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Our Lutheran Commitment

The Lutheran sense of vocation ...

It's key for ELCA colleges and ELCA faculty at secular schools.

What makes a college "Lutheran"? Quality education-not the number of Lutherans-is key, according to several educational authorities.

Anantanand Rambachan, a Hindu who heads the religion department at St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minn., stands with Bruce Benson, campus pastor. If ELCA schools had to be administered by Lutherans, Benson said St. Olaf would lose an "invaluable" teacher in Rambachan.

"My argument is that a Lutheran college/university is one that pursues the essential tasks of a university in a way informed by Lutheran theology, particularly as it shapes an understanding of what it means to be human ... the enterprise of knowing and learning ... and our understanding of community," wrote Tom Christenson in The Gift and Task of Lutheran Higher Education (Augsburg Fortress, 2004). He is a philosophy professor at Capital University, Columbus, Ohio.

Mark N. Wilhelm, associate executive director for educational partnerships and institutions, ELCA Vocation and Education, agrees: "I suspect many Lutherans involved in higher education today would agree that an ELCA college or university has a high percentage of Lutherans if half of its students are Lutheran. If you had said that to Lutheran leaders 100 years ago, they would have been shocked. They would have said, ‘What do you mean-only half?'

Read the rest of this article, which appeared in the November 2008 issue of The Lutheran magazine.

Finlandia University is one of 26 colleges and universities affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).

Visit the ELCA website. to learn more about the Lutheran commitment to education.