Augustana College —Rock Island, Illinois

What’s in a name? is a question that might be asked of individuals or institutions.  In the case of Augustana College the answer is that a good deal of our identity is revealed in the name Augustana, which is a Latinized title for the German city of Augsburg.  In Lutheran history the term refers to the Augsburg Confession (in Latin, Confessio Augustana), written in 1530 by Philip Melanchthon as a definitive statement of Lutheran doctrine at a time when schism plagued the church.  The Augsburg Confession invited reconciliation among divergent views rather than emphasizing exclusivity.  When Swedish immigrants to the United States formed their own national Lutheran church body, they named it the Augustana Synod after the Augsburg Confession.  The document’s conciliatory approach shaped the strong ecumenical spirit found in the Augustana Synod, which gave its name to the College.  “While it is a denominational institution, it is not sectarian in any narrow sense of the term,” the College catalogue of the early 1900s read.  That spirit of openness remains central to Augustana College’s vision and mission today.

Why are we writing this to you today, in the month of June, in the year 2006?  Simply to emphasize that we are continually thinking about what it means that we are a College of the Church, rooted particularly in a part of the Lutheran Christian tradition called the Augustana Synod, which was born out of theological and human values which we continue to celebrate. During the past academic year, the College undertook a wide-ranging conversation about what it means that we are a church-related college.  Faculty, Board members, administrators, staff, and students talked together about our heritage, about our values, and about our future aspirations.  What they identified were “Five Faith Commitments” of Augustana College that line up exactly with five core values which we discerned in the life of the Augustana Synod which gave birth to the College nearly 150 years ago.  Here are those five commitments which all of us at Augustana feel confident in making to our students today:

1.        Augustana College offers every student the opportunity to develop a life-shaping spirituality.

2.       Augustana College encourages our campus community to wrestle with ways in which faith and reason challenge and enrich each other.

3.       Augustana College affirms that work and career—indeed, all human effort—are aspects of an understanding of vocation, which the Lutheran tradition in higher education helps illuminate.

4.       Augustana College celebrates God’s regard for the worth of all persons.

5.       Augustana College encourages the development of a campus community which seeks justice, loves kindness and acts with love and humility.

We invite you to pick up a copy of the full document, The Five Faith Commitments of Augustana College, at our table in the display center, or download it from our website, www.augustana.edu.  And we invite you to continue to send young people from your families and your parishes to learn and grow at Augustana College into persons of faith and commitment.