The Article on which the Church Stands or Falls By Karl Wyneken Matthew Harrison, recently elected president of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, foresees big things ahead for his denomination, thanks to the unrest in Christendom being created by one hotly debated issue. The issue is homosexuality, resulting in discord and division in some denominations that…
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By Arnold Voigt Where one begins determines where one will come out. The New Testament is problem-solving literature. The writers are addressing audiences who lived in real-time real-world environments, environments that were frequently antithetical to the Gospel. Conflicting ideologies and theologies impacted communities of faith and demanded responses. Not only did the external environments raise…
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By Mary Todd I have a number of friends who were quite sure that I would leave the Missouri Synod as soon as I finished my dissertation a decade ago. My work examined the synod’s identity over its 150-plus-year history through the lenses of authority and gender and used the issue of the service of…
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By Mary Todd I have moved from a small-e evangelical campus to a capital-c Catholic campus. In learning about my new Catholic world, I find that, more and more, we need not only to understand the words we use but to ask—in an attempt to understand—about the words others use. When I heard that the…
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By Robert Sylwester Dr. Robert Sylwester is professor emeritus of education, University of Oregon. He has published numerous articles on the subject of how new developments in science and technology impact education and is the author of 20 books and curricular programs. His most recent books are A Biological Brain in a Cultural Classroom (2003) and How…
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By David Stein Kierkegaard wrote years ago: “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” To that end permit me to return [some] to the past, stand beside the present and pray with hope about God’s future for the church catholic and apostolic. It’s always easiest to go backwards, to dredge…
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By David Stein “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return there” (Job 1:21). The truth is “male and female were created in the image of God,” and God blessed them. And everything God made was very good. Three thousand years later the ancestral shepherd boy laments: “You have searched me…
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By David Stein “The deplorable, miserable conditions which I recently observed when visiting the parishes have constrained and pressed me to put this catechism of Christian doctrine into this brief, plain and simple form. How pitiable, so help me God, were the things I saw: the common man, especially in the villages, knows practically nothing…
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By Arthur Simon Thanks to my father, I became aware at an early age of the reluctance within the LCMS to question the status quo regarding social justice. The scandal of racial prejudice and segregation within both church and nation were special concerns of my parents. Then when my brother Paul was first elected to…
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One of the theological gems from the history of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod is a set of 32 theses against “unevangelical praxis” that was prepared for the 1862 Convention of the Central District of the LCMS. Unfortunately the original document has never been translated completely into English–until now. These 32 theses are just…
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