September 12, 2001

Acting unilaterally, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has placed in jeopardy its relationship of “full communion” with the Episcopal Church. At its August biennial session in Indianapolis, the Lutheran body’s churchwide assembly narrowly approved a church bylaw that contravenes an element of “Called to Common Mission,” the ecumenical concord that was given final approval by the two denominations’ top governing bodies in 1999 and 2000.

I worked my first full-time summer job at a glue factory when I was 18 years old. Most of the other guys carpooled to work from the inner city. I came from a suburb up the hill and a good ways up the socioeconomic scale. I did not know when I first punched the clock that I was enrolling in a course more important than any I would soon take in college.

After more than 400 years of foreign occupation and domination, East Timor is getting a taste of freedom and self-rule. On August 30 the people of this long-beleaguered island—the only predominantly Christian region in the Indonesian archipelago—joyfully waited in long lines in the hot sun to select an 88-member assembly that will write the new nation’s constitution and become its first parliament.

The White House initiative on faith-based social services, widely touted as ushering in a new era of partnership between governments and religious organizations, is based on several myths.

Myth No. 1: Religious organizations face substantial discrimination when competing for government grants and contracts.

Faithful, effective Christian congregations make a difference. They touch people’s lives, address profound questions with insight and wisdom, and offer places where the ingredients of a flourishing life can be discovered and nurtured in relationship to the God of Jesus Christ.