Pastor Foltz is Pastor Emeritus of Saint James Lutheran Church in Gettysburg, PA and author of the the Frontline Study content.
Most of the Bible was written to people who did not seem to have a future. Faith in God offered hope against hope (Romans 4:18). That faith was informed by stories that often included promises about the future in which peace, justice, and love prevailed. These promises offered encouragement for pursuing those visions in the […]
What seems to be the initial biblical scenario did not work out. Jesus did not raise the dead and then return with them to establish an eternal kingdom on earth. At first, believers were told to wait patiently. Some still do. However, most modified this vision of the future. Believers supposedly enter some kind of […]
There are a number of scenarios for the future in the Bible. Sadly, popular Evangelicalism has promoted those that do not offer much hope for 21st century believers. For instance, the Risen Jesus returning on a cloud assumes an ancient cosmology in which God resides in a heaven above and comes down to earth to […]
I was not sure where to go from here. I began with Karen’s question of whether faith offered a healthy optimism about positive change in society. After looking at how this was asked throughout the Bible, I elected to reduce it to whether there is even a future considering the violence of society. My first […]
Let’s examine how the question about the future is handled in the Christmas story. Matthew and Luke ask how there can be a child in the future if there is no sexual relationship. How can there be a future if the imperial empire forces a woman to travel in the final stages of pregnancy? How […]
The goal was to find some help from Christianity in answering the question, “Is there a future in light of the present world situation?” The first thing that struck me was that the fatalism many of us fight is derived from what is happening around us. How can you be optimistic, considering what is happening? […]
Karen echoes what I hear from many friends when she writes, “Maybe we need to explore healthy optimism as a positive result of faith. I feel overwhelmed by the events of day-to-day living that make it feel like there is little likelihood of positive change coming. It is often hard to keep showing up and […]
I started this series by observing many of my friends were asking “What exactly is woke?” After about two months, I am willing to define it as awareness, a basic value in all the great world religions. They all claim to discern reality that is described as facing the truth, providing a healthy way of […]
Last week, I suggested we are in a cultural revolution in which people turn to name-calling and invoking God when rational arguments fail. One reason I decided to write on Woke Christianity is I’m surprised that more people are not in an uproar over the misuse of God in this conflict. MAGA claims our nation […]
Last week a dear Black American friend said she regretted not being able to use Woke any more. She was referring to politicians making it a term of derision but also all sorts of other causes including themselves in a part of black culture. Hearing her say this made me aware how involved the issue […]
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