Types, Methods, and Sagas in Lutheran Higher Education: Learning from Childers

Intersections, Dec 2014

By Lake Lambert, Published on 01/01/14

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Types, Methods, and Sagas in Lutheran Higher Education: Learning from Childers

Ty pes, Methods, and Sagas in Lutheran Higher Education: Learning from Childers - Types, Methods, and Sagas in Lutheran Higher Education: Learning from Childers In 1977, the Association of Lutheran College Faculties published The Church-Related College in an Age of Pluralism: The Quest for a Viable Saga. The book was the result of a resolution passed at Dana College in 1969 “to formulate a philosophy of Christian higher education” and to identify “key issues for discussion” (Baepler 9). In a series of annual presentations during the early 1970s, Lutheran college faculty in that era reflected on the current state of church-related higher education, offered an extensive bibliographic review of the subject, and sought to articulate for a new time what it meant to be engaged in Christian higher education. “Pluralism” was the resounding theme of the period, and these authors were keen to engage its ethnic, epistemic, religious, and ethical forms. Valuing an Institution’s Saga For the Association, the organizing trope that guided their book was “the saga.” Perhaps it had a natural appeal to Scandinavian Lutherans, but its connection to Biblical narrative was not lost on the authors. Its more immediate debt was to another book that few would recognize today. Burton Clark’s The Distinctive College: Antioch, Reed, Swarthmore (1970) argued that the “organization saga” of an institution is the most important element of a college’s distinctiveness. Too many colleges, argued Clark, lack distinctiveness and a sense of their unique purpose in American society. Their missions are bland; their stories are not compelling; and they look and act like others as a result. “We are attracted to Mr. Clark’s category of the ‘saga’ for a variety of reasons,” stated the Association’s authors, and then continue: The concept fits our experience. Those with positive experiences in church-related colleges can recall, in retrospect, being inspired by the story of the college. Those with negative experiences can recall disappointment in the contrast between the saga and reality. Moreover, the concept provides a “handle” for diagnosing the current dilemmas of our institutions. The state of the story of an institution is a barometer of its health. (Baepler 12-13) The authors cautioned readers against confusing a college’s saga with the lofty goals and fanciful educational philosophies of “catalog prose,” but how the “rhetoric” relates to the “reality” of the college is itself part of the saga that must be studied to grasp the college’s distinctive mission. Lake Lambert is Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. Prior to his appointment at Mercer in 2010, he was Professor of Religion and the Board of Regents Chair in Ethics at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa. Most importantly, the Association’s authors learned from Clark that the college saga must be told and retold even as it is lived, reshaped, and grown. This too fit their experience because the Biblical saga was never far from their minds: The narration of Biblical events is never undertaken for merely historical reasons. The story of the Exodus is retold at a critical time as a way of establishing confidence in a new and radically different future. The God who led the Israelites out of Egypt is leading them still. This theological dimension of saga should especially encourage church-related colleges to view their convictional basis—not as a millstone which binds those institutions to past performance and past possibilities—but rather as a charter which inspires them to think through a creative and courageous relationship to the future. (Baepler 13) The reference to Exodus is especially interesting because the Association did not see the college’s saga as something to slavishly follow and measure disobedience against as much as it is (or should be) the way a college’s character and ethos is formed and lived amidst rapid change. From Sagas to Types and Back Again This must be the starting point for understanding Eric Childers’ College Identity Sagas: Investigating Organizational Identity Preservation and Diminishment at Lutheran Colleges and Universities (2012). Based on Childers’ doctoral dissertation in higher education at the University of Virginia, the book adopts Clark’s concept of the saga to understand three Lutheran institutions: Gettysburg College, Concordia College (Moorhead), and Lenoir-Rhyne University. While Childers seems unfamiliar with the importance of the same idea to the Association of Lutheran College Faculties thirty-five years earlier, he knows Clark well and sees in the institutional sagas of Lutheran colleges an unexplored opportunity. Childers offers a “thick description” of his three chosen institutions using interviews, documents and observations as his primary resources. The interviews are particularly illuminating because he spoke with presidents at each as well as key faculty and staff leaders, includ (...truncated)


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Lake Lambert. Types, Methods, and Sagas in Lutheran Higher Education: Learning from Childers, Intersections, 2014, pp. 6, Volume 2014, Issue 39,