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You are here: Home / Archives for R. Stephen Warner

Articles by R. Stephen Warner

R. Stephen Warner is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago

A Conservative Case for Recognition of Gay Relationships in the Church

June 8, 2016 by R. Stephen Warner

So far, I have been very dissatisfied with the discussion of the proposals for same-sex holy unions and ordination of sexually active homosexual clergy in the ELCA.  The discussion keeps being presented as a debate between “liberals” and “conservatives” or between “progressives” and “traditionalists,” with the former supposed to be in support of the radical […]

Filed Under: Human Sexuality in the ELCA: Perspectives on the Struggle

What Do We Hold Together? What Holds Us Together?

February 11, 2015 by R. Stephen Warner

Introduction: I am a Christian sociologist. (My conviction that that juxtaposition is not an oxymoron is something we can discuss later.) I am a member of Immanuel ELCA in Evanston where Frank Senn is my pastor. I joined the church some ten years ago to be nurtured in the naive faith I increasingly experienced in […]

Filed Under: What is the Tie That Binds?

What Sociologists Have Learned About Church Attendance

February 6, 2015 by R. Stephen Warner

Social scientists have been tracking self-reported religious service attendance for over seventy years. At present, over 40% of adult Americans claim to attend church (or other religious services) nearly every week. That figure is 25% lower than at its peak in the 1950s, but it has remained remarkably stable for the past four decades, declining […]

Filed Under: Keeping the Sabbath

20.1 Lent 2015

The Catechumenate

19.4: Advent 2014

Communion and Community

19.3: Ordinary Time 2014

Green coffee beans (top left), Nicaraguan red beans (top right), corn (bottom left) and millet, vital Nicaraguan crops, held in women farmers’ hands

Food and Justice

19.2: Pentecost 2014

Latvian Wheat by Dace Kiršpile

Growing Leaders

19.1: Epiphany 2014

archangel gabriel

Religion and the Arts

1996 – 2013

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