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Mark S. Hanson

Mark S. Hanson

Distinguished Fellow in the Christensen Center for Vocation; former Presiding Bishop

Augsburg College

The Rev. Mark S. Hanson is Distinguished Fellow in the Christensen Center for Vocation at Augsburg College, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and former presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Published Articles

Article

Negotiating Legitimate and Conflicting Values

Eboo Patel, Katie Bringman Baxter, Mark S. Hanson

No. 44 · Fall 2016

In a closing-day conversation at the 2016 Vocation of a Lutheran College Conference, Mark Hanson and Eboo Patel — moderated by Katie Bringman Baxter of Interfaith Youth Core — share case studies in which legitimate religious values come into tension with one another, and make the case that Lutheran colleges should teach interfaith leadership through the hard cases rather than the easy ones.
Article

Living at the Intersection of Fear and Hope

Mark S. Hanson

No. 32 · Spring 2010

Hanson draws on his January 2009 ELCA/ELCIC visit to Jordan, Israel, and Palestine—a Hebron Quran that did not burn, fifth graders dancing at the Hope School, a conversation with King Abdullah II—to frame the vocation of Lutheran higher education at the intersection of fear and hope. Engaging Brueggemann, Sittler, Buechner, Auden, Strandjord, Douglas John Hall, W. Robert Connor, Lewis Mudge, and Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, he argues that Lutheran colleges are called to critical inquiry that does not collapse into a hermeneutic of suspicion, to a “thinking faith” that resists religious fundamentalism, and to communities of discernment that work for the common good.
Reflection

Colleges Lead Way: Curiosity, Faith, Discernment, Mission are Key

Mark S. Hanson

No. 28 · Fall 2008

Reprinted from The Lutheran (November 2007), Hanson names four marks of the colleges of this church—nurturing unquenchable curiosity, nourishing faith formation and exploration, modeling public moral deliberation, and preparing students for engagement in the world—and gives thanks for the colleges’ vocation to call us to stand outside ourselves and reach out in mission for the sake of the world.
Article

Reflections on Our Shared Commitments

Mark S. Hanson

No. 25 · Spring 2007

Originally delivered to the Lutheran Educational Conference of North America in March 2007, Hanson’s address describes the ELCA as “an ecology of interdependent ecosystems” and locates the church’s relationship to its twenty-eight colleges and universities in a shared mission rather than in older anxieties about church-relatedness. Drawing on Wittenberg’s Lutheran Identity Study, Augustana’s “Five Faith Commitments,” Pamela Jolicoeur’s Concordia address, W. Robert Connor on “big questions,” Joseph Sittler on grace, Walter Brueggemann on fear, Jonathan Strandjord on being “other-wise,” and Cynthia Moe-Lobeda’s Public Church for the Life of the World, he names four marks of shared mission: communities of free inquiry, encouragement of religious expression in a diverse society, education for the common good, and the formation of leaders for church and religious communities worldwide.

Mark S. Hanson

Published Articles

Negotiating Legitimate and Conflicting Values

Living at the Intersection of Fear and Hope

Colleges Lead Way: Curiosity, Faith, Discernment, Mission are Key

Reflections on Our Shared Commitments