The First Great American Lutheran University?

If you are interested in the faith formation of future generations and cultivating societal soil in which people of faith (and all people) are free to grow and flourish, I invite you to read a little book from 12 years ago by Gary DeMar called, Whoever Controls the Schools, Rules the World. Christians certainly do not have any call to "rule the world." History shows us how such power-hungry, misdirected thinking goes awry. At the same time, we must not ignore the centuries-old battle for the mind centered in K-12 and higher education schooling systems or that theories and ideas shape the world and communities in which we live. We see this from Athens to Sparta, Geneva to Cambridge, and Wittenberg to Princeton. We must also recognize the widespread cultural and ideological influence of research, writing, and theories from top universities.

This powerful influence by the education system was one of the crucial recognitions of the 16th-century Reformation. The reformers rightly saw education as a transformational force, and this value was brought across the ocean, leading to the formation of the church body in which I am honored to serve, the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod.

From the formation of this Synod, the vision for education included ensuring great and faithful schools for children in our pews, a system that equipped future church workers, creating excellent schools that blessed people and society as a whole, and preparing people for various vocations.

While not discussed as much, there were hints of another role for universities, specifically, the hope to one day establish world-class centers of scholars whose work had the promise to create wide-reaching influence in people's lives, the church, the nation, and even the world.

Lutheran P-12 and higher education have arguably achieved many of these first goals, but we have yet to realize that last part of the vision. It sits there, awaiting our time, and investment. While we have many world-class and promising Lutheran schools, we have not yet achieved the creation of the first Lutheran Institute for Advanced Studies, Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton, Yale, or some version of these research-intensive higher education communities, at least not beyond the discipline of theology.

Unlike some Catholic powerhouse institutions for scholarly work, Lutheran higher education institutions remain primarily "teaching universities," even as some individual scholars at these universities produce valued and world-class scholarship. What a tremendous gift these teaching universities are to the church and world.

Yet, I contend that there is a great benefit, even need, to create the first great American Lutheran research university, or at least centers of research in discrete areas of study. A hundred million dollars in seed funding plus a billion-dollar endowment would be adequate to make this happen. In less than two decades, such an institution would yield blessings worth far more than this upfront expense. Launching this as an expansion of an existing Lutheran university or as one or more stand-alone research centers would be possible. Imagine the potential blessings and impact of such an effort.