Much of the discussion of the Lutheran identity of Lutheran colleges and universities is focused on Luther. However there are other important figures in the establishment and formation of these institutions. Wilhelm Löhe, the spiritual father and benefactor of Wartburg College and Wartburg Seminary is one of these figures.
Biography and Historical Context
Löhe was born in 1808 in Fürth, an industrial and manufactur- ing center near Nürnberg where he grew up in a middle class household.1 The faith that he knew was a blend of seventeenth- century Lutheran orthodoxy and eighteenth-century Pietism. Löhe’s father died when he was still a boy so his upbringing fell on the shoulders of his mother whom he adored. His mother valued education and encouraged him to go to school. Löhe was a good student and graduated from the prestigious Melanchthon-Gymnasium in nearby Nürnberg. (It should be noted that although Nürnberg was near, his attendance still demanded a sizeable commitment from both the pupil and his mother). After graduation, Löhe began theological studies at Erlangen (also nearby) where he spent all but one semester of his studies. Upon completing his studies at Erlangen, Löhe served a series of congregations as vicar. In the 1830s there were more pastors than congregations and Löhe was already a controversial figure so he was not quickly called to a congregation. Finally in 1838 he was called to serve a congregation in a tiny village in the hinterland of Franconia: Neuendettelsau where he served the remainder of his life.
A few key features of Löhe’s life bear upon his understanding of education.
First, he grew up in an industrial and manufacturing center and was thus well aware of the effects of the Industrial Revolution. He experienced firsthand how industrialization affects the lives of people. Industrialization attracted people to cities where they often only experienced misery and squalor. Education, Löhe was persuaded, was a way out of the drudgery of life in a factory or worse, unemployment.
Second, his father’s death left his mother in a difficult situa- tion. She knew that education was a way out for her son, thus she became one of his most important champions during his studies.
Third, these experiences (the Industrial Revolution, his father’s death and his mother’s encouragement of education) together shaped his passion for and sympathy with those who were less fortunate. An important component of his mission strategy had to do with what today we call “service.” His mission endeavors were often shaped by people’s physical and economic needs. “Not only are [Christians] to proclaim the Word, they are to live the Word.” (Ratke 183) Even his understanding of worship, particularly of the Lord’s Supper, is shaped by his concern for those who are poor and hungry: “The eucharistic table should not be a table where some whose bellies are full feast while others are distracted from the rich blessings of the redemptive meal because their bellies grumble with hunger.”2 (Ratke 120)
The fourth relates to Löhe’s own experience of education. His theological studies at Erlangen were enriched by the example of a geology teacher who was a fervent and active Christian. This experience contrasted sharply with the example of his own theology professors at Erlangen and his experience in Berlin. In Berlin he was dismayed by the example of Hegel (he couldn’t see any practical application or implication of Hegel’s philosophy in either Hegel’s teaching or personal life) and encouraged by the example of Friedrich Schleiermacher. He disagreed violently with Schleiermacher but admired him for his expression of Christian faith.
Education
Löhe’s understanding of education emphasized the following main points:
Teaching and education are about formation. People are trans- formed by what they know, and, I might add, experience. Löhe writes: “Every cause has an effect. Every word has power. Every lesson changes something in those who are taught and not just within the field or the type of the knowledge, but in all of [the student’s] being. Every lesson, in other words, makes humans better or worse. … In a word, teaching and education [Bildung], teaching and formation are inseparable.” (“Einige” 373) Students can become better or worse people as a result of their education. Who students become cannot be separated from what they learn in schools. More than that, teachers who educate just with words in the classroom are doing only half of the job. Löhe states, “I don’t want to say that instruction, which is given only through words, does not educate in any way whatsoever, but it certainly doesn’t educate to the degree that it might when it should and could educate [bilden: also “form”].” (“Einige” 376)
Not just teachers, but institutions as well are involved in this endeavor named education. It is too much to lay the burden of teaching or formation on the shoulders of those who are at the front of the classroom. Any institution that lays this burden on its teachers is shirking its responsibility. Schools, colleges, and universities are about education in its fullest sense. Schools must be aware of this responsibility and be prepared to teach more than mere knowledge. Education “encompasses and educates the whole person.” (“Einige” 378)
Teachers are whole persons too. They teach in places other than the classroom; and they teach in other ways besides through words. If students are to be understood as whole persons, then teachers are as well (and, for that matter, institutions of higher educa- tion). “Teaching and life are of one piece.”3 (“Einige” 376) That is, teachers teach with their actions and lives as much as they teach with their words. Just as a sacrament is the Word of God made visible, so should our teaching make our values visible.
