Recent Feminist, Womanist, and Mujerista scholarship has shed light on important scholarly horizons for Lutheran theology and ethics. Significant work in gender, sexuality, and politics retrieves, reimagines, and reconstructs Lutheran themes for the present. The papers in this session all seek to expand this scholarship: How does Lutheran theological language engage themes of gender and sexuality justice in diverse contexts? How might Lutheran themes contribute to, be challenged by, or transformed with perspectives from diverse and intersectional politics? How do Lutheran traditions engage thinking about reproductive labor, abortion access, or reproductive justice? Papers in this session address the ethics of consent, LGBTQ+ religious trauma, reproductive justice and the intersections of abortion politics with work and disability studies.
In recent decades, *consent* has become a central ethical guideline for navigating sex in a diverse and imperfect world. Increasingly, however, many feminists are charging that consent cannot carry the weight we’ve asked it to carry. A critical legal criterion, consent has fallen short as an *ethic*. But what would a sexual ethics beyond consent look like? This paper suggests that the writings of Martin Luther might have something to offer contemporary feminist debates over consent and desire, and, conversely, that contemporary debates in sexual ethics might have something to offer Luther studies. Part one of this paper turns to Luther's *Bondage of the Will* to offer a theological critique of consent. Part two turns to *Freedom of a Christian* to advocate for an "ethic of attention." This paper then concludes by considering some risks inherent in an ethic of attention.
Religious trauma syndrome is receiving increasing attention. This includes the trauma experienced by LGBTQIA+ persons because of heteronormative theologies and practices. Writing from my perspective as a queer Lutheran, I ask, what resources in Lutheran theology can help LGBTQIA+ persons name, resist, and grow through religious traumas? This trauma-informed theology of Word & water, wine & wafer involves several strands. I employ a Lutheran theology of the cross to name the discursive sins harming LGBTQIA+ Christians. Then Martin Luther’s performative theology of the Word is employed to offer a theory of language that helps trauma survivors tell their stories (if they wish). Next, a Lutheran view of the Lord’s Supper as an experience of embodied communio counters the isolation suffered by many LGBTQIA+ Christians. Finally, Luther’s understanding of baptism into the Body of Christ counters the mischaracterization that queer Christians experience from those closest to them (including family and clergy).
Lutherans are leaving their congregations, and Lutheran congregations are leaving the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America over its social teaching that supports legal, safe, accessible, and regulated abortion services. Two major themes anchor ELCA social teaching on abortion—moral agency and flourishing. Dobbs works against both values, yet it also goes against ELCA social teaching that supports legal abortion services as part of reproductive healthcare. A unified ecclesial response is difficult because of the divergent and often divisive positions on women’s moral agency and the ethics of neighbor justice. Nevertheless, as a feminist Lutheran theologian, I will raise questions and possibilities over what an ecclesial response to Dobbs might be. I will also offer constructive critique of Lutheran social teaching as I imagine what the social teaching could hold and what its rhetorical stance could be in order to take up current theological, ethical, and practical challenges in reproductive justice.
Representations of disability are ubiquitous in American life and politics. This paper argues that defenses of disabled personhood have secured the passage of legislation that restricts abortion access by reinforcing associations between human value, social contribution, and a capacity to work. But in contrast to dominant narratives in Disability Studies that attribute such linkage to the Christian heritage of social conservatism, I’ll argue that the Lutheran tradition, surprisingly, contains resources to unhitch ethical visions of human dignity from demands for productivity, contribution, and work. Lutheran emphases on incapacity, the need for God’s help, and the significance of community for illuminating one’s own value all show an affinity with the Disability Justice Movement’s insistence that “people have inherent worth outside of commodity relations and capitalist notions of productivity.”