The Fortieth Anniversary of Women's Ordination in the Lutheran Church

Abstract : This article offers a perspective on the present and future roles of women in the ELCA. It gives some analysis of women's roles in the trend of declining traditional congregations and rising megachurches while imagining the role of clergywomen in the church's next forty years as new models of ministry emerge.     

Reengagement With Education: A Multidisciplinary Home-School-Clinic Approach Developed in Australia for School-Refusing Youth

School refusal (SR) can result in decreased academic achievement, impaired social connections, and family stress. Current interventions for SR include behavioral and cognitive-behavioral treatments that are not always effective. Incorporating multidisciplinary work that includes therapeutic and educational interventions may enhance outcomes for youth displaying SR. The In2School program fosters a working partnership between mental health clinicians and teachers. It was designed to meet the needs of young people missing more than 50% of school in the previous 6 weeks due to mental health disorders, including anxiety or depression. This paper reports on an action research study in which the In2School program was piloted. Over a 14-week period, therapeutic and educational interventions were integrated into the learning environment via a transitional classroom to support youths’ return to school. Outcomes of this program are reported for the first cohort of 7 youth. Of these youth, 6 returned to mainstream schooling with attendance levels being maintained for 6 months after completing the intervention. Progress was observed in mental health recovery, quality of life reports, increased social interactions with peers, and positive experiences at school. The preliminary results presented in this paper suggest that a multidisciplinary, home-school-clinic intervention holds promise for helping school-refusing youth to return to school.     

Disability,Performance, and Discrimination in the Service to Humanity

In an age when the church is called upon to be an inclusive community, persons with disabilities in Nigeria are still grappling with exclusion. Disability is associated with multiple challenges. The challenges include degrading treatment, marginalization, and exclusion from recruitment opportunities, as well as discrimination in churches. Some people believe that disability has negative connotations and that persons with disabilities are hopeless, helpless burdens and passive “objects” meant to receive charity as well as physical and spiritual deliverance. Persons with disabilities are stereotypically seen as incapable of being productive. It is assumed that because people live with disabilities, they are not meant to occupy leadership positions or fully partake in church activities. The expectation that persons with disabilities be wholly embraced into the Christian fold is yet to be met. This article shares information on the context in which some of the challenges facing persons with disabilities are rooted. It examines the involvement and experiences of persons with disabilities in the activities of the church, church institutions, and church‐affiliated organizations in Nigeria while acknowledging the church’s mandate of inclusion. It finds that stereotyping and discrimination are challenges for persons with disabilities – individuals who are also made in the image of God. In the future, more research needs to be carried out on issues around the isolation of persons with disabilities in the body of Christ. The findings would help interested groups recognize the predicaments of persons with disabilities and find realistic strategies for a progressive inclusive church community – in this way assisting the efforts of the World Council of Churches’ programme on disability.     

People with Disabilities – In Order to Belong,They Need to Be Missed!

People with disabilities are often excluded within our churches: Why is that so? This paper will explore why disabled people are not missed within our churches as a mission group and as a member of the body of Christ. It will also explore why the fact that they are not missed makes them feel like they do not belong in the church. The paper will conclude with what people with disabilities have to offer the church, and what the church can positively do to help them feel like they belong through our mission and inclusion of them into the full ministry of the church.     

Global Perspectives on Disability and Mission

This article starts by exploring what disability is and why we should not be limited by only one definition. It then reflects on challenges and possibilities of historical review as it relates to disability by key church figures. In looking at the theology of disability in the modern era, the article argues that in order to move from the margins, we need to embrace a practical theology of embodiment that goes beyond inclusion to belonging. Scholars on disability and theology are therefore called upon to embrace a practical theology of disability through incorporating people with disabilities at the centre of developing a theology.     

