The Priesthood of All Believers and Other Pious Myths

(excerpt) Now, to be sure, this was not the first time this had happened to me. I looked for the friendship between Luther and Melanchthon and discovered that they were colleagues not friends. Then, I found that the four “classical” marks of the church—one, holy, catholic, and apostolic—were the inventions of nineteenth-century Anglo-Catholics! I wanted to discuss Luther’s comments on the “orders of creation,” only to discover they were the construct of a nineteenth-century German Lutheran ethicist

PUBLIC RIGHTS IN DETERMINING LAND USE

Land Economics/Use,

The 95 Theses as a Template for Lasting Liturgical Reform

In this lecture, Timothy Wengert uses the 95 Theses as a lens to view what is essential to Lutheran liturgical reform. The lecture concludes: So this lies at the heart of the early Luther’s liturgical theology: the Mass, the sermon and prayer, all tied to faith and baptism. As we continue to witness to God’s renewal of Christian liturgy in our midst, Luther provides us with some of the Christian church’s richest resources

The growth and size of the Brazilian mutual fund industry

This article describes the evolution of the Brazilian mutual fund industry, its regulatory framework, organization, types of investors and managers, economic environment and its relative growth. It shows the evolution of this industry in Brazil and its idiosyncrasies providing a deeper look into one of the largest emerging market mutual fund industries. It emphasizes the growth of independent managers with more complex assets and sophisticated strategies that resemble international hedge funds. There are many popular and academic explanations for the mutual funds growth, some of which were tested in this article using a time series framework. The results suggest that financial market innovation and market risk are significant variables in explaining growth. Common variables like economic growth, regulation and taxes were not found to be statistically significant. We conclude with a comparison between the evolution of the Brazilian and US mutual fund industries.emerging markets, Brazilian financial market, hedge funds, mutual funds, international asset allocation.