EDITOR'S NOTE:
From time to time questions are asked about how the above portion of Augsburg's mission statement is lived out in daily life on campus—in the education students receive, in the faculty and staff who teach, in daily engagement with the community. Questions are asked about the nature of Augsburg as a Christian college and as a college of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, especially as it relates to a commitment to intentional diversity. Augsburg Now invites discussion in this area to form the basis of occasional articles about the College's mission, its founding tenets, and the legacy of its alumni, faculty, and staff of 133 years. We begin with questions posed in a recent letter, followed by excerpts from comments made on campus this spring that speak to the issues raised.

Dear Editor,
"I felt led to write you after taking the time to read the Spring 2002 edition of your publication. ... My husband and I have been working as youth leaders since September 1978 at Grace Baptist Church and have numerous experiences watching souls come to know Jesus. Throughout your publication, I see very little mention of Jesus. Is Augsburg still a Christian school? I see a pastor's name mentioned from time to time and Juliana Martinez briefly mentioned Jesus who started her out to be a 'leader,' but even she did not give Him continuing credit for where she is. Has Augsburg changed to be a diversified school, separated from the Christian faith? I need to know where you stand, as I need to know how to pray for all of you, and what to tell others who are looking for a Christian college." —LuAnn (Ludewig) Lindquist ’78

From Augsburg 2004: Extending the Vision
"Augsburg is the only ELCA college to be located in the center of an urban area. As part of its life in urban society, as well as because of its Christian traditions, Augsburg remains committed to intentional diversity among its students, staff, and faculty. Augsburg's commitment to diversity is a function not only of the gospel, but also of Luther's notion of vocation. Because God's love extends to all, those who would be faithful to the gospel cannot preserve non-essential distinctions between person, and in fact are called to extend special attention to those pushed to the fringes of society. Further, an institution that takes seriously the future of its students cannot avoid preparing those students to work in the diverse communities that make up the modern world."

Excerpts from remarks by Rev. Mark S. Hanson ’68,
presiding bishop, ELCA

At the Commencement luncheon and ceremony—May 19, 2002
"As presiding bishop, I'm deeply committed to the vocation of this church to be a church in higher education, and as I look at the 28 colleges of this church, Augsburg stands unique, not only in its location, but in its vocation—of preparing people to live in a diverse world, grounded in the faith, but as global citizens.

"It was in this hall when we'd gather for chapel that I remember as a first-year student hearing Oscar Anderson, our president, cry out for the Holy Spirit to stir up within each of us that faith which so many of us had been benefited by planting in our hearts from parents and grandparents, so it might be for us a living faith ... Augsburg College, where reason and faith are held in lively tension, where we are sent into the world with a passion for building communities of justice and mercy."

Remarks by Philip Quanbeck II, assistant professor of religion
At the 100th anniversary celebration of the birth of Augsburg President Emeritus Bernhard Christensen—April 16, 2002
"I've been asked to describe how the legacy of Bernhard Christensen continues today. Let me address how Christian faith remains a distinctive and essential part of Augsburg's mission. This is the Christensen legacy.

"During Christensen's tenure as president of the seminary and the College, the collegiate division became a true liberal arts college. Christensen built programs in arts, music, sciences, and humanities. He did that by identifying people whom he wanted to be teachers in those programs. In religion he found people who were then fresh out of graduate schools, such as John Stensvaag, Paul Sonnack, and Philip Quanbeck, to name only a few. These, like others, would become fondly remembered by students and, dare I say, legends. In matters of Bible and theology, Christensen brought in the challenges of modern historical and critical approaches. At the same time there was a concern for teaching the faith.

"Augsburg is still a college with a Christian mission. In the tradition of Bernhard Christensen, we continue to combine the scholarly and critical approaches to Bible and theology with a concern for an encounter with Christian faith. Every student at Augsburg is required to take three religion courses. This three-course requirement includes a course in Bible, a course in Christian theology, and a third course which may be in world religions, ethics, philosophy of religion, or an additional course in Bible or theology. Many students exceed this minimum and go on to take five courses for a minor.

"The full-time faculty who teach in our religion department are all people of faith. As academics, certainly, we have been trained to be able to step outside of our tradition and look critically at it. On the other hand, we are not dispassionate observers simply interested in historical curiosity. No, we are people concerned with the claims the gospel makes on individuals and the world. This constant engagement of faith and learning or faith and reason, as President Frame likes to say, is at the core of our mission as a department and our mission as a college.

