The Crossings Blog

Colleagues, After a semester’s leave-of-absence from ThTh postings my partner Robin Morgan is back. ThTh #134 is her theology-of-the-cross essay on one of today’s hot topics: Eco-theology. These reflections arise from Robin’s work this past semester in her PhD program at St. Louis University. As usual: comments welcomed.  Peace & Joy! Ed Schroeder Some Thoughts on Ecotheology In a recent ...

Colleagues, On December 1, with arms full of greenery for the family Advent wreath, my sister-in-law Linda Schroeder was walking back across the street from the garden shop to get to her car. That’s all she can remember. Witnesses say she was struck by a hit-and-run driver (who a day later did “turn himself in.”) The ...

Colleagues, Two years ago a dozen or so of us Crossings folks celebrated Christmas in Bethlehem. Our “home” during those days was the guest-house of the Talitha Kumi school in nearby Beit Jala. It’s mentioned in the final paragraph below. So the people and places mentioned below are woven into our own biographies. I receive messages ...

Colleagues, Here’s something for Advent. It’s the Pastor’s Piece in the December 2000 newsletter from Mt. Olive Evangelical Lutheran Church, Mukwonago, Wisconsin. That pastor, Steven Kuhl, also wears a couple of other hats. He represents the Greater Milwaukee Synod of the ELCA on the Council of Churches, does some teaching at nearby St. Francis Archdiocesan Seminary, ...

Colleagues, Paul Goetting, like me, is a retired ELCA pastor with LCMS roots. We were classmates in seminary days–class of ’55–and teaching colleagues at Seminex. Paul and wife Trudy (nursing instructor–specialty midwifery) have been short-term missionaries off and on for a number of years. Their venues of service include India, Afghanistan (in earlier days when that ...

Colleagues, The posting of 2 weeks ago, ThTh 127, linking the lectionary-appointed Gospel for Thanksgiving Day 2000 (in the USA) to theological instruction at Valparaiso University forty-plus years ago, elicited some responses. Here are three of them. You may remember that ThTh 127 reported on the “new curriculum” at V.U. in ...

Colleagues, Today’s offering, on Thanksgiving Day (USA), expresses my thanks for the gift Jerome Burce has given us with the book reviewed below. As you’ll divine beginning with my opening line, I commend it to you with no reservations. Peace & Joy! Ed Schroeder PROCLAIMING THE SCANDAL. REFLECTIONS ON POSTMODERN MINISTRY By Jerome E. Burce Christian Mission and Modern Culture series ...

Colleagues, By popular demand (well, actually one Crossings junkie explicitly asked for it) I’m composing a Crossings style text study of this year’s Gospel (Revised Standard Lectionary) appointed for the USA Day of Thanksgiving, a week hence on November 23, 2000. So substantively this Thursday Theology #127 belongs to the genre “Sabbatheology” (=text studies). But Thanksgiving ...

Colleagues, Eleven years ago today, the day before Luther’s birthday, the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. Makes me think of the semester-long stint that Marie and I did thereafter in Lithuania, one of the countries of the former Soviet bloc. We’re still in e-mail connection with folks we met there in the city of Klaipeda, one ...

Colleagues: Half a dozen, maybe more, responses (some of them lengthy pieces) have come my way since last week’s posting about Christians Palestinians. I’d like to send them all your way, especially the two coming from Jewish authors who speak out for the Palestinians in their ironic David/Goliath dilemma with Israel, but it’s too much. So ...