Full Issue, Number 3, Summer 1997 the Onc Gregational and Synodical Mission Unit, the Ve Angelical Lutheran Church in America
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Intersections Volume 1997 | Number 3 Article 1 1997 Full Issue, Number 3, Summer 1997 The onC gregational and Synodical Mission Unit, The vE angelical Lutheran Church in America Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.augustana.edu/intersections Augustana Digital Commons Citation The onC gregational and Synodical Mission Unit, The vE angelical Lutheran Church in America (1997) "Full Issue, Number 3, Summer 1997," Intersections: Vol. 1997: No. 3, Article 1. Available at: http://digitalcommons.augustana.edu/intersections/vol1997/iss3/1 This Full Issue is brought to you for free and open access by Augustana Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Intersections by an authorized administrator of Augustana Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INTERSECTIONS faith + life + learning U NMBER THREE SUMMER 1997 �;, ;,··: ''CO ,iY1'-�c:"'.'.::;. 1 · ·1.. ·.. ./.. · � � ·� 1 INTERSECTIONS faith + life+ learning NUMBERTHREE SUMMER 1997 Contributors to this Issue Focus: H.Paul Santmire ...........The LutheranLiberal Arts Collegeand Carefor the Earth. Gregg Muilenburg.................... .An Aristotelian Twistto Faith and Learning. Two Poems: GaryFincke ................................ Dark Angels & Decorative Cooking. Discussion: Bruce R.Reichenbach ................. Mission and Hiring in the Christian College. Wendy J. McCredie ..............................A Call for Creative Education. Hany Jebsen ........................................ Hittinga Moving Target. Reflection: Chuck Huff... ..................................Confessions of a Collaborator. Intersections Number 3, June, 1997 Published by the Division for Higher Education & Schools The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Published at Capital University, Columbus, Ohio, USA 43209 James Unglaube, Publisher Tom Christenson, Editor Editorial Board Timothy,A. Bennett, Foreign Languages and Literatures, Wittenberg University Karla Bohmbach, Dep't.of Religion, Susquehanna University Tom Christenson, Dep't.of Philosophy & Religion, Capital University DeAneLagerquist, Paracollege & Dep't.of Religion, St. Olaf College James Unglaube, ELCA Div. For Higher Education & Schools Staff Jessica Brown, Student Assistant& Secretary Cover Art by Forest Walker, age 8 Purpose Statement This publication is by and largely for the academic communities of the twenty-eight colleges and universities of the EvangelicalLutheran Church in America. It is published by theDivision forHigher Education andSchools of theELCA. The publication presently has its home at Capital University,Columbus, Ohio which has generously offered leadership, physical and financialsupport as an institutionalsponsor forthe inauguration of thepublication. The ELCA has frequently sponsored conferences for faculty and administrators which have addressed the church - college/universitypartnership. Recently the ELCA has sponsored anannual Vocation of theLutheran College conference. The primarypurpose of INTERSECTIONS is to enhaµceand continue such dialogue. It will do so by: * Liftingup thevocation of Lutheran colleges and universities * Encouragingthoughtful dialogue about thepartnership of colleges and universities withthe church * Offeringa forumfor concerns andinterests of facultyat the intersection of faith,learning and teachi ng * Raising for debate issues about institutional missions, goals, objectives and learningpriorities * Encouraging critical and productive discussion on our campuses of issues focal to the life of thechurch * Servingas a bulletin board forcommunications among institutions andfaculties * Publishing papers presented at conferences sponsoredby theELCA and its institutions * Raising the level of awareness amongfaculty about the Lutheranheritage and connectednessof their institutions, realizing a sense of beingpart of a larger family withcommon interests and concerns. From the Publisher: Withthe publication of thisissue of Intersections we have begun our second year of thisvaluable part of theVocation of a Lutheran College Program. This entire effort has caughtthe attention of hundreds of people on our 28 college and university campuses and has been able to play an important role in nurturing the Lutheran tradition in higher education. Intersections has serves as an important bridge between the annual summer conferenceand the conversations which have been occurringon the campuses. As I writethis, the 1997 conferenceis just aroundthe corner. Thisyear we will be looking at the Lutheran tradition in higher education from two perspectives. The first is from the outside. Richard Hughes from Pepperdine University will share insights from the Lilly Endowment project which