Pastor Foltz is Pastor Emeritus of Saint James Lutheran Church in Gettysburg, PA and author of the the Frontline Study content.
It made sense, even though it shook me up, when James Davison Hunter observed race has replaced abortion as the great divider since he wrote Cultural Wars in 1991. It rings true because the media daily reports efforts to support or oppose racial equality. It is upsetting because Hunter sees a greater threat for violence […]
My attempt to come up with some guidelines for moving beyond the abortion stalemate did not work very well. I received three kinds of responses. The first felt my effort to be carefully neutral ended up being irrelevant. Lupe, who has spent time as a political prisoner and journalist, knows far better than I about […]
A start to resolving the conflict would be an agreement to converse with one another using creative healing words and to do so as a family that is committed to working things out. The conversation would not be an abstract discussion of natural laws or eternal truths, but an attempt to improve a disturbing situation […]
I had hoped to come up with some insights that would help break the gridlock in the discussions about abortion, human sexuality, and racism. After struggling a couple of months, I found myself suggesting we should simply work harder in practicing compassionate love and using creative, healing words. That certainly would go a long way. […]
Ever since I suggested last week that the most important contribution Christians make to overcoming the deep divisions in our society is compassionate love, significant events seemed to affirm or challenge my assertion. The very next day an editorial was published in our local newspaper that demonstrated how severely alienated we have become. The writer […]
Where do we go from here? I thought I might have come up with some new proposal, program, or opening by now. Instead, I feel I am pretty much where I started. That is not to say I am frustrated; only that I have come up with nothing new. After much reading, I have found […]
As I was trying to understand what happened to cause our deeply divided society, I came across a Politico interview with James Davison Hunter of the University of Virginia Advanced Studies in Culture. It was regarded as an update on the book, Culture Wars, that he wrote in 1991. Hunter attributes our experience of violent […]
I decided to start this series when I found myself growing extremely uneasy with Christians using militant language. I was increasingly hearing religious spokespeople speak of Jesus as a warrior fighting for us in a cosmic war between good and evil. This extended to many of them picturing the Christian life as primarily battling adversaries […]
I got diverted last week. The thesis in the back of my head has been that either-or discussions in a technological society call for new perspectives. Technology makes for so many new possibilities that our concept of reality changes. We no longer see things black and white but rather in all shades of grey. I […]
I am looking for a way to peace in our deeply divided society. Just about everyone recommends conversation and that is exactly what seems impossible in our present situation. That really came home last week as I was reading responses to last week’s lesson while listening to David Brooks’ Yale Divinity School lecture “The Crisis […]
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