Teachers need to be learning as well. I’ve already said that teach- ers are whole persons and that they model in their actions and their personal lives what they teach. Presumably one of the things that teachers teach is that the life of the mind is a worthy life. They teach students that learning is valuable. Teachers, who should have the best interests of their students at heart, must be involved in learning themselves. “Teachers should always be learning and researching, always asking questions.” (“Aphorismen” 418)
Education is not neutral. It is—or ought to be—religious. Education sanctifies. I have already hinted at the neutrality of education and teachers. They are not. They cannot be neutral when education is about the communication and transmission of not just knowledge and skills, but also values. “All education is religious: Religion sanctifies even the so-called worldly means of education so that it is no longer merely worldly.” (“Einige” 373) Löhe is saying here that the values of Christianity—love, mercy, justice, peace, service, etc.—sanctify the world. They make it holy. Education, at its best, is about overcoming hate, evil, injustice, and self-centeredness.
Education is not just for the present. Clearly, if we as whole persons are about teaching the whole person, our concern is not just for the immediate present, for practical and utilitarian ends. “Whoever is educated only for the present … but not for eternity, is actually defrauded with this education, because they really are not being educated.” (“Einige” 373) Education is about provid- ing students with the tools they need to meet the future with confidence and hope.
Educational institutions need to be whole institutions. I have already mentioned this, but it needs to be highlighted. Educational institutions are not only about proclaiming the Word, but living the Word. If there is a dissonance between the values of the institution and what it practices, then there is a problem. A school can hardly talk about the importance of meeting a person’s physical needs so that they are not hungry or live in poverty if its employees are underpaid. It can hardly talk about the importance of wholeness if its faculty and staff are stretched and stressed by the busyness of committee meetings and other institutional commitments. It can hardly talk about the importance of wholeness if its faculty haven’t the resources to be engaged in research and learning.
Conclusion
Education is for the whole person. While knowledge is clearly the primary “commodity” that a college has to offer, it is not the only one. A college committed to education offers values and faith as well. A college committed to education witnesses to the truth it teaches not just in the classroom with words, but in its policies and its practices as well. Finally, education is a com- munal activity that involves not just students and teachers, but administration and staff—indeed the entire college—ought to be actively engaged in this important endeavor.
Endnotes
That Fürth is an industrial and manufacturing center can be seen in the fact that the Adler, the first train in Germany, traveled between Fürth and Nürnberg.
Löhe wrote: “The obligation remains for us to care for our poor brothers, and if we do not hold an agape feast like the ancient Christians, we are not released from mercy. Undoubtedly we go in an unworthy manner to God’s table if we do not care for our brothers at the altar, if they do not have, in addition to the heavenly riches of the sacrament, their allotted share of earthly food also” [Prüfungstafel und Gebete für Beicht- und Abendmahlstage: Beicht- und Kommunion~büchlein für evangelische Christen (Zum Gebrauch sowohl im als außerhalb des Gotteshauses) in GW VII/2:287].
Löhe goes on to say: “The more teachers recognize their calling [vocation], they must all the more give all of their being to this calling [vocation] as an example of what their teaching can achieve.” (“Einige” 373)
Works Cited
GW = Löhe, Wilhelm. Gesammelte Werke. Ed. Klaus Ganzert. 7 vols. Neuendettelsau: Freimund, 1951–1986.
Löhe, Wilhelm. “Aphorismen über Schule und Schulunterricht.” GW III/2:384–419. __ . “Einige Worte zum Anfange der Windsbacher Schullehrer- Konferenzen 1838.” GW III/2: 373–77.
Ratke, David C. Confession and Mission Word and Sacrament: The Ecclesial Theology of Wilhelm Löhe. St. Louis: Concordia, 2001.
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Editorial
From the Publisher
Mark Wilhelm
Wilhelm reports on the difficult financial season facing the ELCA churchwide organization — a ten-percent budget reduction announced in November and significant cuts to unrestricted grants for colleges and universities — while affirming that the ELCA’s commitment to the mission of its schools remains strong, including its commitment to engaging the “other,” the theme of this issue.
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Editorial
From the Editor
Robert D. Haak
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Article
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Ronald D. Witherup, S.S.
