RockneCAST
Dr. Wilfred Bunge - Transformed by the Journey (#258, 18 Oct. 2024)
In this episode, I interviewed Dr. Wilfred Bunge, professor emeritus of religion at Luther College.
Dr. Bunge served as a professor of religion from 1962 to 1999 and was the co-author of Transformed by the Journey, a book covering 150 years of history from its founding through its sesquicentennial date of 2011.
Dr. Bunge discussed the writing of Transformed by the Journey and shared his own journey from a farm outside of Spring Grove, Minnesota to Luther College to Harvard and back to Decorah, Iowa serving over three decades in the religion department.
For those of you who love ideas, the liberal arts, and Luther College, this is the episode for you! In one hour, we covered all things Luther College from Wil's own journey at Luther and his observations about other leading lights in Luther history including Vilhelm and Elisabeth Koren, J.W. Ylvisaker, Elwin Farwell, and Weston Noble.
Much gratitude to Dr. Bunge for sharing his journey and for his service to Luther College!
- Duration:
- 56m
- Broadcast on:
- 18 Oct 2024
- Audio Format:
- other
Friends of the Rockney cast, I'm here with Professor Emeritus Wilbongi, and I'm so proud to be able to interview him. I came across the work of Wilbongi, basically for my entire life. He went to First Lutheran Church, along with Richard Simon Hanson, but more importantly, he wrote a book called "Transformed by the Journey," which celebrates 150 years of Luther College in Word and Image. He co-authored it along with Mary Hall Moore and Dale Nimrod. And for those of you who have an interest in Luther College, its history, its future, this is the book for you because it is chock full of history, ranging from Wilhelm Quarren to Lower Lowerson to the Yolva Sockers in all stages, basically almost anything you want to know during this time period is in this book. And it's such a rich tapestry that I strongly encourage you to read this book and buy it. And I'm so delighted to be able to interview the author of this book, Professor Wilbongi. Professor Wilbongi, welcome to the Rockney cast. Thank you so much for participating in this interview. It's my pleasure. Thank you so much. I thought maybe first we would start off with the "Transformed by the Journey" book. You were the author of this book after you had retired from Luther College. I wonder if you could give our listeners a little bit about how did this book actually come about and how did you go about putting it together? Well, I actually volunteered to write the book. I wasn't on any particular planning committee, but since I'd been here for quite a few years, I thought that it would be an interesting project for me. And I had worked with Mary Holmore and Dale Nimrod on a number of other things, and we were getting a very harmonious working relationship, so I knew that they could help me. And I did the writing, but we wrote and rewrote, and they had the job of responding to what I had written, making suggestions, criticizing, helping me look for pictures because the illustrations are a major part of the book, and so we worked on that for a couple of years. Actually, it was delayed at one time because the person in the editing department at Luther had other projects he was working on, and we were all retired, so we had time to wait. And it is such what a treasure for those of us who are interested in Luther College, because the reason why I loved the book title "Transform by the Journey," those of us who love Luther College, I think, kind of have our own transformation from the time that we first read Odysseus in Pidea until we go through the school and take classes from Professor Bunge or Richard Simon Hansen, or Mary Hall Moore, and are transformed by it but are continually transformed about it. I wonder, were you the one that came up with that particular title? I think it was Robert Larson in the theater department who suggested the title. I don't think we had a title in mind when we started out. And if you care to share a little bit about what you know Robert's reasoning was for that wonderful title "Transform by the Journey," I have no idea. But it's a good title. It's a good title, and we recognize that immediately, and that's what we were doing. We were reporting on this transformation, these changes, major changes along the way. And I loved that part of the book because we're not going to get a lot into this future generation or the future discussion of the future of Luther College, but I think what really is, really for me as a reader of this book, which I absolutely loved was, is that from its start, Luther has always had a series of challenges that they've been able to overcome. And I think this book really kind of depicts that in terms of the challenges that was overcome. And just the journey, I think, of the first book that we read in Pidea, The Odyssey, it's taken me several years to really realize how much actually treasured that book as a student and now as an adult has really stayed with me. But I thought we could kind of next go up, we'll still talk about some segments of the book that I thought was some of my favorite parts, but I thought if you could introduce the reader into the list or your own journey to Luther College. How did you grow up? What was the environment that you grew up, and how did you get to Luther College? I grew up on a farm in just two miles east of Spring