Riswold calls us to think together about the ELCA's 1991 social statement on abortion. Our social, political, and legal context has changed drastically since this statement was written, but one thing remains the same: we as Lutherans are called to compassionate community. What does this mean for us today? Riswold invites readers into thoughtful conversation in an engaging and accessible volume that will help individuals, faith communities, and classrooms engage the complex issues surroundi...

"By them we have been carried away out of our own land, as into a Babylonian captivity, and despoiled of all our precious possessions." Martin Luther, 1520 "Their goal is our deracination, which is 'detachment from one's background (as from homeland, customs, traditions).' Thus women and other Elemental creatures on this planet are rendered homeless, cut off from knowledge of our Race's customs and traditions." Mary Daly, 1984 What is this land, this world of which these two theologians ar...

Why should feminists care about Christianity? Why should Christians care about feminism? In Feminism and Christianity Riswold presents a collection of concise answers to basic questions like these in order to generate discussion about how the two can challenge each other and can even work together in the twenty-first century. Situated firmly in the third wave of feminist activism and scholarship as well as in contemporary Christian theology, Riswold addresses issues such as race, class, ge...

"In order to adequately address the issues of atonement and christology, we must understand how it is that we think about the relationship between God and the human being. The way in which we understand and interpret the life and death of Jesus and his role within that relationship then impacts our theology of the sacraments, particularly the eucharist. "Further, the questions continue to confront and be confronted by my inescapable identity as a Lutheran Christian. I use the term 'inescap...

The title of this book plays upon the central place a theology of the cross holds in Lutheran theologies, especially lucid in Luther's Heidelberg Disputation (1518). The 500th anniversary of this document coincided with the 70th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations wherein the preamble points to a global aspiration of a common good shaped by freedom, justice and peace. This book is located at the intersection of these two themes, asserting that the cross has...