"A Lutheran college like Augsburg has a unique role in the life and mission of the church. A college classroom is not, nor should it be, Sunday School or confirmation. It is a place of open and free inquiry. There is, however, a providential irony. We have the opportunity in our classrooms and on this campus to meet, teach, and engage students and others who may be unlikely to enter a church. We have the opportunity to teach some who have little or no knowledge of the Christian tradition. The Christensen tradition, and the Augsburg tradition, have always emphasized freedom over compulsion. This college provides a place where students can encounter the Christian faith and its claims in an atmosphere of freedom. I hope the wider church and its congregations appreciate the importance of a place like Augsburg and how the church¹s mission is served here.

"Augsburg is among an ever-decreasing number of colleges that still has daily chapel. It is significant that the College continues to devote space in the daily schedule as a testimony to its commitment.

"We're willing to take big risks here, but they're the risks the church needs to take in order to speak and teach the gospel message. We risk asking difficult questions with no simple answers. We risk finding new ways to translate the Christian message into contemporary language. We walk the difficult line between the particularity of the gospel and the necessity to adapt to the needs of diversity in modern society. Those are the kinds of intellectual and faith risks that were Bernhard Christensen's legacy to this school. His willingness to venture into new territory, however, also reflected a deep confidence that the gospel would survive the test."

Excerpts from "Pentacost's Clear Call to Polyphony,"
by William V. Frame, president, Augsburg College
The Baccalaureate Sermon—May 19, 2002

"[On Pentecost], at the very moment in which the disciples are empowered to proclaim the gospel to all people regardless of national origin or religious tradition, Peter turns back to [Joel] calling his people to repentance in advance of the Judgement Day. And the sharpest point of the irony lies in the line with which Joel ends his panegyric on the Last Day: 'And those who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.'
"What of the others? Why doesn't Peter ask this obvious question? Today we naturally ask about 'the others'—the ones who don't, or don't yet 'call upon the name of the Lord.' Perhaps we're better instructed now than Peter was then. He and his successors have since published the gospel, and we've heard its central message—that we love one another and our neighbors as ourselves. Those neighbors surely weren't expected to be Christian, were they, nor even and exclusively of the three great traditions borne of the sons of Abraham?

"But the largest reason for the difference between Peter and us concerns our experience with diversity. We've been trying for some time to create here, on this campus, both a distinctive Lutheran, Christian community that is therefore—not 'also' or 'by the way,' but therefore—warmly hospitable to a wide array of diversity. We have much yet to achieve in this effort, but Peter and his colleagues have been preparing for their foray into a diverse world from a relatively homogenous cultural confine. They haven't yet faced, to the degree we have, the immense challenge of managing the tension between community and diversity, between unity and plurality, between the one and the many.

"Apparently, they don't sense (as we certainly do) that Joel's exclusivity—especially as an original qualifier of those to whom they publish the gospel—would compromise their work in the world beyond Galilee or our work either in this College or in vocation in the world beyond this College. After all, we have invited a fair number of folk who do not 'call upon the name of the Lord' to join our learning community and to bring their various religions and cultures with them.

"A community is more than a mutually advantageous 'deal' among privately-interested individuals formed into parties. But what is this 'more than,' this unifying thing? Here is a question of central importance on which we might make a fair trade with the gospel: While we may have news for Peter and the disciples on diversity—and I don¹t think that's an impious claim—they surely have news for us on the constituting elements of the Christian community. The 12th chapter of Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians contains a brilliant exposition, ' ... the body is one and has many members,' he says, 'and all the members of the body, though many, are one body.'

"This theme that creates the polyphony among the parts, on the one hand, and between each part and the whole identifies eight very carefully chosen talents or human capabilities. They are: the utterance of wisdom and knowledge, healing and the working of miracles, prophecy and the discernment of spirits, the listening and rhetorical capacities that enable us to understand and be understood, and faith.

"Are not these nine the very talents that make for communal life, that weave a disparate batch of people through their very vocations into that peculiar network of relationships and hope that warrants the name 'community'? Have we not used the wonderful opportunity of our time together here to bring these to greater life in each other—and to draw us each, by means of our exchanges, toward called lives of service that can be lived out, joyously, in a world more surprised by these virtues than welcoming of them?

"Diversity and community are easy; diverse community is real hard, but trying it offers the best life possible."

For the full text of President Frame's talk at the
Baccalaureate service, see www.augsburg.edu/commencement2002

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