Pastor Foltz is Pastor Emeritus of Saint James Lutheran Church in Gettysburg, PA and author of the the Frontline Study content.
There has always been some controversy about the nature of the church. When I entered the ministry about 60 years ago, an Evangelical pastor friend of mine described the controversy as a tension between those who see the mission as calling people to accept Jesus’ offer of eternal life against those who try to provide […]
I decided to do this series when so many of my friends were in a quandary about talking to people on the other side of our deep cultural divide. Many could find no way to have decent conversations with lifetime time friends or family. All were worried about their inability to talk about community issues […]
I was the kind of pastor with whom people shared their inner, often hidden lives. Early on, I became aware that almost everyone struggles with sexual issues in one way or another. I also came to realize people’s public personas were often just the opposite of their real selves. For instance, someone who was always […]
I think I have been resisting this lesson. Being very active in the civil rights movement most of my life and raising a Haitian son, I was afraid I was too emotionally involved to trust my understanding of what is happening. Yet the only way I could ex[plain the great conflicts in our society was […]
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 […]
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