advocacy Blog, with a downloadable version from the ELCA advocacy resource page. Shaped by the ELCA’s social teaching documents and the experiences of its congregations, ministries…
February 27, 2022–Highs and Lows
Maggie Falenschrek, St. Peter, MN Warm-up Question Think back on the last week. What were some of the high points? What were some of the low points? Highs and Lows The 2022 Beijing Olympics wrap up this week. The last few weeks have been full of amazing moments: great displays of jaw-dropping talent, individuals and teams who are at the absolute top of their game, even heart-warming displays of camaraderie and sportsmanship. When we watch the competition as viewers we tend to only see the highlights— those mountaintop moments of triumph. We don’t often get a full view of…
When the orthodox Protestant Theologians Become Recovering Catholics
At the end of the day all theological discourse must reduce to some reality. If the reality isn’t ultimately Jesus Christ, and the triune God He mediates, then you, by definition do not have a genuinely Christian theology. People can spend all their days, all their energies recovering natural law, natural theology so on and so forth, merely because they think this provides for the orthodox way of Protestant theology that history has to offer. Ultimately, though, Christian theology isn’t judged by a historicism like this, for that is what this mode is operating from. Christian theology, instead, is judged…
ELCA 2022 federal policy priorities for advocacy action
DOMESTIC | ENVIRONMENT | INTERNATIONAL | MIGRATION | MIDDLE EAST | CIVIC ENGAGEMENT | GETTING INVOLVED Every public policy decision has an effect on us and on our neighbors, even neighbors living across the country or around the world. This compels us as church to “unite realism and vision, wisdom and courage, in its social responsibility. It needs constantly to discern when to support and when to confront society’s cultural patterns, values, and powers” (ELCA social statement Church in Society: A Lutheran Perspective, p. 3). By building relationships with policymakers, taking joint action with values-sharing issue partners, writing comments…
February Update: UN 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. U.N. | Arizona | Colorado | Minnesota | New Mexico | Ohio | Pennsylvania | Wisconsin U.N. Lutheran Office for World Community (LOWC), United Nations, New York, N.Y. – ELCA.org/lowc Dennis Frado, Director The sixty-sixth session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW66) will take place from 14 to 25 March 2022. This year, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the…
The Contemporary Reformed Are Recovering Catholic Modes of Thinking and Thus Spirituality: The Genuine Protestant Way Against Analogia Entis
If you’re a Catholic or scholastic Protestant thinker, you’ll follow along with Erich Przywara’s dictum (following Thomas’) of ‘revelation perfecting revelation.’ You’ll see a continuity between the naked philosopher’s machinations, and what comes in perfection through God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ. You’ll maintain that humanity, since it is born into an iteration of God’s grace (which is an abstract creation), has the capacity, albeit, finite, to think towards the God of creation. On the other hand, if you’re a genuinely Protestant thinker who takes the noetic effects of the fall, who takes total depravity seriously, and who does not sublate…