American Spectator Magazine Covers the Luther Seminary Meltdown

 

Article author - Ellie Gardey Holmes - A Notre Dame Alumnus

For over a century, Luther Seminary has called its beautiful campus in St. Paul, Minnesota, home. Apart from its buildings in the Collegiate Gothic style, the campus is also the site of the log cabin Old Muskego Church. The chapel was constructed in 1844 by devoutly Lutheran Norwegian immigrants in Wisconsin. In 1904, the chapel was transported, piece by piece, to Luther Seminary’s campus.

Luther’s students and faculty are now leaving all of that behind. Last week, the seminary’s board of directors announced that they have voted to sell the campus. The Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal has reported that the value of the site is greater than $8.7 million.

While the seminary was once the bustling home of those aspiring to become pastors in the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination, it has in recent years grown increasingly quiet. More and more students have opted to simply take classes online on a part-time basis. Meanwhile, international students have become a large portion of those populating the physical campus. Luther Seminary remains, however, the ELCA’s largest seminary.

Over the decades, those aspiring to be pastors in mainline denominations such as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have grown increasingly older. The number of pastors who work full-time jobs in addition to their time preaching on Sundays has also grown. Online learning options therefore make more sense to this majority for whom being a pastor is a capstone achievement rather than a life mission.

Robin Steinke is on the left of the other professor.

The seminary is seeking to purchase a much smaller physical location in Minneapolis, at which “periodic in-person learning” will take place. Evidently, the online model will take over, with occasional seminars to reinforce the seminary’s mission. This model, said the seminary’s president, the Rev. Robin Steinke, will make the school more “nimble.” She explained, “The way students learn and prepare for ministry has changed. Now is the right time to align our resources with that reality and evolve how we deliver on our mission.” [gag, ptui]

Luther Seminary has experienced an endless downward spiral of lower and lower enrollments alongside financial difficulties. Its enrollment has fallen from more than 600 students in 2007 to 183 students in 2024, when measured by full-time student equivalency, according to the Association of Theological Schools. Its current president arrived at the school after the previous president resigned following multimillion-dollar deficits. Many, if not most, mainline seminaries have experienced similar fates.

Luther Seminary’s decline also matches that of the ELCA more generally. According to religion statistician Ryan Burge, from 2003 to 2023, the membership of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America declined 46 percent. While the ELCA had just under 5 million members in 2003, that number fell to 2.79 million baptized members in 2023. 

What is astounding about Luther Seminary’s decline is that almost all students receive a full-tuition scholarship. Even still, potential students don’t think losing several years of income is worth the value of the degree. The problem, at base, is that the ELCA is struggling to attract candidates for ordination.

*****

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is a left-leaning denomination. It has, since its formation, ordained women as pastors. In 2009, the denomination allowed “LGBTQIA+ individuals” to be ordained. On abortion, the denomination says, “A developing life in the womb does not have an absolute right to be born, nor does a pregnant woman have an absolute right to terminate a pregnancy.” Officially, the church says that it “lacks consensus” on the topic of homosexuality, but the reality is much different.

This Pride Month, the week before the ELCA’s largest seminary announced the upcoming closure of its campus, the denomination’s presiding bishop, Elizabeth Eaton, delivered a message to her church in which she said the teachings of the apostle Paul and Martin Luther call people to “honor the full dignity of every person: every sex, every gender, and every body.” (RELATED: How Naivety Is Allowing Unbiblical Progressivism Into Evangelical Churches)

“We have a chance to renew our commitments to the LGBTQIA+ community,” she further said, “to speak with grace and unity that we are a part of God’s great creation.”

On its website, Luther Seminary prominently features a “land acknowledgment” about its campus: “Luther Seminary is on Miní Sóta Makhóčhe, the homelands of the Dakhóta Oyáte. The Ojibwe, Ho-Chunk, Cheyenne, Oto, Iowa, and the Sac & Fox also inhabited Minnesota land.”

Perhaps Luther Seminary will decide to give back its stolen land.

Daily Luther Sermon Quote - Trinity 1 Lazarus - "So we see now in the example of the rich man that it is impossible to love, where no faith exists, and impossible to believe, where there is no love; for both will and must be together, so that a believer loves everybody and serves everybody; but an unbeliever at heart is an enemy of everybody and wishes to be served by every person and yet he covers all such horrible, perverted sins with the little show of his hypocritical works as with a sheep’s skin; just as that large bird, the ostrich, which is so stupid that when it sticks its head into a bush, it thinks its entire body is concealed. Yea, here you see that there is nothing kinder and more unmerciful than unbelief."