Grove, Minnesota. We were a German, we came from German immigrant origins, and most of the people in the area came from Norwegian immigrant origins, and that was very pronounced in those days. Most of those things have faded, at least since then, but it was very prominent back then. And we, in effect, we became honorary Norwegians. Welcome to the club, Will. You didn't have any choice. If you lived near Spring Grove because people were still speaking, ordinary people were still speaking in Norwegian, in that probably third generation. And I was born in 1931, so I lived through the Great Depression. My family was really quite upset by this, or economically distressed by the Great Depression. That was followed by the Second World War. And so the circumstances of my childhood were really quite constrained. We didn't know much about the larger world, particularly the world of higher education. I'm so glad you mentioned that because another local legend that I love is Dr. Norman Borlaug reading his book. And the part that really struck me about that book was his hunger growing up, and how wonderful it was to go to college where he could get a full meal. So without going into all the particulars of your circumstance, could you describe how difficult was it Spring Grove in that area before you went to Luther College? What were the economic circumstances like for you? Well, they were limited, but everybody had enough to eat and ethical as to where. So the basic essentials were there. So I wouldn't really describe it as poverty stricken, but it was economically limited. And so we didn't travel, we didn't take vacations, but that was very common among rural farm people, probably somewhat unheard of today, because the percentage of farmers in our society has considerably reduced, has been considerably reduced in the years since the Second World War with the development of large machinery and use of chemicals, et cetera. And they do more with fewer people. And I believe in preparing for this interview, you said that you were a first generation college student. So what I wonder from you is, how was it that you first heard the term Luther College, and what made you go to Luther College as opposed to somewhere else? Well, I had a cousin who had gone to Luther College, and I conversed with her about your experience, and she liked what she was experiencing, and she thought Luther would be a good fit for me. And we had other choices. I could have gone to Winona State College. Back then, those state colleges were called teacher's colleges, and that's sort of what I had in mind, that what you do when you graduate from college, you potentially become a public school teacher. That was the main objective. So I took her work for it. I didn't really explore other possibilities, and my parents supported it. They said, "You can do whatever you want to do. They never put any pressure on me to make any particular choice." And you were a first generation student, right? Yes, they had not even gone to high school. So they went to something at the University of Minnesota Division of Agriculture, a couple of terms at what they called ag school, which was a kind of general equivalent to high school, but only for a couple of terms. And so my mother, especially, always regretted that she didn't have an opportunity for further education. She had a hunger for education. So I suppose that influenced me, and I really wanted to go to college. I wanted to learn more about the world. I don't much about it. I love it. And so when you get to campus, if you could share, you have any recollections as to kind of your first impressions when you arrived in campus. Would it have been in the 1949, or what was the year that you actually arrived? In 1949, yeah, I've basically been a rather shy person. So I probably thought it's going to be difficult to navigate this new social situation. I hadn't been far from home in my whole life. Yes. Kind of scary, probably. That was not scary, exactly, but challenging, at least. But I soon got into the swing of things, and it was very easy to make friends. It was a small community at that time, about 800 students. And so everybody sort of knew everybody else, and it was a very, very congenial situation. One thing I'm very curious about is I fortunately had the privilege of interviewing the late Simon Hansen for the same podcast, and it's my understanding that he went to Luther at the same time. Yeah. We entered in the same year. And so you shared kind of a lot of things in common. So what I'm wondering is, did you know Richard Simon Hansen while he was enrolled, and what was your recollection of him as an undergraduate student at Luther during that time frame from '49 to '53? Yeah, we weren't close at that time, but I remember that he was a student director of a men's chorus. They had previously had a professional director, but when he was a student, he directed that men's chorus. It was called the Skola Contorum, the School of Singers. And we also entered Luther Seminary in St. Paul in the same year, and he was very active there. I would say he was much more outgoing than I, and he had all sorts of talents for doing all sorts of interesting things. And so we knew each other quite well, but he was not my closest friend. And when we joined the faculty, I came in 1962, and he came, I think, in 1963. He built a host across the street from where we were living, eventually. Not that very year, but