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
Women in Leadership: Obstacles, Opportunities, and Entry Points
Susan Hasseler
No. 41 · Spring 2015
Drawing on two focus-group conversations with female faculty and academic administrators at Augustana College (Sioux Falls), Hasseler traces four obstacle/opportunity themes for women in academic leadership — valuing the intellectual work of leadership, religious and cultural interpretations of gender roles, caregiving realities, and embracing a strong voice — and proposes deliberate next steps for cultivating inclusive excellence on ELCA campuses.
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Editorial
From the Editor
Jason A. Mahn
No. 50 · Fall 2019
Mahn opens with Lenny Duncan’s observation that the ELCA is 96 percent white — the whitest denomination in the U.S. — and asks how teachers and administrators at historically, predominantly, and persistently white institutions can turn from white privilege and white supremacy toward spaces where people of color thrive and white people are re-formed into antiracist allies.
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Editorial
From the Editor
Robert D. Haak
No. 30 · Fall 2009
Haak frames the issue around the question of Lutheran college identity as formed in distinction from some “other,” introducing essays by Witherup on the Joint Declaration, Reuther on Holden Village, Afzaal on Christian-Muslim dialogue, Dovre on the history of Midwestern Lutheran colleges, Radecke on service-learning, and Ratke on Wilhelm Löhe — each making the claim that the “other” is an essential partner in conversation who helps us know who we are and shape who we will become.
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Article
What Could the Lutheran Colleges and Universities Contribute to the ELCA Discussion of Sexuality—But What Would They Actually Contribute?
Robert Benne
No. 22 · Spring 2006
Benne hopes that Lutheran colleges might model fair moral discourse on sexuality by gathering a balanced mix of what James Davison Hunter calls “orthodox” and “progressive” voices from religion and social-science faculties, with the Great Tradition treated as the default position. He doubts this is what would actually happen: citing Klein, Stern, and Western’s research showing a ten-to-one liberal-to-conservative ratio in social-science and humanities associations, he suspects Lutheran faculties skew further left than other private colleges and would simply reinforce the ELCA’s already-progressive seminary and churchwide leadership.
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Article
Critical Engagement in Public Life: Listening to Luther's Troubling Questions
Samuel Torvend
No. 35 · Spring 2012
Torvend narrates the medieval “spiritual/temporal” division and the neo-platonic devaluation of the body that shaped the world into which Luther was born, then traces the disruptive questions Paul’s letters provoked in Luther: about indulgences, the two estates, vocation, and the public reach of baptism. He argues that Luther’s reform — expressed in Kirchenordnungen, social welfare reform, public schools, and writings on lobbyists, usury, and monopolies — carries a “genetic encoding” of public engagement that Lutheran colleges should reclaim against the temptations of holy apathy and Christian nationalism.
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Article
Forming the Division for Access, Equity & Belonging at Susquehanna University
Amy Davis, Dena Salerno, María L. O. Muñoz, Nina Mandel, Scott Kershner
No. 59 · Spring 2024
Five Susquehanna University colleagues trace the institution’s 166-year arc from a Missionary Institute founded to remove barriers to education through the formation of a new Division for Access, Equity & Belonging in 2023, arguing that access rooted in Lutheran origins must continue to drive policy revision, infrastructure, and belonging for minoritized communities today.