Augustana and the Global Church June 11, 2010 Augustana Heritage Association Ecclesia Plantanda Augustana College Rock Island, IL June 10-13, 2010 Norman A. Hjelm 624 Sussex Road Wynnewood, PA 19096
[email protected] 1 It has fallen to me to reflect with you this morning concerning “Augustana and the Global Church.” Even though I was involved in making up the title for this talk, I am not at all sure what I should be doing. “Global Church” was surely not the way people in Augustana talked. “Foreign missions” or “international aid and cooperation” were terms far more common to our self-understanding. Similarly, as seems clear to me, our mid-20th century understanding in Augustana of “ecumenism” lacked the ecclesiological dimensions that are increasingly common today. In a certain way, then, our topic is quite simply anachronistic. Augustana as such ceased to be in 1962 and history has moved on. Indeed, a case might well be made that history has now surely passed us by… Yet I recall that some years ago I had an exchange of letters with Reuben Swanson, the late president of this Augustana Heritage Association, in which I suggested that this Association served no helpful purpose if it existed merely as a forum for our nostalgia. We are, rather, formed to review, clarify, and understand our history and our tradition both appreciatively and critically. We exist for the life of the church today, a church that increasingly is expressed globally and surely can be enriched by a critical appraisal of the Augustana heritage. Let me start by telling a story, a true one.