For me, the most compelling and constructive moment at this past summer’s Vocation of a Lutheran College Conference was also the most challenging.
Lynn Hunnicut was two-thirds the way through her opening introduction to the organizing theme of vocation within Lutheran higher education and its connections with this year’s focus on “civil discourse in a fragmented world.” During a pause for comments and questions, one participant pressed her on what she meant by civil discourse. Was it, the participant wanted to know, merely talk that was deemed to be respectful and polite by those whose power is protected by “respectful” and “polite” (read: carefully controlled and conforming) conversations? When do appeals for civility and civil discourse silence voices that are already repeatedly silenced because they are deemed too angry or unreasonable? Was the “fragmented world” in the conference title meant to implicate minority groups who find solidarity in self-segmentation? Did fragmentation’s alternate naively imply a kind of white, majoritarian space that many mistake for neutral or unified?
These were tough questions. We returned to them throughout the conference and it made for richer, more difficult, more productive exchanges. Looking back now, I admit that I had not realized that “civil discourse,” which had seemed to me a rather innocuous theme, could be spotted by others as un-interrogated and so not-so-innocent after all. I’m learning that one of the most determinative characteristics of the privilege possessed by white, straight, Christian males like me is the inability to see our own privilege, when left to ourselves. I am grateful to the other participants of the conference for enabling me to see how what counts as “civil discourse” can and should be contested—especially by asking who benefits from appeals to it. The no-less contestable title of next summer’s conference—“Beyond Privilege: Engaging Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity” (July 15-17, 2019, see announcement on page 13) promises to pick up where last summer’s conference left off.
Most of the essays that follow were first presented at the 2018 Vocation of a Lutheran College conference. Some of them emphasize the need to emphatically listen and find common ground in a polarized culture, complete with partisan politics, social media echo-chambers, and the propaganda of “alternative facts.” Others remind us that calls for civility can also become “the sleep-aid of a majority inclined to ignore the violence done in its name” (Newkirk, as cited by Leiseth, below); these authors urge educators to speak truthfully, even when those words sound angry. Together, the essays help us tune up for frank and honest conversations while resisting hateful discourse about divisive issues, as Mark Wilhelm puts it. Even the final essay by Pacific Lutheran University music director Jeffrey Bell-Hanson—which is ostensibly “outside the theme”—might help us get the “pitch” of our discourse right. Hanson, too, connects feelings with facts, passionate performance with responsible truth-telling.
The spring 2019 issue of Intersections will be devoted to the foundational document of NECU: “Rooted and Open: The Common Calling of the Network of ELCA Colleges and Universities.” The editorial board invites reflections on the document; essays about its use among educators, administrators, and board members on our campuses; as well as reviews of other recent publications that help us consider our overlapping institutional vocations. Please contact me if you are willing and able to contribute.
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Editorial
From the Publisher
Mark Wilhelm
Wilhelm frames the issue by reflecting on the Letter of James and the Lutheran tradition of “calling a thing what it is” — arguing that the standards of academic discourse, deeply rooted in Lutheran insistence on frankness and honesty alongside concern for the common good, give NECU institutions a solid platform for sustaining honest but not hateful discourse about divisive issues.
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Article
Vocation and Civil Discourse: Discerning and Defining
Lynn Hunnicutt
Hunnicutt draws on Rabbi Amy Eilberg’s reading of Moses’ calling to identify four features of vocational discernment — attention, wonder, communal consciousness, and humility — and argues that these same qualities are also key aspects of civil discourse, so that forming students for vocational discernment is simultaneously forming them for civility.
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Article
Polarization, Incivility, and a Need for "Change"
Guy Nave
Nave argues that when Americans demand “change,” they usually mean that “others” need to see things their way — and that meaningful transformative change requires acknowledging the provisional nature of our perspectives, seeking to understand as much as to be understood, and bursting the ideological echo chambers of social media through projects like Clamoring for Change.
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Article
Putting the Kind Back in Human
Sarah Ciavarri
Drawing on Brené Brown’s research on vulnerability and Edwin Friedman’s family systems theory, Ciavarri distinguishes “kind” from “nice” and argues that courageous, vulnerable, and playful truth-telling — rather than yelling louder or trading pithy memes — is the path back to one another and to our common humanity.
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Article
It's Time to Rewrite the Rules of Civility
Jon Micheels Leiseth
Leiseth contends that the prevailing rules of civility too often function as the majority’s rules, stifling those facing real harm — and proposes that NECU institutions rewrite civility as “neighboring,” guided by the ELCA’s five values of accompaniment: mutuality, inclusivity, empowerment, sustainability, and vulnerability.
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Poem
Original Song Lyrics: "Just a Little"
Mike Blair
Lyrics for an original song inspired by biblical images and stories, by Emma Lazarus’ “The New Colossus,” and by the faith, hope, love, and courage of immigrant friends and neighbors — led as a devotion during the 2018 Vocation of a Lutheran College conference.
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Article
The Musician's Vocation
Jeffrey Bell-Hanson
Bell-Hanson argues that musicians, who exercise profound influence over the emotional flavor of a moment, are called not merely to technical proficiency but to a sense of vocation: understanding their art well enough to use it responsibly, to intend truthfulness rather than manipulation, and to articulate its significance in dialog with other disciplines.
