Original Song Lyrics: "Just a Little"

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.

From the Editor

Jason A. Mahn

Mahn recounts how a participant’s probing questions at the 2018 Vocation of a Lutheran College Conference turned “civil discourse” from an innocuous theme into a contested one — and previews essays that variously urge listening and common ground, or speaking truthfully even when those words sound angry.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Long Pilgrimage of 2020-21

Kara Baylor

No. 52 · Fall 2020

Drawing on Martha Stortz’s definition of pilgrimage as “intentional dislocation, for the sake of transformation, where the body teaches the soul,” Baylor invites students and educators worn out by the 2020-21 academic year to ask what is essential, to listen to what their bodies are telling their souls, and to be more open to the transformations the dislocation might still yield.

Serving Two Masters: Teaching and Writing Between Academy and Church

John Reumann

No. 9 · Summer 2000

Reumann reflects on more than fifty years navigating between academy and church—the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis (whose Doktorvater Morton Enslin was unceremoniously dumped at Toronto by “young Turks” Robert Funk and others, while Harry Orlinsky saved the day at the centennial), the 1978–1987 New American Bible Revised New Testament committee with its bishops, the U.S. Lutheran–Roman Catholic dialogue volume on “Righteousness,” and the 1999 Joint Declaration on Justification—and uses his Anchor Bible and Augsburg commentaries on Philippians, Colossians, and Romans to illustrate Krister Stendahl’s judgment that one can no longer master all the literature: epistolary research, rhetorical and discourse analysis, social-world readings, feminist scholarship on Euodia and Syntyche, the koinonia and friendship debates (Sampley, Fitzgerald, Witherington), and the house-church recovery of Filson. The academy is antepenultimate, the church penultimate, God ultimate—professors as “believers, testifiers, witnesses” serving pro bono, pro ecclesia, and pro Deo.

Risky Speech–Gifted Friendships

Sonja Hagander

No. 44 · Fall 2016

Augsburg College Pastor Sonja Hagander reflects on pastoral care across faith traditions — from a campus chapel service after the 2008 murder of Muslim student Achmednur Ali, to her decade-long friendship with Jewish colleague Barbara Lehmann — and reads the Gospel of John as a roadmap for interfaith friendships marked by love, free speech, public space, and a willingness to risk being changed.

So That All May Flourish Study Guide

No. 57 · Spring 2023

A chapter-by-chapter study guide to So That All May Flourish (Fortress Press 2023), a new volume by NECU authors that develops the central tenet of “Rooted and Open” and offers discussion questions for use in orientation programs, classes, workshops, task forces, and professional development settings.

About the Cover and Artist

No. 49 · Spring 2019

Kristen Gilje, a Bellingham, Washington artist who spent nine years as Artist in Residence at Holden Village, recounts the “Tree of Life” she painted for the Holden Village 1999 summer theme and the unexpected interpretation Lapidary Fred offered of Yggdrasol, Prometheus, the Druid Tree Spirit, and the crucifix all at once.

Caught in a Place Between Caesar and God

Darrel D. Colson

No. 54 · Fall 2021

Colson reflects on his anguish, as Wartburg’s president, over an Iowa law that prevents him from requiring student COVID-19 vaccinations — reading Luther’s “Whether One May Flee From a Deadly Plague” alongside the conflict between obeying the law and serving neighbor.