So why all this talk about Vocation? It is to do the work the one’s soul must have. It is also a recognition that if we as a community are ever truly going to take seriously the work of racial reconciliation and deconstructing racism and patriarchy, the work can not only be focused on deconstructing systems of power. The work must also center on the flourishing of marginalized groups. This is the understanding of Dr. Kimberly Crenshaw who coined the world “Intersectionality” and is also the work of Womanist Scholars. We recognize in our vocational calling now is the time when Black women scholars and leaders of the church must come together to create initiatives that contribute to new generations of Black women leaders who can shift the way that people live in the world. This is what the Womanist Experiential Learning Initiative is all about.
“If we as a community are ever truly going to take seriously the work of racial reconciliation and deconstructing racism and patriarchy, the work can not only be focused on deconstructing systems of power. The work must also center on the flourishing of marginalized groups.”
The Womanist Experiential Learning Initiative, a collaborative work of Womanist Hebrew Bible Scholar Dr. Yolanda Norton and Pastoral Theologian Beverly Wallace, will provide students with the opportunity to explore a theological perspective engaged by many African American women theologians—one that takes serious and centers Black women’s voices and scholarship as a viable source and resource for theological education. A portion of this project, in concert with the work of the Office of Justice for Women in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will allow young women in high school, college, and seminaries “to step into their questions and reconsider their assumptions,” engaging in theological exploration viewed through the lens of race, class, and gender.
The Beyoncé Mass—a Christian womanist worship service that uses the music and life of Beyoncé as a tool to cultivate an empowering conversation about Black women—their lives, their bodies, and their voices. This mass introduces individuals to this womanist understanding. It is a space that encourages a practice of Christian faith that sees and acknowledges people where they are and for who they are. The Mass is a space story, Scripture, and song that calls for the liberation of all people by creating welcome, fostering healing, and engaging contemporary conversation and culture as a part of Christian identity and praxis. Additional “host” spaces are needed to share this experience.
The Womanist Experiential Learning Initiative is also working to provide Black female students at the undergraduate level the opportunity to study abroad in countries like Portugal, Brazil, and Ghana, where they can learn about global intersectionality and participate in service-learning opportunities with Black girls in these locations. We know that studying abroad expands the cultural horizons of students, but this intentional work is also intended to help Black girls who attend predominantly white institutions develop a social and learning network that can combat the isolation they often feel. In addition, this study abroad initiative will be tied to the Black Girl Magic Academy—a new program being launched by a new nonprofit—the Global Arts and Theology Experience—in conjunction with a range of church, academic and community partners.
In addition, the Womanist Experiential Learning Initiative, will pilot The Black Girl Magic Academy in three cities in the United States and two outside of North America. This program will focus on Black girls between the ages of 13 and 17 years old. The curriculum will be a year long experience and will allow them not participate in virtual learning opportunities with their peers around the world but also work with Black young adult women in their context to expand their learning beyond what traditional educational systems provide.
Already several seminary students have taken it upon themselves to engage in this women learning in our Lutheran Seminary. One student explored the use of a womanist pedagogy with women in prison. Another student is looking at how to engage the arts, specifically opera to share the story of a displaced African American community. And another student is learning about how to use a womanist way of knowing for spiritual direction with the LGBTQI+ community. As part of the reflection on her womanist reading, this same student wrote:
It was in bell hooks’ book, Sisters of the Yam, that I found language to describe the pain that I had seen within myself. The daunting reality of being a Black queer woman oftentimes feels like too much to bear, and in order to do so day to day, I had to shut down pieces of myself. I could not go through the day bearing all of myself, knowing that I am the very thing that the white cisgender, heteronormative capitalist society that I live in works so hard to diminish. In abandoning these parts of myself, I have become numb and stuck in survival mode. The grief of that is a lot. There have been countless times where I thought that it was not worth surviving, staying in this world. But it was trusted community that brought me back, and kept me here. Every day it has been their words, smiles, or even a touch that has given me enough strength to carry on to the next moment. Sisters of the Yam helped me to understand this part of my story. Through hooks’ writings, I was able to see that I am not alone, that my experiences are not odd, but rather a part of a legacy of surviving, and thriving, because of community. I am because we are.
