Luther Congress and Lutheran Ed:
At the end of July I had the privilege of attending the International Luther Research Congress in Canoas, Brazil. The article below came out of some musings from the congress and thoughts on Lutheran Ed winding through my head during the past year; hopefully it will be showing up in a couple of small Minnesota newspapers. The photos are of me in front of the chapel at ULBRA, my fried Lubomir Batka (right) of the systematics department at Bratislava along with Vesa Hirvonen (left) from the University of Helsinki. Al Collver of LCMS World Relief and Human Care samples the wine during our excursion Brazil's own
Little Italy. The blurred photo is Robert Kolb of Concordia Seminary delivering the first video address in congress history.
SOME REFLECTIONS ON EDUCATION FROM THE LUTHER CONGRESS IN BRAZIL:
Entering the campus of ULBRA (Universidade Lutherana do Brasil) by its main thoroughfare you can’t miss the massive fountain in the shape of the Luther Rose. Each of its sides measure some 70 feet, a foot for every thousand students making their way through this university in Canoas, Brazil. Continuing past the fountain you come quickly to the chapel, a modern structure, whose stained-glass walls carry on a vibrant dialogue of light with the surrounding world.
Fountain, chapel and university lying on the same plot of land; does one come to the university by way of the fountain and the chapel, or to the chapel and the fountain via the university? At least in Canoas these questions pose a false dichotomy. Fountain, chapel and university are a unified whole.
It was here that I, at the end of my Fulbright year, had the privilege of attending the 11th International Luther Research Congress, a gathering of Luther scholars from around the globe that meets once every five years. From July 21st – 27th we discussed “Luther’s Ethics in the Realms of Church, Household, and Politics” (ecclesia, oeconomia, politia). For the 16th Century reformer these three hierarchies or estates formed the unified whole of an ordered world, not yet fractured into the endless dualities and happenstances of our own post-Enlightenment situation.
These scholarly discussions seem a long way from my own educational roots in Lutheran schools of Watonwan and Martin counties, and yet they are part of the same heritage. This past year at Eberhard Karl’s University in Tuebingen, Germany has allowed for some reflection on this educational heritage. What place does a Lutheran education have in a 21st Century world?
Though one might rightly expect a scholar or two from Lutheran education (MLHS has had two Fulbrighters in the last two years), I am quite convinced that mine is not the face of Lutheran education – some ivory tower specialist at conferences and universities on other continents. I would suggest that the face of Lutheran education is actually that of two friends, Josh and Alicia, with whom I graduated from MLHS in 1996. Parents of two children, Josh works in law enforcement as a probation agent supervisor and Alicia as the office manager of a local clinic. They are, in my estimation, the face of Lutheran education, because they cannot simply be defined by the work they do in local governance (politia), in the local clinic (oeconomia), or in their own home (oeconomia). Integral to their lives, their identity, and to their roles at work and at home is the fact that they remain members of the church (ecclesia), in whose faith they now raise their children.
I understand these two as the face of Lutheran education in the face of much misunderstanding. From within and without, I fear that Lutheran education may have fallen into estimation from the standpoint of false dichotomies: public vs. private, civic vs. parochial, state vs. church. I fear that it has come to be seen as something of an adjacent happenstance: the 3 R’s plus religion, an order of textbooks with a side of Jesus. So understood, a Lutheran education system has no place in the 21st Century (or in any other for that matter).
However, Josh and Alicia form the face of Lutheran education by a day-to-day life that quietly but surely defies these dichotomies. Monday through Saturday are not detached from Sunday. These two are carried into their week conscious of their God-given places in life, their “callings” or “vocations.” Josh gets to see himself as an instrument for the protection and well being of society; Alicia gets to see in each person who enters the clinic a creation in need of care. Beyond their professions comes their care for parents, children and neighbors. These two are not looking to somehow convert or Christianize their bit of the world. Rather, they are Christians given to care for the bit of the world around them. They are no super people, no special order. But the faults, failures and brokenness that they both meet and make among family and friends, co-workers and fellow citizens, finds its place Sunday as that which is forgiven. Forgiven they are freed back into Monday through Saturday. They are both “free” and “dutiful” as Luther summarized in his 1520 Treatise “On the Freedom of a Christian” (Luther’s Works 31:344). These persons are not compartmentalizeable instances or adjacent happenstances; they are undivided wholes.
Fountain, chapel and university – household, state, and church – not dichotomies and not adjacent happenstances, but a unified, well distinguished, ordered whole, lived as such by two children of Lutheran schools. That is a vibrant, colorful and yet subtle dialogue that brightens the world around them. This is place of Lutheran education in the 21st Century; it is nothing other than this whole and dare give nothing less.
