ProtestantBeliefs.com

By Rev. Peter A. Pettit We have just navigated our way through Reformation Sunday once again and many in the church will have wrestled with the appointed texts of the Revised Common Lectionary. Jeremiah’s “new covenant,” Paul’s “faith apart from works of the law,” and John’s “if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” all lean into the problematic posture of the church’s millennia-long anti-Jewish rhetoric. Few among us want to go there; any echo of that rhetoric in our preaching and teaching is usually unintentional. The ELCA in 1994 spoke explicitly, in “A Declaration of the…

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. Election Day Resources: ELCA prayer and worship resources for Election Day are available here. Intercession prompts: For the global missionaries of our church, including pastors, educators, medical personnel, and Young Adults in Global Mission (YAGM)… For our nation’s veterans, all who have experienced…

This post deals with some technical stuff that might not be interesting for all readers, but I find it quite instructive in better understanding why it is that Thomas Torrance rejects the determinism that shapes frameworks of thought like that found, theologically, within Arminianism and Calvinism. And it should also help to illustrate an alternative route to thinking about things in causally determinative ways; which implicates the ways that, in the West, in general, we have become most accustomed to think, even though someone like Einstein and his theory of relativity has demonstrated that reality, in fact does not work in…

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. Election Day Resources: ELCA prayer and worship resources for Election Day are available here. Intercession prompts: For those grieving in the aftermath of the shooting at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in St. Louis, Missouri… For all affected by school shootings…

By Richard J. Mammana The Episcopal Church’s 80th General Convention in Baltimore this summer was a watershed moment for relationships of Lutherans and Anglicans around the world. The triennial gathering was delayed by a year because of the global Covid pandemic, but the bicameral legislative process (one house for bishops and another for priests and lay deputies) has been in place since 1785. The General Convention makes decisions about the mission and governance of The Episcopal Church, the official name of which is the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America….

The Gospels of the New Testament witness all present Jesus via His historicity, and the facts of His life as they unfolded in particular frames of reference. John the evangelist ended his Gospel with the quip, “And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen.” Clearly, Jesus was a historical personage, but this is not how the Christian has come to know Him at a first order; nor is it the way that the Evangelists…

Today’s blog post comes from Rev. Lisa Heffernan, ELCA Disability Ministries coordinator I’m just going to be honest here. All month I’ve been procrastinating on writing this blog post. Why? I’m not sure, I guess. Perhaps it’s because it asks for a bit of vulnerability on my part. You see, it’s October, and October is spina bifida awareness and disability awareness month. Spina bifida is the neural tube disorder I was born with, so I can tell you all that I am intimately “aware” of it every day. Do I hate it? No. Not at all. Are there challenges/frustrations that…

Josh Kestner, Clemson, SC Warm-up Question Who are some people that you look up to in your life? What have they done to make you respect them? Tell about a time when your faith and values did not line up with your experience of reality. How did you feel? What did you do? Resilient Women I am in awe of the Muslim women involved in protests surrounding the wearing of the hijab. They are heroes who are showing strength and resilience in the midst of persistent pushback. One of the things that has struck me is that there is no…

Death is so anti-climactic relative to the world at large. You can live 80 good years on this earth, and then simply die. Those you leave behind will grieve and mourn the absence, but the world at large keeps going as if nothing happened. And yet in the Kingdom of Heaven every death is charged full with God’s death for the world in Jesus Christ. There is no more death, in fact, in the Kingdom. In the Kingdom what was once death, in the fallen world, was put to death in the death of Christ. As a result, there is…

“Energy blackmail” The European Union is a world leader when it comes to replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy. The World Economic Forum reported early in 2022 that the EU had “passed another milestone in the race towards a zero-carbon future,” sourcing 22 percent of its energy from renewables in 2020 – ahead of the 20% target the bloc had set in 2009. But that won’t be enough to keep Europe warm this winter, as a fuel crisis the likes of which hasn’t been seen since World War II grips the continent. Officials have warned of potential rolling blackouts, manufacturing…