Faith and LearningLearning rooted in the tradition and values of Lutheran higher education

At Gustavus, we believe that learning happens in community with others. Because of our conviction that faith enriches and completes learning, Gustavus works to foster collaboration between religious and other departments and promote opportunities for dialogue between diverse beliefs. Gustavus is Lutheran, not sectarian; it favors the Lutheran tradition and Lutheran values, including religious services, but does not seek religious uniformity (all members of the campus community are invited to worship services and other religious observances, but participation is entirely voluntary) and has as its goal combining a mature understanding of faith with intellectual rigor to the benefit of society, believing faith and education inform each other.

Gustavus and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) - "The 500-year-old Lutheran intellectual tradition lives on in ELCA higher education. The colleges and universities of the ELCA offer both undergraduate and graduate education in the best of liberal arts, pre-professional and professional education. Our schools are dedicated to the freedom of inquiry and the development the whole person. At ELCA colleges and universities, students are educated for a sense of calling or vocation, opening the path toward a meaningful life of contribution to the common good through whatever career they choose."  ELCA Colleges and Universities  For more information about the common calling of ELCA colleges and universities, please read the joint statement by the Network of ELCA Colleges and Universities: Rooted_and_Open.

Many private colleges identify themselves as church-affiliated or church-related, but the extent and meaning of affiliation or relatedness varies greatly among institutions. The following statements seek to explain how Gustavus Adolphus College interprets and exemplifies its Lutheran tradition, church-relatedness, and values.

The Lutheran tradition

• Insists upon freedom of inquiry and criticism in the pursuit of knowledge and truth;
• Values intellectual rigor and cautions against both premature judgments and overreaching conclusions;
• Prefers paradoxes to dogmatism or ideological "certainties";
• Supports interfaith understanding and welcomes those of other denominations and religions as partners in the search for wisdom;
• Views justice informed by compassion as the goal of all political and social structures;
• Encourages a sense of vocation- discerning one’s responsibility to benefit the larger community in every area of one’s life;
• Seeks to understand the nature and vital importance of community community that is constituted by quality relationships with each other, with the natural world, and with God;
• Supports music and the arts as integral to what it means to be human;
• Regards the purpose of education to be human freedom: freedom from ignorance, prejudice, and coercion, and freedom for service and leadership within the larger community;
• Takes human limitations seriously and therefore regards a deliberative community and ongoing dialog as essential for education;