Lutheran Studies

PLU has been a lively center for the study of Lutheran higher education and the global Lutheran tradition since its beginnings in 1890.

Distinguished lecturers, undergraduate courses in history, music, scripture, theology, and the visual arts, study away classes in Germany, Namibia, and Norway, campus ministry workshops, faith and reason dialogues, faculty publications and public presentations, musical performances, seminars on vocation, summer theological institutes, and an excellent collection of Lutheran works in the library mark PLU as a place where the study of this reforming movement continues to flourish.

While the Lutheran movement began in Germany and then spread quickly to Scandinavia during the 16th century, Lutheran schools were established throughout most of the world by the end of the 19th century thus creating a global educational presence.

Through its relationship with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Lutheran World Federation, PLU is connected to an international consortium of institutes, schools, colleges, universities, seminaries, and study centers in which education for service shapes a common life and mission.

Lutheran Studies at PLU welcomes students, faculty, staff, and alumni into this global network, into the significant dialogue between cultures as we engage the pressing economic, political, and social issues of the new millennium.

In January 2011, the PLU Board of Regents established a professorship in Lutheran Studies and confirmed the nomination of Dr. Samuel Torvend as the first University Professor of Lutheran Studies. Dr. Marit Trelstad is the second person to be nominated and confirmed in this endowed University Chair. This professorship expresses the university’s ongoing commitment to promote the intellectual gifts and capacities of the Lutheran tradition within a regional, global, and twenty-first century context.