Fresh Expressions of Church and the Mixed Economy

The term “fresh expressions of church” has been used since 2004 in the Church of England to refer to small contextual churches that start alongside but aim to be different to parish churches. What is characteristic of a fresh expression of church is not its newness, but its ability to pass on and contextualize inherited theology, ecclesiology, tradition, and spiritual experience. The ecclesiology of fresh expressions of church can be summarized as a dialogical‐relational ecclesiology that is focused on a theological centre. There may be around 2,100 of them in the Church of England, both urban and rural. During the past 15 years, the self‐understanding of the Church of England, a traditional state church with its parish structure, has changed. The mother church of the Anglican World Communion claims since 2008 to be a mixed‐economy church: one that supports and recognizes innovative ecclesial spaces (fresh expressions of church) as church, as well as parish churches. It is the goal to have an innovative diversity of churches in a pluralistic society. At the same time, these churches should be recognizable and contextual. It is the concept of the mixed economy that manages a fair cooperation between parochial and fresh expressions of church. In the meantime, the concept of mixed economy is received not only in the UK, but in different national and free churches in continental Europe, the US, South Africa, Canada, and Australia. Lately, the concept has been taken up by the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe (CPCE).     

THE COLLECTIVE CHARACTERS OF RELIGIOUS CONGREGATIONS

Our primary aim in this article is to advocate for the interdisciplinary study of the collective character traits of local religious congregations, taking as our focal example local Christian congregations. It should be clear that such study presently lies on the frontier of interdisciplinary religious studies. Yet, as we will attempt to show in the first section, the way has been paved for the study of such collective character traits through salient developments within several academic disciplines in recent decades. This frontier, in other words, is open for exploration, and there are available tools that can help us explore it. We will illustrate how such exploration may be undertaken fruitfully in the second section by focusing on two distinct kinds of virtuous collective character traits of Christian congregations: traits that enable a congregation to fulfill its distinctive role in the missio Dei, and traits that enable a congregation's members to flourish in their interpersonal relationships. In each case, we will identify a candidate collective virtue of the relevant type, discuss its nature from philosophical and theological perspectives, and, drawing on relevant empirical research, provide reason for thinking that applying empirical methods to it can yield additional insights about its value.     

The Contribution of the Protestant Church in Germany to the Pluralist Discourse in Bioethics: The Case of Stem Cell Research

Christian contributions to the public discourse on bioethicscome from individual Christians, from Christian churches, andfrom academic theology. All contributors must frame their argumentsin such a way as to account for the pluralism of worldviewsin contemporary Germany. For this purpose, they must take issuewith certain hermeneutical and discourse theoretical considerations.That is to say, in order for their contributions to remain normativelyauthentic in a Christian and Protestant sense, these must relateto Scripture and to Protestantism's confessional documents,and in order for these contributions to remain pertinent andrelevant to the facts, they must relate to biomedical, philosophical,and legal contexts. Given these hermeneutical and discoursetheoretical requirements, two church statements addressing theethical discussion concerning the use of embryonic stem cellsfor medical research are analyzed.     

The Future of Luther's Theology

Abstract : Some historical observations need to be made about Luther in his own time before his thought can be made useful for our future. First, theology was a collaborative undertaking for Luther and his Wittenberg colleagues. Second, theology was tied to their Reformation agenda of teaching a new way of practicing Christianity in accord with the gospel. That agenda required radical changes: a conversion of religious efforts to please God into advocacy of the neighbor; expansion of the church beyond Rome into an ecumenical assembly of holy and active believers; and a theological reorganization of public life that blurred the line between theology and ethics. In these areas, adapted to the 21st century, lies the greatest utility of Luther's theology for the future.     

Spare the Rod? Ideology,Experience, and Attitudes Toward Child Discipline Among Presbyterian Clergy

Despite the recurrent public and academic controversies over the issue of corporal punishment, few studies have examined the attitudes of clergy members. This oversight is noteworthy, because clergy members may influence the beliefs and behaviors of church members and others via their roles in parish ministry, counseling, and civic leadership. Our study addresses this gap in the research literature using data from a nationwide sample of Presbyterian Church (USA) clergy members. Key findings include the following: (a) Approval of corporal punishment is higher among male, non-white, less affluent, and parish (vs. specialized) clergy; (b) Theological conservatism is unrelated to corporal punishment attitudes, but political conservatism and Republican Party leanings are strongly predictive of greater approval of physical discipline; and (c) Clergy members who know someone in their congregation who has experienced abuse are less supportive of the corporal punishment of children, although direct personal experiences with physical or emotional abuse are less consistently related to corporal punishment attitudes. Several implications and promising directions for future research are discussed.