And another 23 year-old student who was newly exposed to Womanism through her experience with the Beyoncé Mass said: “I’m going to get a concentration in Womanist Theology even if that concentration is not offered.”
The impact of this work is tremendous. To expand this work to colleges and universities, congregations and communities with learnings also in a global context, will assist Black women and persons who want to see the legacy of humanity through the lens of Black women will help inform the world. Our hope too is that this work will inspire, equip, connect and support Black women (and other students) divinely motivated to serve as change makers in their communities doing, as Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon often said, “the work—their vocational calling—that one’s soul must have.”
-
Editorial
From the Editor: Why All This Talk About Vocation?
Colleen Windham-Hughes
Windham-Hughes introduces the Fall 2022 issue built around Mark Wilhelm’s keynote “Why all this talk about vocation?” and previews five panel responses, two first-time conference reflections, and companion pieces on Womanist theology — framing vocation as a call not to privilege but to constructive and corrective work that undoes unjust systems.
-
Article
Why All This Talk About Understanding the Mission of NECU Member Institutions as a Vocation?
Mark Wilhelm
In his valedictory keynote, retiring NECU Executive Director Mark Wilhelm argues that Lutheran higher education is, properly understood, vocation-based education — outlining four core practices recovered over the past fifty years and naming the constructive and corrective work still to be done, including a fuller embrace of DEIJ and of the diverse vocations of NECU’s 27 institutions.
-
Response
Response to Mark Wilhelm: Vocation, Mission and Privilege
Marit Trelstad
Trelstad affirms Wilhelm’s claim that vocation is the foundational shared mission of Lutheran higher education rather than one program among many, and presses the critique that calls to “vocational reflection” can mask privilege — arguing that an intersectional lens shows vocational discernment is in fact a matter of survival and flourishing for students from marginalized communities.
-
Response
Response to Mark Wilhelm: DEI, Great; DWS (Dismantling White Supremacy), Even Better
Vic Thasiah
Thasiah argues that if Lutheran colleges and universities want to live out their commitment to the flourishing of all, DEI is good but DWS — dismantling white supremacy — is even better, and offers three Lutheran sensibilities (suspicion of self-righteousness, the decolonial shockwave of the cross, and critical thinking that can still register awe) that can make DWS a core practice of higher education.
-
Response
Response to Mark Wilhelm: Distinguishing Between Identity and Vocation
Andrew Tucker
Tucker proposes that NECU’s next most faithful step is to faithfully and effectively differentiate vocations and identities — arguing that identity is who you are, vocation is what you do, and that recognizing the plurality of both helps Lutheran institutions name which work is theirs to take up and which is good work that belongs to someone else.
-
Response
Response to Mark Wilhelm: Vocation—Wide Perspective Questions
Mary-Paula Cancienne
Cancienne, drawing on Iain McGilchrist, asks whether higher education has prioritized micro lenses at the expense of the macro view, and invites educators to hold the drama of individual vocation stories within a wider plot that includes James Webb Telescope wonder, climate grief, the long shadow of enslavement, and the resilience of native populations.
-
Response
Response to Mark Wilhelm: Adopting the Framework of ‘Because’ and ‘Therefore’
Paul C. Pribbenow
Pribbenow describes how Augsburg University responded to its dramatic demographic transformation (from 18% to nearly 70% BIPOC entering students over sixteen years) by adopting an institutional vocational statement and a simple “because/therefore” framework for translating particular Lutheran theological convictions into institutional programs, policies, and practices.
-
Article
Work Works
Julius Crump
Crump argues that in an era of class-stratified careerism and the “ruins of neoliberalism,” commencement-speech rhetoric about heroic vocation will not resuscitate vocation — instead, professors embodying vulnerability, extemporaneity, and contemporaneity in the classroom can show students that consistent work, embodied as service to others, is itself worthy.