 

First Sunday after Trinity

6. But where unbelief reigns man is absorbed by these vanities, he cleaves to them, seeks them and has no rest until he has acquired them, and after he possesses them, he feeds and fattens himself with them as the swine wallow in the mire, and finds at the same time his happiness and felicity there. He never inquires how his heart stands with his God and what he possesses in God and may expect from him; but his belly is his God; and if he cannot get what he wants, he imagines things are going wrong. And lo, these dreadful and wicked fruits of unbelief the rich man does not see, he covers them over, and blinds his own eyes by the good works of his pharisaical life, and hardens himself until no teaching, exhortation, threatening nor promise can help him. Behold, this is the secret sin which to-day’s Gospel punishes and condemns.

7. From this now follows the other sin, that he forgets to exercise love toward his neighbor; for there he lets poor Lazarus lie at his door, and offers him not the least assistance. And if he had not wished to help him personally, he should have commanded his servants to take him in and care for him. It may have been, he knew nothing of God and had never experienced his goodness. For whoever feels the goodness of God, feels also for the misfortune of his neighbor; but whoever is not conscious of the goodness of God, sympathizes not in the misfortune of his neighbor.

Therefore as he has no pleasure in God, he has no heart for his neighbor.

8. For the nature of faith is that it expects all good from God, and relies only on God. For from this faith man knows God, how he is good and gracious, that by reason of such knowledge his heart becomes so tender and merciful, that he wishes cheerfully to do to every one, as he experiences God has done to him. Therefore he breaks forth with love and serves his neighbor out of his whole heart, with his body and life, with his means and honor, with his soul and spirit, and makes him partaker of all he has, just like God did to him. Therefore he does not look after the healthy, the high, the strong, the rich, the noble, the holy persons, who do not need his care; but he looks after the sick, the weak, the poor, the despised, the sinful people, to whom he can be of benefit, and among whom he can exercise his tender heart, and do to them as God has done to him.

9. But the nature of unbelief is that it does not expect any good from God. By which unbelief the heart is blinded so that it neither feels nor knows how good and gracious God is; but as Psalm 14:2 says: he cares not for God, seeks not after him. Out of this blindness follows further that his heart becomes so hard, obdurate and unmerciful that he has no desire to do a kindness to his fellow man; yea, he would rather harm and offend everybody. For as he is insensible to the goodness of God, so he takes no pleasure in doing good to his neighbor. Consequently it follows that he does not look after the sick, poor and despised people, to whom he could and should be helpful and profitable; but he casts his eyes upward and sees only the high, rich and influential, from whom he himself may receive advantage, gain, pleasure and honor.

10. So we see now in the example of the rich man that it is impossible to love, where no faith exists, and impossible to believe, where there is no love; for both will and must be together, so that a believer loves everybody and serves everybody; but an unbeliever at heart is an enemy of everybody and wishes to be served by every person and yet he covers all such horrible, perverted sins with the little show of his hypocritical works as with a sheep’s skin; just as that large bird, the ostrich, which is so stupid that when it sticks its head into a bush, it thinks its entire body is concealed. Yea, here you see that there is nothing kinder and more unmerciful than unbelief. For here the dogs, the most irascible animals, are more merciful to poor Lazarus than this rich man, and they recognize the need of the poor man and lick his sores; while the obdurate, blinded hypocrite is so hard hearted that he does not wish him to have the crumbs that fell from his table.

11. Now all unbelieving people are like this rich hypocrite. Unbelief cannot do nor be different than this rich man is pictured and set forth by his life.

And especially is this the character of the clergy-, as we see before our eyes, who never do a truly good work, but only seek a good time, never serving nor profiting any one; but reversing the order they want everybody to serve them. Like harpies they only claw everything into their own pockets; and like the old adage runs they “rob the poor of his purse.” They are not moved in the least by the poverty of others. And although some have not expensive food and raiment, yet they do not lack will power and the spirit of action; for they imitate the rich, the princes and the lords, and do many hypocritically good works by founding institutions and building churches, with which they conceal the great rogue, the wolf of unbelief; so that they become obdurate and hardened and are of no use to anybody.

These are the rich man.