Beyond the red doors: 'Berg's Lutheran Roots

Muhlenberg’s Lutheran heritage is known and seen daily, thanks to the red doors on campus. What that really means for the school in today’s world was the topic of the Common Hour event on Feb. 3 titled “Through the Red Doors: Are Muhlenberg’s Lutheran Roots Relevant Today?”

Hosted by the Chaplain’s Office with support from the Interfaith Youth Core, speaker Rev. Dr. Darrell Jodock addressed a packed room in Seegers 111. Many in attendance were religious leaders from local churches as well as President Williams’s wife, Diane Pierce-Williams.

Jodock has been a professor of religion and a pastor over the course of his almost 40-year career, part of which he spent as a professor at Muhlenberg from 1978 to 1999. While at Muhlenberg, Jodock served as the chair of the Religion department for 13 years and played a key role as the chief founder and board member of the Institute for Jewish- Christian Understanding; he served as the chair of its board for ten years.

The event began with a welcome and introduction by Chaplain Callista Isabelle. Following this introduction, Jodock asked the question “why should Lutheran institutions like Muhlenberg claim its Lutheran identity?” to start his speech. This was followed by four things he believes Muhlenberg does not need in order to ascribe to this Lutheran identity: a certain number of Lutheran students or professors, the need to answer to an outside authority, a staff who needs to sign a claim of faith, and the use of religion as a brand.

Jodock believes there are three paths a college or university can take. One is to be wholly religious and have all members of its community ascribe to a certain religion. Another is to be completely secular and not acknowledge religion. However, Muhlenberg “follows a third path” that attempts to be religiously rooted and be inclusive of all religions while prizing and encouraging inter-faith dialogue.

He says the key to this third path is that the school “distinguishes between educational values and theological principles.” This means that its students, faculty, and staff move beyond knowledge and skills and analyze the implications of what they learn and do. Part of this includes both an embracement of diversity as well as a critical evaluation of religion. Jodock described this evaluation as a combination of thinking about both the positives and negatives that come with religion and secularity.

Jodock’s call for diversity was followed by a story that reflects some of our own current events. He mentioned that in a time of anti-semitism in the 1930s, many colleges and universities were not accepting or had a quota on Jewish students. Jodock had met an alumnus from this time who recounted to him the reason he came to Muhlenberg, because it not only had no quota but welcomed Jewish students regardless of the political and social beliefs that were sweeping the world at the time.

As for Muhlenberg today, Jodock explained that it is able to remain more autonomous than its counterparts thanks to “a religious anchor,” saying that the college’s values are based on religious principles and that “any community needs values in order to be a community.” Jodock also added that liberal arts colleges are inherently more communal and that basing values on religious principles “make available a vocabulary” to the community’s members.

One such word he stressed as having religious roots is vocation. A vocation is a calling, whether it be a career, a humanitarian, political, or religious calling. It has since taken on a different connotation, but Jodock explained that for many it has the same meaning. He explained that a college such as Muhlenberg, which acknowledges its religious roots, can help students to understand this definition of the word rather than being another synonym for the word job.

As for embracing its Lutheran roots, Jodock told the crowd that Lutheranism was started by a professor who managed

to balance both learning and religion. While “claiming tradition makes the college implicit in all errors of Christianity, Luther said all institutions, including religion, need reform.” Jodock then listed values found and encouraged in the Muhlenberg community that have roots in religion. These include the distinction between educational values and theological principles, “the importance of sound ideas combined with cautions of how to go [forward with them]”, the importance of a vocation, a larger perspective on how people are affected, “educational importance of cultivating wisdom” and to go beyond knowledge and skills, “educational community and freedom of inquiry”, “importance of music and the arts”, and the “priority of the relational”.

Jodock, wrapping up his presentation, explained that being a Lutheran college is “worth claiming in order to make it more deeply educational but also to spread these values,” values that stress community, diversity, and inclusion.