Witherup draws attention to the tenth anniversary of the Lutheran-Catholic “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification” signed on Reformation Day 1999, summarizes the document’s claim that justification is the work of the triune God received by grace alone through faith, surveys the remaining questions raised by Pope John Paul II and the 2006 endorsement by the World Methodist Conference, and proposes a pastoral strategy for bringing this ecumenical milestone out of the shadows in Catholic parishes.
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Reflection
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Rosemary Radford Ruether
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Book Review
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David Ratke
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Ratke reads Derek Bok’s Our Underachieving Colleges from Lenoir-Rhyne and argues that Bok’s call to think holistically about undergraduate education and to dialogue across disciplinary boundaries names the work already underway at ELCA colleges. He weighs faculty attitudes, the role of skills in the core curriculum and the major, and the importance of the extracurriculum for student formation.
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Response
Tat for Teat: Ratke Responds
David Ratke
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Article
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Don Braxton
No. 15 · Winter 2002
Braxton, taking his cue from David James Duncan’s defense of ignorance as a fly-fisher’s most crucial tool and from Socrates’ midwife’s art in the Theaetetus, defends a doctrine of “honesty of mind” resting on four premises—knowledge is constructed, judgments are wagered amid imperfect knowledge, expertise can disable learning, and we are encumbered by other ways of knowing. He field-tests the disposition against three domains: the climate-change and creationism debates in environmental studies, the post-September 11 turn toward religious pluralism (engaging Union Seminary’s Joseph Hough and Hauer and Young’s “three-world” approach to the Bible), and the liberal arts classroom where students “become democrats of the mind” through Reinhold Niebuhr’s balance of conviction and contrition.
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Institutional Focus
About Rooted and Open: The Common Calling of the Network of ELCA Colleges and Universities
No. 49 · Spring 2019
An institutional framing piece introducing Rooted and Open — NECU’s statement on Lutheran identity in higher education — with a roster of the faculty working group and writing team and an orientation to the essays in this special issue.
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Article
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Jim Huffman
No. 17 · Summer 2003
Huffman traces his personal journey through three stages of faith—the “comfortable Christ” of his Midwestern Christian childhood, Clark Pinnock’s “faith principle” of accessible salvation, and finally Christ as the “humble teacher”—to a pluralism that rejects religious triumphalism without abandoning Christian commitment. Drawing on Diana Eck, Wesley Ariarajah, John Cobb, the Catholic novelist Endo Shusaku, and the histories of Confucian China and imperial Japan, he then describes how this commitment shapes his teaching of East Asian religion and nationalism at Wittenberg University: insisting on respectful language, working sympathetically through doctrines like Buddhist non-attachment, and helping students see the pernicious effects of triumphalism in both religious and political life.
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Article
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Ann Hill Duin, Eric Childers
No. 38 · Fall 2013
Duin and Childers introduce Project DAVID—Distinction, Analytics, Value, Innovation, Digital opportunity—as a framework for showcasing strategic reinvention across ELCA liberal arts institutions. Building on Childers’ College Identity Sagas and reading Selingo, Norris, and Popenici alongside the AAC&U, Adrian College, NITLE, and the Delta Cost Project, they pose framing questions about distinction, vocation, affordability, value propositions, two-track innovation, and BYOE technology that ELCA campuses can use to face their own “Goliath” moments.
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Editorial
From the Editor
Tom Christenson
No. 21 · Summer 2005
In his valedictory letter as outgoing editor, Christenson recounts the 1994 origins of Intersections, when he took the idea to Naomi Linnell and Jim Unglaube at DHES and persuaded the council of presidents to launch the journal on a shoestring with printing paid by DHES and everything else by Capital University. He summarizes the issue’s contents—papers from the 2004 Vocation of a Lutheran College Conference plus two commissioned pieces from former DHES directors Bob Sorensen and Leonard Schulze—and thanks the student copy editors and Capital’s presidents and provosts who sustained the publication.
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Editorial
From the Publisher
Mark Wilhelm
No. 31 · Winter 2010
Wilhelm traces his decades-long enthusiasm for the Lutheran doctrine of vocation from his St. Olaf days reading Luther’s Open Letter to the German Nobility, notes Parker Palmer’s lecture-circuit ministry and Mark C. Taylor’s reflections on calling, and argues that ELCA colleges should claim vocation as the defining mark of Lutheran higher education—yet warns that vocation risks becoming “the program du jour” rather than a permanent hallmark.