> BIO	Encore Presentation - All Are Invited! No Registration Required. Thurs. May 17, 2007, 7 p.m. Central FAITH AND PUBLIC LIFE LWR: Your passport to global citizenship. Dr. Gary Simpson, Professor of Systematic Theology, Luther Seminary, St Paul, MN What does our faith look like on the outside? Privately we strive to live faithfully through prayer, meditation, reading the Bible, and seeking personal integrity. What does it mean to also express our Christian beliefs publicly? How do the teachings of Jesus Christ inform the way we relate to our community, including our global neighborhood? We live in a unique time when discussions about the role of faith and public life are common even among the popular culture. The language of morality, ethics, and values abound in pundit talk shows, political campaigns, academic recruiting, and even corporate marketing schemes. As Lutheran clergy and lay leaders committed to the Christian call to peace and justice, how do we take advantage of this opportunity? During this virtual U course we are pleased to join with Dr. Gary Simpson, Professor of Systematic Theology at Luther Seminary in St. Paul. Professor Simpson has done much writing and teaching on the topic of faith and public life. He asserts we should be imaginative when we plan for how our Christian mission is revealed in the world and that Lutheran World Relief is one way to meet our call to faithful global citizenship. Professor Simpson wants students to understand that the context of their public ministry is a living congregation. Just as each Christian has a vocation in the world, each congregation also has a vocation. "Every congregation has a public character, indeed, is a public character. This publicness is focused primarily in worship, preaching and the celebration of the sacraments. These events are the very publicness of the triune God, and all other dimensions of congregational life flow out of them." Bring a newspaper, a Bible, and an imagination pad as we settle in for a one-hour telephone conference class on faith and public life, the role of Lutheran World Relief, and YOUR place in the world. Oh yeah, and don’t forget the bunny slippers.   Listen to an audio presentation of this class by downloading this mp3 file. LARGE FILE 43MB Download A PDF of the class notes and transcript. Suggested Reading:
	BY GARY SIMPSON Luther Seminary: Gary Simpson’s Faculty Profile “By the Dawn's Early Light: The Flag, the Interrogative, and the Whence and Whither of Normative Patriotism" Word & World 23 (Summer 2003):  272-283. “Civil Society and Congregations as Public Moral Companions.” Word & World 15 (Fall 1995):  420-427. Living Out Our Callings in the Community (with Diane Kaufmann and Raymond Bakke) (St. Paul, MN: Centered Life, 2006) "Our Pacific Mandate: Orienting Just Peacemaking as Lutherans." Journal of Lutheran Ethics (June 2005) “God is a God who bears: Bonhoeffer for a Flat World.” Word & World 26 (Fall 2006). This article is not available online. PREVIOUS VIRTUAL U. COURSE MATERIAL Called to Serve: A Theological Basis for Our Work October 2005 Virtual University Course with Dr. Darrell Jodock Follow this link for resources from last year’s Virtual University course on the theology behind LWR.  A recording of the class is available for download, as well as two articles written by Dr. Jodock. ARTICLES Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The Church in Society: A Lutheran Perspective. Sept. 1993 “The first social statement adopted at the second biennial Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, August 28-September 4, 1991. It was adopted by a more than two-thirds majority vote.” Pasewardk, Kyle A. and Garrett E. Paul. “Forming an emphatic Christian center: a call to political responsibility.”  The Christian Century Vol. 111, 24 Aug. 1994.  An article by two Lutherans who recognize the polarization of faith-based politics and call for the renewal of an “emphatic” centrist approach which “demands the conversion of all, each through the other, and frees us to attend to and receive the power that emerges through the other.”  Highly recommended. Wuthnow, Robert. “Divided We Fall: America’s Two Civil Religions.” The Christian Century 20 Apr. 1988:  395-399. This article observes that American “civil religion” has traditionally provided the county with enduring values and a sense of meaning and direction, but that this civil religion has become divided and no longer unites us around a common set of ideals.  An older article, but still relevant and revealing. Brademas, John. “The Place of Faith in Public Life,” excerpt.  July 2005.  Ed. The Carnegie Council, 31 Mar. 2006. Edited excerpt from a July 2005 speech by John Brademas, President Emeritus, New York University.  Brademas talks about how his Christian faith has informed his career in the public arena and about the relationship between religion and political life. Loconte, Joseph. “Why Religious Values Support American Values.”  26 May 2005.  Ed. The Heritage Foundation, 26 Sept. 2005 A lecture published by the conservative Heritage Foundation arguing that protestant Christianity underlies the principles of liberty, dissent, freedom and dignity, which are central to America’s civic identity. King, Jr., Martin Luther. "Letter From Birmingham Jail" Obama, Barack. "One Nation...Under God?" Sojourners Magazine, November 2006, Vol. 35, No. 19, pp.43-47. WEBSITES The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America: Church In Society ELCA website with resources for advocacy and civil engagement. Faith In Public Life: A Resource Center for Justice and the Common Good A coalition of progressive ounded by national religious leaders in 2004 to “provide critical organizing and communications resources to strengthen diverse faith movements that share a call to pursue justice and the common good.”  “Faith in Public Life envisions a country in which diverse religious voices for justice and the common good consistently impact public policy; and those who use religion as a tool of division and exclusion do not dominate public discourse.” Sojourners Magazine A progressive evangelical publication exploring faith, politics and culture.  It’s mission is “to articulate the biblical call to social justice, inspiring hope and building a movement to transform individuals, communities, the church, and the world.” The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life A nonpartisan “fact tank” that “seeks to promote a deeper understanding of issues at the intersection of religion and public affairs.”  “The Forum functions as both a clearinghouse and a town hall. As a clearinghouse, it gathers and disseminates objective information through polls and reports. As a town hall, it provides a neutral venue through its various issue roundtables and briefings for discussions of important issues where religion and domestic and international politics intersect.” University of Sothern California: Center for Religion and Civic Culture “The Center for Religion and Civic Culture is an organized research unit of the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern California. It promotes discipline-based, transdisciplinary, and interdisciplinary research related to the involvement of religion and religious institutions in civic culture. Its research utilizes both social scientific and normative methods.” BOOKS Bonhoeffer, Deitrich.  Ethics. New York, NY: Touchstone, 1995. Bonhoeffer, Deitrich.  Life Together. New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1954. Moe-Lobeda, Cynthia D.  Public Church: For the Life of the World (Lutheran Voices Series). Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 2004. Wogaman, J. Philip. Christian Perspectives on Politics. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000.