Dr. Efraín Agosto

TOMORROW night (Tues, March 31) Dr. Efraín Agosto, Dean of Hartford Seminary (Conn.) and professor of New Testament, will be speaking at Concordia Seminary on the topic of leadership, especially as it relates to the biblical letters of Paul (his area of expertise).

I just attended a lunch meeting where Dr. Agosto spoke. This promises to be a thought-provoking event at the intersections of leadership, Latino and multicultural issues, and the Bible.

The lecture will be at 7:00PM in the Seminary’s Werner Auditorium. It is free and open to the public.

(Werner Auditorium is on the north end of Concordia’s Clayton campus. DeMun Avenue dead-ends into a campus drive that leads into the north-end parking lot closest to the auditorium.)

The event is hosted by the Center for Hispanic Studies (CHS) at Concordia Seminary, and it is the fourth Annual Lecture in Hispanic/Latino Theology and Missions. The Center is also hosting a Latino…

With so many other hot-button issues on Civil Religion right now, this one won’t generate much light or heat, but I thought it was worth noting.

The originator of Dana King’s noted Stendahl’s Rules, the Rev. Krister Stendahl has died.

In addition to serving as bishop in the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden and being an ecumenical religious leader, Stendahl was a long-time professor and dean of Harvard Divinity School, and one of the most notable New Testament scholars of his generation.

He helped to pioneer what has become known as the “new perspective on Paul.” Although this “new perspective” is now not-so-new, and has come under much critique, his 1963 essay, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” is still required reading in many divinity school and seminary classrooms.

Yet, perhaps the greatest legacy of the “new perspective” isn’t so much about biblical studies, as it is about how it changed the…