a couple of years later. So we spent most of our careers living across the street from Waleedah. And you both went to Harvard, too, correct? Yes. We both went to Harvard Divinity School in Hebrew Bible, as we call it now. Back then, we called it the Old Testament, and I in the New Testament and Christian literature. Wonderful. So we saw each other there as well. So the other thing that I think is interesting is you studied with the late Pit Wall-A, who is kind of a legend in Luther College circles. I remember Pip was still alive in 1990, and I remember that he would go on these walks and sit on this rail right near the bottom of Ridge Road, and I was always concerned that he was going to fall off, but he would wear his letter jacket. So little did I know that that skinny 90-year-old was one of the legends of Luther College. And so it's my understanding, you actually studied in the same department as Pip Wall-A. I wonder if you could just elaborate a little bit, or maybe you didn't. Did you take any classes from Pip Wall-A? Well, I took a lot of classes from him. Okay. Latin classes and Greek classes. So I would say roughly one third of the courses I took, I took with him. He was also the academic dean of the college. And I don't know how you did all of those things, but he did. And the classes were very small, because even then, you know, the relatively limited number of people who were taking Latin and Greek, mostly students, male students, planning to enter the seminary. And so I got to know him very well. So I wonder if you could share, if you have any specific memories of him as a professor, that made him such a dynamic professor, do you have any recollection relating to that? Well, he came on as sort of like a military drill instructor. And quite a few of the students were, which I would say, afraid of him, yes. I was never afraid of him. I just casually answered his questions. "Well, I don't like to boast, but I was probably a better student in the class than most of them in doing well, so he didn't bother me." But he was a type of professor that put people on the spot, kind of like with the chronic lab. Yeah, right. And he would hone them if they didn't get things right. You know, and they would react nervously, I remember particularly one student who was just sort of trembling, but he was asked to go to the board and write something in Greek or Latin. I never trembled. Because you had mastered the language. One of my kind of favorite parts of transform by the journey was a segment in the book where you talked about the controversy that arose from the Greek play "edipus rex". You kind of explored why that was controversial at Luther in the early 50s and how it ultimately was resolved. I wonder whether you could kind of elaborate for some of our listeners what the controversy was and how it ultimately ended up resolving itself and what your role was in the play itself. Yes. Yes. Robert Jensen translated the play as his senior paper in the spring of 1951. And the play was immediately picked up as a possibility for campus players, I think they called it back then, campus players. And they asked one of the musicians in the music faculty, Sigrart Hoflund, to write music for the choruses. And there was a large group of students who participated in the play because you have main characters and you have a chorus which could easily expand to 15 or so members and the chorus sang the music that Hoflund composed. Well, the President of the soccer was upset by the fact that it was a religious play. And he felt that it sort of called into question the primacy of Lutheran theology or Christian theology on campus and that people might get a wrong impression watching the play. Well, I think it was Kenneth Berger who taught speech at the time, excellent professor, and Dr. Qualley who went to Osaka and persuaded him that the play was a significant part of Western culture and that the translation was a student product and the potential for the play was that it would be well done and that it should let it go on. And he was persuaded reluctantly. After the production when he had seen it, he said, "I think I was mistaken in my opposition because he could sense how, what an impact the basic problem of the play had on the audience. The problem and the resolution of the problem or the lack of a resolution. It was very well received and Helva soccer decided he had made a mistake in opposing it, so it wasn't a big issue but she did have in mind that maybe he should stop that production." The reason why I love that as a topic, it's easy to kind of look back on that now and kind of laugh about it a little bit because it's like, well, was it really that controversial because it was pre-Christian but one theme that I think permeates the book transformed by the journey is this question of tradition versus change. Throughout the history of the college, there have been times where what's the role of the Christian church? What's the role of the Lutheran church? Should we admit women? Should we, you know, there's all sorts of different issues that have been turned on? What I loved about this as an illustration is, is this was kind of a more traditional figure who was a little bit upset by this change and how that would project, you know, to the larger community but then ultimately was persuaded that it was a positive thing for the students and for the community as well. Well you probably know