Concordia College observed MLK Day 2020 on the theme of “Not Racist: A White Moderate Myth.” My ethics students were required to attend the events and reflect on three questions: What was the primary message? How did that message resonate with you? And: What questions did the speeches and workshops raise for you? Inevitably, as a predominantly white institution (PWI) working on equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) ideals, Concordia met the topic with some resistance. I am the only Black woman tenured faculty member, so the resistance came as no surprise. How are we ever going to get to sufficient, sustainable livelihoods for all (as the ELCA social statement has it), if we cannot discuss one of the reasons for economic inequality—racism and racist structural arrangements in the United States? As an intersectional scholar, I introduce my students to issues of race, gender, sexual identity, religion, and other sources of diversity and marginalization in organizations. MLK Day offered the perfect entry point for talking about race in class this semester.
As I read through my students’ reflections, it was clear that, on the one hand, they were profoundly moved and informed by the messages from the speakers. One of the speaker’s talk focused on the question of “who has a right to belong here”—an issue we obviously struggle with as a PWI. We are not yet an inclusive campus; in fact, most minority students would describe the climate as hostile. As such, our retention rates for minority students are insufferable. My ethics students’ comments such as “everyone belongs here and everyone should be accepted here” suggests that some students are open to expanding their worldview. As an example, through student activism, a meal bank fund was begun last semester to help food insecure students.
On the other hand, statements such as “white people do not have to interact with colored people,” or “the power behind [white privilege] is considerably smaller and less impacting to colored people”—and, indeed the fact that they use the term “colored people” to refer to minorities—suggests that we have a lot of work to do to educate our students to become more culturally competent. We have far to go to become a welcoming institution for all.
During our next class period, I led the class through a discussion on race and racism, beginning with a five-minute New York Times documentary, “Conversations with White People about Race.” My goal was to help the students collectively process what their experiences in a safe space, and to help to destigmatize these taboo topics. We can only truly learn how to be ethical leaders in the issues of race and diversity by openly engaging with these topics. Students resonated with the views expressed about the discomfort that white people have towards talking about race. They also talked about how they first came to realize that they were of a certain race. My goal in bringing such difficult conversations to the ethics classroom is to equip my students with the ethical tools to engage in dialogue. We must do better, as an institution committed to helping our students “BREW”: Becoming Responsibly Engaged in the World.
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Editorial
From the Publisher
Mark Wilhelm
Wilhelm frames the issue by tracing how Lutheran educational ideals — once a primary source of contemporary higher education — were masked in the United States, and introduces a NECU initiative that uses the case of business ethics to explore Lutheran social teaching as an academic resource.
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Editorial
Guest Editorial: Moral Deliberation in NECU Classrooms
Ernest L. Simmons
Simmons introduces the guiding question of the NECU working group: could the ELCA’s twelve social statements and thirteen social messages — expressions of Lutheran social teaching originally formulated for congregational use — turn campuses into “academic communities of moral deliberation”?
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Article
The Responsible Professional: Vocation and Economic Life
Martha E. Stortz, Tom Morgan
Stortz and Morgan argue that the “value-added” of Lutheran higher education is a responsibility ethic — one that frames the professional as a first responder “called and empowered to serve the neighbor so that all may flourish” — and unpack the four criteria of the 1999 ELCA social statement Sufficient, Sustainable Livelihood for All as a framework for economic deliberation.
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Institutional Focus
A List of ELCA Social Teaching and Policy Documents
A reference list, as of September 2019, of the ELCA’s twelve social statements, fourteen social messages, and over 150 social policy resolutions — with Spanish translations where available.
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Article
ELCA Social Teaching for the Classroom?
Roger A. Willer
Willer argues that the body of ELCA social teaching, taken as a whole, constitutes an actual social ethic — relatively comprehensive, responsibly consistent, and remarkably cogent — whose mode of responsibility ethics commends it as a classroom resource for any discipline that wrestles with moral questions.
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Article
Business as Usual? Marketing, God, and the Limits of Christian Callings
Emily Beth Hill
Hill, a former corporate marketing consultant turned theologian, returns to Luther’s claim that no vocation is more holy than another — and uses Luther’s Large Catechism definition of God to argue that the modern practice of branding intentionally redirects the love and worship of human beings toward capital, raising the question of whether Christian neighbor-love places limits on what professions Christians should pursue.
