Bioethike

Dr. George Tiller, who was reported to have performed abortions up to the day before delivery in his Wichita clinic, was shot to death today in the lobby of Reformation Lutheran Church (ELCA) where he was a member.  Notes The New York Times, Dr. Tiller, who had performed abortions since the 1970s, had long been [...]

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Having lived overseas for a number of years, I confess that I not infrequently tried at that time to disguise myself as a “foreigner” both in dress and speech in order to provide comfortable distance run away from “ugly Americans.” You know, the loud, demanding, obnoxious types (generally not hailing from the American South), whom [...]

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As this April 4 The New York Times article shows, advocates for same-sex marriage, such as Lambda Legal, are making headway in New England. Ironically, you can thank the Puritans, advocates of individualism and intellectualism, for some of the success.

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The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America issued press releases today referencing the ELCA’s sexuality statement and recommendations. You can read the press releases here and here, respectively.

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Morpheus to Neo: This is your last chance.  After this, there is no going back.  You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole [...]

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This piece from KansasCity.com suggests that cheaper Chinese condoms are causing a dilemma for the folks at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has distributed an estimated 10 billion U.S.-made AIDS-preventing condoms in poor countries around the world. Which makes me ask,  “Why are my federal tax dollars being used to purchase condoms which, in [...]

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There it is, my friends: I’ve let the cat out of the bag. The problem with current discourse in Lutheran circles regarding sexuality is, well, the word sexuality. You can’t find sexuality in the Bible (oh, sure, there are male and female, marriage, sex, more sex, approved sex, prohibited sex, and so on), but not [...]

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Here’s an older piece, ca. 1994, by Dr. Mary M. Knutson, while associate professor of systematic theology at the ELCA’s Luther Seminary in St. Paul.  The general themes of this document and the ELCA’s 2009 proposed sexuality statment, Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust, are remarkably similar. In both, notice the: invocation of Scripture and Luther (or other Reformers); promotion of [...]

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Carl E. Braaten, professor emeritus of the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago and co-founder of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology, offers a thoughtful critique of the proposed ELCA Sexuality Social Statement and Recommendations. Braaten’s careful observation below should be read, memorized, and applied to any social or theological statement produced by any [...]

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Robert Benne, professor emeritus at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia, and the Director of the Center for Religion and Society, weighs in on the ELCA’s Sexuality Social Statement and Recommendations. Benne suggests that the statement avoids making normative judgments about homosexual conduct by neglecting the testimony of the Bible and the Christian moral tradition on [...]

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