how Luther College started. It was started by what they called the Norwegian Synod of the Lutheran church in this part of the country because they needed to have a place where they could prepare ministers, preachers for their congregations and so the chief aim of the college was to provide the necessary courses for theological study and they sort of stuck to that chief aim even though most of the graduates by far the majority of the graduates did something other than going into the ministry, the Christian ministry. They became high school superintendents and high school teachers or other kinds of teachers or some of them became lawyers even back then but for example they didn't offer any courses in the natural sciences during most of the 19th century, first 40 years of the college's history and so the changes that occurred were in a sense painful changes because the people in charge in those early years were largely pastures and they had a vested interest in continuing the tradition of the college primarily as a place to train pastors or teach pastors but gradually it changed and as you say they didn't become co-educational until 1936 when the college was 75 years old so roughly halfway into the history of the college and then they began to offer programs that would be more appropriate for a wider diversity of students and their interests like teacher education and that sort of thing. So and they had earlier in the 20th century they had begun to offer courses in the natural sciences but they still required all of the students to take up until the time of co-education all of the students had to take Latin and Greek and the requirement in Latin and Greek think was abandoned in the 1930s but the reason for that was because they thought that was essential to the study of the Christian tradition since the New Testament was written entirely in Greek and particularly the earliest president of the college Laura Larson viewed the Roman Empire as sort of the ideal empire which had things that taught you about the whole world and therefore when one should offer a lot of courses in which people learned about the ancient Roman Empire and you know it's one of those things that I think when we talk about those periods of change certainly there were periods of painful change that led to growth but with change too when you cut it apart from some of those traditional principles some things are lost and I for one I wish I had more time to study Greek and Latin because I think you study the Bible and you can actually understand the original terms there's something really magical about that in terms of the educational process you'd mention Laura Lowerson and I wonder whether you could maybe comment a little bit on the real history Luther College about the relationship between Wilhelm Corrin, Elizabeth Corrin and the Lowersons in terms of the founding of the college weren't Corrin somehow tangentially involved as well yeah Corrin was called as a pastor to this area I think I'd forgotten what his first title was but eventually he was pastor of I can't come up with the name Washington Prairie Lutheran Church but it embraced a much wider area in the in the beginnings it was a chief Norwegian Lutheran Church in the area and he was a very ambitious person for providing leadership to this church and he is the one who suggested that Decora would be an appropriate place to found the new college so he it was his idea because wasn't it originally like up in La Crosse or something like that where was it originally before it moved to Decora yeah it was just outside of La Crosse in Wisconsin but is there for only one year because there was a vacant personage there and everything that the college did it had only about 15 or 20 students in that opening year and everything that they did was in that personage I mean it was a residence for the students and the faculty there were only two faculty members and I don't know what else say I wonder if their faculty meetings were all contentious when there was just two or they all got along right oh that's so good and so you know of course Elizabeth Corrin was also did she actually ever attend the Luther that was the wife of Wilhelm Corrin but she wrote the famous diary of Elizabeth Corrin did she ever actually attend Luther to have any role or was it mainly did she know or did she never went to the university okay even the Norway I don't think women went to the university very much if at all I don't remember I don't know much about that okay but they were married when they came she and Ulrich Wilhelm Corrin so and she was a very talented person and and the wives of some of the other pastors there was a Herman Fries for example but Parrish in Wisconsin and uh can't remember the name of his wife she was also the diary um she also wrote a diary let me come up with a no but the famous one is diary of Elizabeth yeah yeah she didn't write that for publication I mean it was a private diary but she was an intelligent person and a very close observer of everything that went on around her including nature and so she was sort of the hostess of the uh early Norwegian church in this area and uh and it contained some really good description for those of us interested in the history of decor in this early time period is in the 1850s 1860s time period is that right okay yeah I think they came about 1855 I'm not sure exactly sure of the the first of the year of their arrival but