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Programs

With its history of offering professional education firmly grounded in the liberal arts, with its location in an urban and religiously diverse part of Minneapolis, and with its firm rootedness in a Lutheran tradition that is itself intellectually open and nimble, Augsburg is uniquely positioned to offer curricular and co-curricular training in interreligious leadership.

 

For Augsburg, interreligious leadership presumes:

  • Knowledge or basic literacy in the world’s religions and humanist traditions;
  • Skills in leadership, communication, intercultural competence, conflict resolution, and community organizing; and
  • Sensibilities that are grounded in awareness of one’s own calling and core commitments (intellectual curiosity, epistemological humility, aesthetic respect, critical loyalty, civility, empathic listening).

Currently Augsburg University provides opportunity for interfaith dialogue and classes, which feed the knowledge base of interreligious leadership. It offers service projects in the religiously diverse Cedar-Riverside community, which builds skills of intercultural and interreligious competence. And in curricular and co-curricular settings, it explores questions of meaning and purpose, developing the sensibilities ingredient in interreligious leadership.

The Five Dimensions of Augsburg's Interfaith Initiatives: everyday experience, vocational exploration, spiritual engagement, ethical praxis, global awarenessThe Five Interfaith Dimensions

  1. Everyday experience highlights ordinary expressions of interreligious diversity on campus, in the workplace, and in the home
  2. Ethical praxis highlights moral engagement, and action and reflection in the public square
  3. Global awareness emphasizes the responsibilities of citizens of the world
  4. Vocation exploration explores individual beliefs, core values, and commitments as a foundation for engaging the world’s religions
  5. Spiritual engagement points to practices of devotion that mark these great traditions, etching religion onto bodies

ELCA Resources

Read about why a Lutheran institution like Augsburg cares about interfaith work in these documents produced by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America:

“Rooted and Open: The Common Calling of the Network of ELCA Colleges and Universities” (PDF)

“A Declaration of Inter-Religious Commitment” (PDF)