Welcome to Luther Seminary’s Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity site. This work is vital to our mission to educate leaders for Christian community sent by the Holy Spirit to witness to salvation through Jesus Christ and to serve in God’s world.
It is also an important part of our newly-adopted vision statement: “Luther Seminary is called by the Holy Spirit to lead faithful innovation for the sake of the gospel in a rapidly changing world.”
As a learning community set free by the grace of Jesus Christ, we’re sharing our journey here–including our setbacks as well as our successes–in order to be as transparent as possible and to hold ourselves and each other publicly accountable.
Why Is This Work So Important?
Luther Seminary’s work is framed around the concepts of promise, community, and neighbor: in God’s promises of forgiveness and grace, we are freed to encounter one another in community; as we create a trustworthy, inclusive community by the grace of God, we are empowered to open toward the neighbor; as we open toward our neighbors, we are formed and reformed in our identities in Christ.
We are living in a moment of deep fragmentation and polarization in our society–and these divisions extend to Luther Seminary. We are a diverse community comprised of individuals with different backgrounds, races, ethnicities, sexual orientations and gender identities, languages, cultures, socioeconomic circumstances, political perspectives, and theological commitments.
In the midst of all this, we are called to unity for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is not the cheap unity that comes from shutting people out who aren’t like us, but the difficult unity of listening to and loving each other in the midst of important differences. Seminary is a learning community: if we can learn to do this better at Luther, we will become leaders who can be conduits of God’s healing and change wherever we serve in the world.