I think it was about 1855 well it couldn't be could have been a year or so earlier yeah that early that early church history is so interesting another fabulous book which you have read is called Wormley Weston which was kind of a book dedicated to Weston Noble I wonder if you could comment a little bit about when you were an undergraduate student at Luther from 49 to 53 if you have any memories of Weston Noble during that time frame yeah when I came as a first year student it was the second year that Weston was the director of the Nordic Choir it had been started um in 1946 by the previous director and she came in 1948 so 1949 was his second year and back then uh first year students could participate in the choir because we were fairly small enrollment and there was I think about 64 60 or 64 members now they're much larger there's 77 in the Nordic Choir yeah he was you know he was 26 years old when I came and turned 27 in November I turned 18 in November so he was just nine years older than I was but we never thought of him as young and inexperienced because he had total command of his audience it squires into you sitting in Nordic didn't you I did I did for four years and it was a it was my main activity as an extracurricular activity um you know everybody most people most fellows at least have a sport that they get involved in but for me it was a choir wonderful and what if you could comment what you think made Weston so special as his as an educator and in terms of his contributions to Luther college well he was very um it is own uh humble way he was very ambitious and he immediately got started thinking in larger terms about attracting more students more talented students to Luther and he um I interviewed him for this book warmly Weston uh I volunteered to write the book when we celebrated the 50th anniversary of his work at Luther which he came in 1948 this was in 1998 and so I interviewed him at length and uh I actually remembered some things about those early years that he didn't remember himself hmm like wife for example well he had a picture on his wall of his what he said was his first choir and I told him no that's not your first choir that's your second choir because I'm in that picture and I was in jail in 1948 he was quite surprised and somewhat disappointed I think because he loves the picture anyway no he was very effective students um admired him and they followed his direction and he got started moving out to uh evaluating high school performers you know he would they had his music I think they called him contests at high schools in the area and all over the country yeah and he he just enjoyed it and he had the freedom to do it and I think it was in that same year 1949 and 50 that he started the Dorian festivals and so we had a band festival in I think it was in January you know it may have been later sometime in the spring semester of 1950 that was his idea wasn't it that was his idea and it's called Dorian because I think that's a certain mode of music yes and it was the name of the music club we had on campus and students who were members of the club were volunteers in this Dorian festival uh he did he virtually he did the the whole business largely by himself all of the arranging for both band and choir too until like the early 70s right he started a coral festival the following year and so that was in the spring of or January probably of 1951 and then repeated the the band festival and now they've added the uh orchestra festival and the uh keyboard festival and a number of other things and the summer programs it just kept growing over the years and it became more professionalized so that there was somebody to help him with the arrangements but in those early years he did much of that himself so western noble what I'm wondering is is as uh I was in Nordic 96 and 87 and then the trial song was my god how wonderful that art was that the same one he used in the early 50s he used the same song of the years saying the first stand oh my god how wonderful oh art so that is funny because sometimes in the shower I'll just blur that out and people that know me that that's why because of that's the song that you do to travel for Nordic so in terms of your own journey you were there at the beginning with western noble and legends like Simon Anson you went off to Harvard you went on the other side of the country and you came back to Luther college I'm curious about how was it that you came back to Luther college as a professor in the religion department what was your thought process there well when I finished my program at Harvard I hadn't yet written my doctoral dissertation but I you know I had been studying for quite a few years and I needed to get a job I was almost 30 years old I hadn't had a job so I asked around and said well what possibilities are there and I think that colleges particularly Lutheran colleges but maybe all colleges were looking for young faculty back then there was a scarcity of young faculty especially faculty who had PhDs or doctorates or one sort or another and had offers from several colleges but actually I came out and was interviewed at roughly around Easter time in the spring of 1962 in response to an invitation from the president of August Santa College in Sioux Falls South Dakota it was interviewed in Chicago and one since it was during the Easter break I decided to go I'll just take the train to Decora or spring roll visit