A majority of Americans, 52%, agree with the statement, "Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God." That's not surprising. But what is surprising is that nearly one-in-three (30%) of evangelical Christians also agree in rejecting the deity of Christ.
Simone Weil was a French philosopher and convert to Christianity who wrote profoundly about the value of work. In emphasizing how in our labor we love and serve our neighbor and how God's love works through what we do, she sounds much like Luther on vocation.
In a time when the church freely used coercion and punishment to enforce its teachings, Luther insisted that faith can never be a matter of compulsion.
It seems incredible that someone as belligerent as Donald Trump has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. But not only has he worked out accords between the Arabs and Israelis and Serbia and Bosnia, he is the first president in 39 years not to start a war or bring the U.S. into a new international conflict.
Which should be the major motivation for our votes, the candidate's personal qualities or the policies the candidate would carry out?
Historically, some religions and governments have tried to compel people to hold a certain belief and to punish them if they did not. Cancel culture is a revival of that mindset. But such efforts are futile and counter-productive, causing people to hate the beliefs that are forced on them.
Not only do theologians have doctrinal differences. They also have differences about what doctrine even is. This is why liberal theologians can sound orthodox without being so and why ecumenical dialogues can find agreement where none exists.
That so many Americans are planning to vote by mail due to their fears of COVID-19 at the polling site may result in an unprecedented debacle come election day. Not because of fraud or the beleaguered Post Office, but because of post-election day deadlines and the fact that two-thirds of Trump supporters will vote in person while half of Biden supporters will vote by mail.
In our efforts to Christianize "Labor Day" by turning it into a feast day celebrating the Doctrine of Vocation, I would like to offer you some recent reflections on why vocation is so important, how it can solve so many of the problems Christians are currently struggling with, and how it has the potential to revitalize contemporary Christianity.
The doctrine of the atonement--that on the cross Christ bore our sins and endured the punishment that we deserve--is being minimized or even rejected, not just by theological liberals, but by some theologians who purport to be evangelicals, conservatives, or even Lutherans, even some who claim to be "radical Lutherans." A book by Jack Kilcrease shows why they are wrong.
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