included publication of the book he co-edited: Models for Christian Higher Education. David Johnson, President of theUniversity of Minnesota at Morris will look at thetradition fromthe perspective of someone in thepublic sector. David is a LutherCollege graduateand served for many years as thechief academicofficer at Gustavus Adolphus College. Thesecond perspective is fromthe inside. Ann Pederson fromthe Religion faculty at Augustana in Sioux Falls looks at the tradition from thecampus setting. Timothy Lull, President of Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary will give a broader view fromthe church. We will be gatheringon theCarthage College campus in Kenosha, Wisconsin. An excitingnew development in thisprogram will be sharedin its initial stages at theconference at Carthage. Eric Eliason, Associate Professor of English at Gustavus Adolphus College,. has been working on a model for the development of an Academyof Scholarsin Lutheran HigherEducation He will share withus his thoughtson creatingsuch an academy as a vehiclefor swnmer seminars wherein faculty from our campuseswill be able to do intensive scholarly research topics related tothe sub-title of Intersections, namelythe intersections of faith,life andlearning, enabling participants to venture into this area and out of theirmore narrow academicdiscipline. We lookforward to his report. These areexciting days forLutheran Higher education. James M. Unglaube Director, Colleges andUniversities ELCA Division forHigher Education andSchools June, 1997 From the Editor: Withthis issue oflntersectionswe have deviatedfrom the pattern of thefirst two issues which featureda principle paper withseveral responses.In this issue we featurethree principle papers, one with responses, two without, plus a page of poetryand one of reflectivebemusement. Insteadof thesingle focus issues we have had in thepast we here featurework onthree completely different issues: theenvironment, theeducation of desire and hiring and personnel policies. Yet all of theseessays have thesame sub-focus namely the Lutheran colle ge/university,it's educational mission and its priorities. I amparticularly pleased withthis issue because of the provocative issues I see raised here. Paul Santmirefocusses our attentionon theambiguities about ethics in our own traditionand provokes us to examinethe sources of our anti-urban prejudices. He also provides aninspiring picture of what Lutheran education ought to include. Gregg Muilenburg uses anAristotelian analysis of educationto challenge thecommon Lutheran assumption thata dialogue of faithand reason is thebest we cando. BruceReichenbach, Wendy McCredie and HarryJebsen provoke us to explore thedimen sions and difficultiesof relationshipbetween mission andhiring/promotion priorities at our institutions. GaryFincke has provided us withtwo poemsthat explore surprising meanings of food and eating. Finally Chuck Huffcomes clean through honest but not verycontrite public confession. There is plenty here to argue withand about. We hope to hearyour responses. I wish to use therest of my editorial space to recommend a text to yourreading. Though I will summarize thefocal argumentof thebook very briefly, my point is not to review it (I hope someone else will takeon thattask in these pages) but to provoke your reading of it. The book is George Marsden's The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship, (Oxford, 1997) mentionedand quoted in Reichenbach's essay. Marsdentackles head on theprejudice againstfaith - informedscholarship thatis verycommon in American academic circles. He cites and argueswith several influentialauthors who arguethat thoughit may be appropriate to have one's scholarship informed by one's political views or by one's gender or class - influencedoutlook, there is no place in the academyfor faith - influencedscholarship. Marsden then goeson to point out that this view is widely held even among most Christianscholars who have a very hard time articulatingwhat difference theirfaith makes to theirscholarship. Christians havethus, for the most part,been silently complicit in the view that faithdoes not andshould not informreally good scholarship. The most interesting andchallenging parts of Marsden' s book are thetwo latter sections where he details excellent examples of Christians whose faith explicitly informs their scholarshipand suggests some Christian theologicalprinciples thathe believes could have a positive effecto n Christianscholarship in several fields. Those of us who teach in Lutherancolleges anduniversities like to thinkthat the"Lutheran-ness" of our institutions makessom e substantialdifference to thesort of institutionswe are. But we are usually quite silent whenit comes around to answering the question that Marsden raises: How do the particulars of our faith inform our scholarship and consequentlythe