-
Reflection
Why All This Talk About Vocation?
Madyson Ray
Ray, a junior at Midland University and the only student attendee at the 2022 conference, reflects on four workshops — on teaching womanist thought, on supporting student-athletes, on resistance to the word “vocation,” and on vocational reflection — and brings home concrete ideas including a women’s-history scavenger hunt and semester-long vocational reflections.
-
Institutional Focus
LibGuide: Introduction to Womanist Theology
Elli Cucksey
Cucksey, the head librarian at Trinity Lutheran Seminary, recounts how Beverly Wallace’s Introduction to Womanist Theology class — the first offering of the ELCA Seminaries’ Womanist Theology Initiative — led her to build a publicly available LibGuide that amplifies Black women’s voices and gathers the resources of the course for future students.
-
Article
Learning from Luther on Covid-19
Carl Hughes
No. 52 · Fall 2020
Reading Martin Luther’s 1527 treatise “Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague,” Hughes finds practical and spiritual guidance for a pandemic age: serve the neighbor, follow medical experts, honor those whose vocations put them at risk, and trust that even when we fail, God will not abandon the community.
-
Institutional Focus
Continuing the Dialogue: Augustana College
Sandra C. Looney
No. 1 · Summer 1996
Looney describes Augustana College, Sioux Falls, debating and renaming its values—Christian, Liberal Arts, Community, Excellence, Service—under the leadership of religion professor Dr. Arthur Olsen and the T’N’T (“Through Thick and Thin”) committee, in the wake of ELCA Region III’s “What Does It Mean to be a College of the Church?” conversations. She describes Augustana’s 56% Lutheran student body, daily 10 a.m. chapel, dual Christmas Vespers in Our Savior’s Lutheran Church and St. Joseph’s Cathedral, the Capstone classes on moral and aesthetic issues, and the ongoing work of enlarging Augustana’s conversation to include Native American, Jewish, and Islamic voices.
-
Article
One Life, Many Callings: Vocation Across the Lifespan
Katherine Turpin
No. 47 · Spring 2018
Turpin, drawing on the collaborative research behind Calling All Years Good, traces how vocational discernment shifts through adolescence, younger adulthood, middle adulthood, late adulthood, and older adulthood — arguing that focusing vocation on entry into the workforce limits the capacity of intergenerational college communities to wrestle with calling throughout life.
-
Institutional Focus
A List of ELCA Social Teaching and Policy Documents
No. 51 · Spring 2020
A reference list, as of September 2019, of the ELCA’s twelve social statements, fourteen social messages, and over 150 social policy resolutions — with Spanish translations where available.
-
Article
Finding the Miracle in the Intersection of Mission and Limitations: Lessons from Latin America
Kat Peters
No. 61 · Spring 2025
14 min audio
Peters draws on her time interning with Lutheran World Relief and leading a study abroad program in Central America — including a Costa Rican women’s farm cooperative whose ecotourism project was “unprofitable” but life-giving — to argue that the intersection of God’s preference for struggle and God’s desire for abundant life is itself the miracle higher education can claim amid scarcity.
-
Article
Educating for Peace: 21st Century Models for Thinking Globally and Acting Locally
Janet E. Rasmussen
No. 18 · Fall 2003
Rasmussen opens with a rabbinic story about the one-step distance between East and West and describes Pacific Lutheran University’s four-phase “Global Education Continuum”—Introductory, Exploratory, Participatory, Integrative—developed with Teagle Foundation support and grounded in Perry, Bennett, and Musil. She illustrates intentional global/local partnership through three case studies: Barbara Temple-Thurston’s Trinidad-and-Salishan initiative; the China Partners Network with the Amity Foundation, Good Samaritan Hospital, and PLU’s Wang Center; and Ann Kelleher’s three-institution “Norway in Namibia” partnership with Hedmark University College, the University of Namibia, NAMAS, and the Ondao mobile schools for the Himba people. She closes with Daloz, Keen, Keen, and Parks’s Common Fire research and Lee Knefelkamp’s call to be “communities of peace.”