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Article
Responding to Student Hunger at NECU Institutions
Kristen Glass Perez
Glass Perez recounts how her work as college chaplain at Augustana and Muhlenberg evolved after a student offhandedly declared, “I am always so hungry at this school,” and shares five lessons learned from launching campus pantries, emergency grant programs, and the HOPE Survey to address food insecurity as a defining calling of NECU institutions.
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Article
Gen Z is Made for Lutheran Higher Education
W. Kent Barnds
Barnds argues that Generation Z’s defining traits — socially responsible, purpose-driven, cost-conscious, culturally open, and tech-expectant — align almost perfectly with the missions of NECU institutions, and offers concrete suggestions (from replacing “vocation” with “purpose” to embracing Gen X parents as co-pilots) for Lutheran colleges seeking to attract and serve this generation.
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Article
'In, With, and Under:' The Tradition and the Teaching of Christian Ethics
Pamela K. Brubaker
No. 17 · Summer 2003
Brubaker describes how she teaches Introduction to Christian Ethics at California Lutheran University—a religiously diverse classroom where about 30% of students are Lutheran, 30% Roman Catholic, and many are “unchurched”—as a community of moral discourse rooted in the Lutheran dialectic of faith and reason. Drawing on Larry Rasmussen and Bruce Birch, Elizabeth Bettenhausen, Roger Crook, and Robert Benne’s typology of “Hot and Cool Connections” between church and politics, she walks through her course’s units on human sexuality, economic life, and war and peace—including the Bomb Shelter simulation, a mock Disney stockholders meeting on sweatshops, and a Congressional hearing on the School of the Americas—to show how ELCA social statements function as case studies in critical inquiry and education for citizenship.
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Article
Vocation of the Lutheran College and Religious Diversity
Darrell Jodock
No. 33 · Spring 2011
Jodock describes a “third path” for Lutheran colleges that is both rooted in the Lutheran tradition and inclusive of religious diversity — an alternative to sectarian and non-sectarian default models — and identifies six interlocking features of the Lutheran tradition (giftedness, an engaged God, wisdom, caution about claims to know, community, and an emphasis on service and community leadership) that shape how such a college engages interreligious dialogue and civil discourse.
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Article
A Response to Paul Santmire
Don Braxton
No. 4 · Winter 1998
Braxton appreciates the dialectical structure of Santmire’s mandates—“skeletons in our closets and riches in our own vaults”—and reads it as a faithful expression of the Lutheran tradition of Paul, Augustine, and Luther. He argues that Santmire is on target in warning against premature flight to non-Christian traditions for environmental wisdom (theoretical sensitivity does not translate into ecological behavior in practice), and that classical Lutheran social ethics has too often been quietistic. But Lutheran ethics at its best is dialectical, not dualistic—recognizing the interpenetration of church and world, Law and Gospel, eschatological Kingdom and present realities, as in Hegel, Ritschl, Bonhoeffer, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Larry Rasmussen. Braxton commends environmental responsibility, social criticism of unsustainable practices, and a liturgical practice of resistance to instrumentalism as appropriate next steps for Lutheran liberal arts colleges, especially Capital University.
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Article
The Impropriety of Jesus' Teaching: The Woman at the Well and The Vagina Monologues
Susan M. O'Shaughnessy
No. 16 · Winter 2003
O’Shaughnessy Poppe dedicates her message to those who worked to put on Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues against administrative resistance and reads the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well alongside the testimony of a Bosnian rape survivor whose story Ensler asked to tell, arguing that the “impropriety” of Jesus—his scandalous recognition of those silenced by sexism, racism, war, custom, and the church—is the model for the mission of a college of the church to defend academic freedom and to break the chains of oppression by inflicting discomfort on the proper and pure.
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Article
Affirming, Entrusting, and Acting: A Baptismal Grounding of Affirmative Action in Lutheran Higher Education
Peter Carlson Schattauer
No. 60 · Fall 2024
Schattauer draws on the Lutheran baptism liturgy — where the gathered assembly publicly affirms what it is for and is entrusted with responsibilities for justice and peace — to argue that NECU institutions create truly inclusive communities by affirming commitments, naming responsibilities, and acting in ways that embody both.
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Institutional Focus
So That All May Belong: Lutheran Roots for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice [abridged]
Altheia Richardson, Angie Hambrick, Caryn Riswold, Colleen Windham-Hughes, Deanna Thompson, Marcia Bunge, Robert Clay
No. 61 · Spring 2025
A condensed version of the NECU statement that consolidates Lutheran theological grounding for DEIJ and a single combined call to action for Lutheran colleges and universities — offered as a shareable summary alongside the complete document.