We need a post-mortem. The sale of Luther High School South, once a premiere place of pedagogy in Chicago, has brought many tears— including to the eyes of my wife, Monique, class of ’85. Go Braves! But it also provides an occasion to re-open the wider conversation concerning the cataclysmic failure of Lutheran schools in urban settings. For example, when I first began, in 1982, working at St. John Lutheran Church and School in Detroit, there were some 20 Lutheran schools in the city, as well as a healthy, racially integrated, Lutheran High School West. There are now zero Lutheran schools in the city of Detroit. I apologize if this sounds like an attack on generations of unsung heroes: especially the chronically underpaid, typically overworked, vocationally-committed teachers. Nor do I desire to impugn the good intentions of administrators and church units which poured much sweat and dollars into these school ministries. Theres been enough guilt and grief over this. Lutheran East, Cleveland and Lutheran North, St. Louis seem to be exceptions among those which are solvent, but theyre countable on one hand. After chatting on FB in-box with a diverse group of friends, I boil down my thoughts to three points: 1) These schools have produced a parade of notable, noteworthy, affluent graduates—including big-name artists, professional athletes, political officials and public influencers. Why have these generally NOT been motivated to “give back” and reinvest. My hunch: it’s primarily no sense of shared ownership. We, Lutherans, have control issues. We’re good at education and service. We’re not as good at life-together. 2) In what ways are these hundreds of closings an opportunity to re-imagine our confessional witness, especially our theology of speaking and living with difference. We need more practical wisdom (phronesis, street smarts) for effectiveness in pluralist, socio-economic settings? Lutherans remain the most white and English-speaking religious group in North America. 3) What can we learn from Concordia College, Selma, the nation’s only Lutheran HBCU? How about our global connections, especially in Africa and Latin America? Both provide models for honoring local leadership. A lack of this constitutes a large part of what went wrong with our city schools and will, in the near future, imperil those few schools which remain.
Posted on: Thu, 31 Jul 2014 14:52:09 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015