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Bruce Reichenbach

Bruce Reichenbach

Professor of Philosophy

Augsburg College

Bruce R. Reichenbach is Professor of Philosophy at Augsburg College in Minneapolis. He was a participant in the first Lutheran Academy of Scholars in Higher Education and has written widely on religion, philosophy, and the mission of church-related colleges.

Published Articles

Article

Lutheran Identity and Diversity in Education

Bruce Reichenbach

No. 17 · Summer 2003

Reichenbach applies the theological taxonomy of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism to Lutheran colleges and argues that institutions self-consciously committed to inclusivism must hold a non-negotiable theological core in paradoxical tension with intentional diversity. Drawing on Richard Hughes, Darrell Jodock, Gilbert Meilaender, Robert Benne, and Mark Schwehn, he surveys the theological themes Lutheran writers identify as identity-forming—the four solas, law and Gospel, two kingdoms, vocation, simultaneously saint and sinner, the theology of the cross—and proposes that diversity at an inclusivist Lutheran college is to be employed in service of educating “head, hands, and heart,” maintained through a critical mass of faculty and staff who carry the “DNA of the school.”
Article

Mission and Hiring in the Christian College

Bruce Reichenbach

No. 3 · Summer 1997

Reichenbach of Augsburg argues that the Christian or Church-related college’s mission to educate the whole person from a perspective of Christian faith and values can only succeed through intentional hiring of a “critical mass” of faculty, administrators, and staff committed to that mission (following George Marsden and the 1960s Danforth Commission), supplemented by on-going faculty development. He defends an inclusive community-with-diversity, a freedom-and-commitment tension grounded in Alasdair MacIntyre’s account of tradition, and the legality of preferential religious hiring under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the relevant case law (Tilton, Hunt, Roemer, Blanton, Grove City, Amos).

Bruce Reichenbach

Published Articles

Lutheran Identity and Diversity in Education

Mission and Hiring in the Christian College