my parents and pay a short visit to Luther college and then go back to my studies in Cambridge Massachusetts and while I was here the other members of the religion department said well we have an opening in biblical studies why don't you interview here so I did and I accepted the invitation wow so it isn't any more complicated than that well and I hadn't grown up in Decora absolutely Decora is such a magical place and I'm really wondering how what would you say the biggest change was from the time you started in 1962 until the time you retired in 1999 what would you say were some of the biggest changes that you observed during that time frame well the enrollment of the college grew considerably beginning with the presidency of Elwin Farwell he had ambitions for the college to be a larger college and he was quite successful at that time there was a smaller percentage of high school graduates that went off to college we were just beginning that period in which more and more graduates in high school wanted to go further and he took advantage of that and used all sorts of techniques to attract them to Luther and he was quite successful I'd be curious about that because of course you know one of the things about the current state of the college is that they've had some challenges it's always a challenging environment for enrollment but I'm kind of talking about the present day I mean curious to see like what your assessment is what made Farwell such an effective recruiter of students in terms of admissions to be able to grow that student body at the time that he did well I think he enlivened the recruitment process so he got out there himself actually and identified students promising students and probably awarded them significant financial aid and he urged the members of the admissions staff to get out there and work harder and perhaps they got a little unaggressive and just took for granted that people would come on their own and they didn't have to do work very hard at it yes thought he insisted they had to work very hard at it and he was very successful he delivered one number that just jumped off the page to me is that in one year he raised the enrollment up 200 students or something like that in the early 60s yeah from the 400s to just over 600 that's just miraculous yeah and the incoming students were virtually half of the student body wow in the following year but you know that tapered off a bit and we had a slight decline in enrollment during the 1970s not a major decline we were still about 2000 but in the early 1990s when everybody thought that enrollment was going to decline suddenly it almost started to grow that was when George Anderson became our president and I don't know that we did anything special to encourage an increase in enrollment but we were up to about 2,500 at one time and the part of Regents was talking about restricting enrollment and we had gotten too big and we didn't couldn't adequately handle that many students well I was there at that time and one of the things they were doing is they were housing students in the TV lounge so they were kind of chock-full which so that's too many students well that was happening elsewhere too yeah it was happening at the University of Iowa wow temporarily they would have to put them in dormitory lounges but then after a number of students dropped out early in the semester they would have enough room for all of them that's an oofta for sure yeah so you mentioned farwell he in the history of the college I think correct me if I'm wrong one of the longest serving presidents of Luther college I believe it was you said about 62 to 82 does that sound about right in terms of this term of service yeah 19 years 63 he came in 63 beginning of the second semester you'd mentioned some of the skills and recruitment or if you could kind of identify what were his skills that made him such an effective leader of the college while he served I think he's widely viewed as one of our more successful presidents at Luther college with a firsthand seat observing him what made him such a special leader for the college well he he had been trained he had been educated in higher education administration at the University of California I think in Berkeley yeah that's he had his doctorate in higher education administration so he was a kind in a sense he was a kind of pioneer in seeking new vision for colleges of this sort and he perceived that Luther college had the promise of being a really good college and more attractive to a larger group of students and so he was very aggressive in whitening the constituency or broadening the constituency and one of the things he did was to aggressively recruit African-American students which began in the end of the 60s and at one point we had up to almost a hundred African-American students and other colleges weren't doing that in quite the same aggressive fashion well nowadays they do yeah but back then they didn't and so he took she took chances and well it was it was also a period of time as I said before it was a period of time in which higher education was growing generally through the country there were more students coming to colleges and universities and there was a lot of building a lot of federal support for new buildings the library for example at college was partially funded by a federal grant and dormitories were funded by the federal government in part at least and other colleges were