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Article
Vocation at Full Stretch: Reflections on Follow Your Bliss and Other Lies about Calling and its Use among College Students
Jason A. Mahn
No. 61 · Spring 2025
Mahn engages Bonnie Miller-McLemore’s Follow Your Bliss and Other Lies about Calling as required reading in a sophomore religion course, showing how her categories of missed, blocked, conflicted, fractured, unexpected, and relinquished callings empower young adults to perceive embodied, unplanned, and often painful dimensions of life as essential parts of vocation — and help close the gap between mission-driven and tuition-driven realities.
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Article
On Recruiting Diverse Students, Rooted in Mission
Eric Rowell, Jason A. Mahn
No. 59 · Spring 2024
Jason Mahn interviews Eric Rowell, Assistant Director of Admissions and Diversity Outreach at Augustana College, about how recruiting students from a wide variety of backgrounds — rooted in Augustana’s Lutheran commitment to vocation and educating across difference — remains essentially unchanged in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decisions on affirmative action.
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Editorial
From the Outgoing Editor
Jason A. Mahn
No. 55 · Spring 2022
Mahn closes out a decade of editing Intersections, passes the duties to Colleen Windham-Hughes, gives thanks to Mark Wilhelm and Augustana College, and introduces an issue largely drawn from comments by Lutheran faculty, staff, and administrators at the 2022 NetVUE national gathering.
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Editorial
From the Editor
Jason A. Mahn
No. 54 · Fall 2021
Mahn introduces the “Called to Place” theme of the 2021 VLHE Conference, arguing that Lutheran higher education’s emphasis on vocation must be grounded in particular geographies and embodied communities — for, as Wallace Stegner put it, “If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are.”
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Reflection
Shelter in Place: Reflections from March 22, 2020
Jason A. Mahn
No. 53 · Spring 2021
On the fourth Sunday of Lent in 2020, Mahn meditates on the etymology of “shelter” (from shield) and on an email from a former student in Boston whose mutual-aid organizing models a Lutheran understanding of vocation: the upending of ego by divine love that frees us, finally, to see and serve the neighbor.
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Editorial
From the Editor
Jason A. Mahn
No. 52 · Fall 2020
Mahn narrates a year of crisscrossing pandemics — Covid-19, economic collapse, partisan politics, and the long pandemic of white supremacy revealed anew by the murder of George Floyd — and argues that Lutheran liberal arts schools, by educating for vocation, are uniquely poised to help students respond with character and capable callings.
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Editorial
The Vocation of a Lutheran College: Some Transitional Thoughts
James M. Unglaube
No. 4 · Winter 1998
Unglaube offers final reflections on thirty years in Lutheran higher education as he leaves the ELCA Division for Higher Education and Schools to join Carthage College, his alma mater. He recalls colleague Richard Solberg’s influence, the closing of Upsala College in 1995, the Higher Education and Namibia program shared with Naomi Linnell, the growth of endowments from $70 million to $1 billion in 25 years, and the Vocation of a Lutheran College project he credits Paul Dovre with inspiring. He likens the twenty-eight ELCA colleges to flowers on a rose bush—same Lutheran tradition, each blossom different—requiring constant nurture if the partnership between church and college is to thrive.
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Article
"Our Calling in Education": Working Together to Generate a Strong Social Statement on Public Schools, Lutheran Schools and Colleges, and the Faith Formation of Children and Young People
Marcia Bunge
No. 23 · Summer 2006
Bunge, Professor of Theology and Humanities at Christ College, Valparaiso University, makes two claims about the ELCA’s forthcoming social statement on education: first, that it should be built on a robust Lutheran understanding of vocation, addressing four common misconceptions (vocation as occupation, as self-fulfillment, as ordained ministry, and as “vo-tech”) and recovering the breadth of Luther’s teaching; and second, that the statement should narrow its focus to three urgent areas affecting children and young people — public schools, Lutheran schools and colleges, and faith formation — rather than addressing the full lifespan of education in equal depth.
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Editorial
From the Publisher
Mark Wilhelm
No. 53 · Spring 2021
Wilhelm reflects on an NPR report of teenagers’ pandemic diaries and the fraught Christian history of struggling to live out Jesus’s ethic of love, framing the issue as a record of NECU institutions working out how to act for the common good through the pandemic of 2020–2021.
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Article
Luther, the Catechisms, and Intellectual Disability
Courtney Wilder
No. 47 · Spring 2018
Wilder confronts Luther’s deeply troubling response to a child with disabilities at Dessau, then mines his Small and Large Catechisms for a Lutheran theology of inclusion — reading the Third Article of the Creed, the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, and the sacrament of baptism as resources that affirm the full humanity of people with intellectual disabilities as faithful children of God.
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Editorial
From the Publisher
Arne Selbyg
No. 12 · Summer 2001
Selbyg reports that the Lutheran Brotherhood Foundation and the Lilly Endowment have funded the Lutheran Academy of Scholars, which since 1999 has gathered ten to twelve Lutheran scholars at Harvard for two-week summer seminars under Ronald Thiemann (themes: “Finding Our Voice—Christian Faith and Critical Vision” in 1999–2000 and “The Lutheran Public Intellectual: Faith, Reason and the Arts” in 2001), and announces that the academy will move to Berkeley in 2002 under Ted Peters to take up the intersection of faith and science.
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Article
The Dangers of "Vocation" for Students Thinking about Career
Carl Hughes
No. 41 · Spring 2015
Hughes warns that Lutherans too often use “vocation” as a theologically glorified synonym for a fulfilling career — a misuse that constricts God’s call to our jobs and excludes minimum-wage workers, caregivers, and others from the dignity of calling. Recovering Luther’s expansive understanding, he argues that vocation refers first to people, not professions, and must always be bigger than any one aspect of our lives.