Jeanne Halgren Kilde

A History of Luther Seminary

History & Biography

“This is an institutional history about challenges. Mark Granquist clearly and accessibly sorts through the theological challenges—regarding the Augsburg Confession, predestination, low and high church worship practice—and shifting institutional relationships that shaped the origin and early development of Luther Seminary. He then moves on to the social and financial challenges that have impacted it since the 1960s. Avoiding nostalgia and boosterism, he presents a picture of midwestern Lutheran diversity that many will find surprising, and some, uncomfortable. Written at a time when seminary education generally and Luther Seminary specifically are facing perhaps their greatest challenges ever due to declining enrollments, this book will be of great value to not only alumni interested in the history of Lutheranism but also anyone concerned with the question of how mainline Protestant seminary education will survive in the upcoming decades.”