doing the same thing so it was an optimistic age but of course then the the event on war it seemed intervened and and the civil rights movement and the coming together of those two movements caused a very upsetting atmosphere at many colleges yes because there were lots of protest movements against the war in Vietnam yes it was happening generally yeah and it upset the life of life in college yes but the civil rights movement was also a controversial thing and it was it gave us a really more upsetting than than what is happening now with the pro-Palestinian demonstrations at some of our universities yes I mean there's been a lot of talk about how disturbing this is and yet unprecedented it is but it isn't really on president because there were a lot more serious things happening on college campuses in the late 60s and early 70s yes it's absolutely a madison sit-ins and that sort of thing so what I love about Farwell is he's this very successful leader made a real effort to diversify the campus to bring in new voices but at the same time he seemed to have kind of an iron cloud vision also of the other traditions so he kind of upheld the traditions of the college while at the same time kind of enhancing it through new visions new new voices at the college I wonder if you could think about how effective he was to maintain tradition versus moving forward yeah that's kind of the secret of his success because he was not rejecting the supporters of the college who had preceded him I mean he honored them and showed them proper respect and so they joined the movement gladly in that it resisted so much because they found him to be amenable to friendship and cooperation and so nobody felt threatened by that yes I want quote that you pulled from Farwell I'd ask you to comment on and we'll kind of follow up in conclusion here in terms of where you maybe see the college going into the future if you want to comment on that but I love this quote from Farwell that he made his stance on the role of the Christian church at a liberal arts college Farwell says this is at 159 of transformed by the journey he says a Christian college should be the avant-garde of the church it should lead and challenge the church to fulfill its task it should seek and receive the best in terms of the use and turn it and and in turn it should turn out the best in terms of educated leadership we are not to teach all ideas all concepts all doctrines we are here to proclaim that we have no fear of any idea any concept any doctrine we are not here to modify color or distort ideas so that they become safe for students we are here to develop students who will be safe for ideas isn't that good I can see why you think that yes it's a very very nice statement so I don't know if you does that you have any response to that in terms of that particular quote well I suppose that you may have perceived that there was certain resistance to change especially theological change you know the the 19th century saw the development of a historical approach historical approach to the tradition and so the tradition was particularly in Germany this movement started in Europe the tradition is subject to investigation to criticism to development as opposed to the notion that it's a given thing that is permanently in place and we can't change it because it's set to us by God yes you know the Bible is the the Word of God and they tended to mean that in quite almost literal terms and so any idea or any approach that raises questions about history the reconstruction of history or the critique of history or any such approach was resisted but over time you have a new group of leaders coming along younger people coming along who weren't educated in that tradition or weren't bound in that tradition and who are no longer bothered by critical approaches and so it the the problem sort of solved itself because you have new people coming in who have new ideas new ways of approaching the tradition new ways of presenting it and and are not threatened by change i love it well that's so good you know when i was in law school i absolutely hated the socratic method and the reason why i did is that i thought well i'm here to learn the law so you're it's your job as the professor to teach me the law not to ask me questions about what i think i don't care what i think i want to know what you think and i want to learn the law now i hear i am 30 years later and i think all life is is one giant question and one of the things that learned in connection with the church that it never really occurred to me is that Jesus rarely ever gave us the answer if you ask him a question he would ask a question or if he gave an answer it was kind of at a parable he wouldn't ever give the answer and so the only thing i can do with that is just say the question itself is it is a sacred act and i think that's kind of what he's getting at um i don't know if you have any thoughts on that the question is a good thing not a bad thing exactly and i think he honored that in his work and encouraged it and in others yes and i don't know whether this is where we're hitting the home stretch here but the other thing i actually loved about it we've talked about what it means to be a christian in the context of luther but what does it mean to be a lutheran and i love this quote that you have it's called a concluding word in this book transformed by the journey and it is on intellectual inquiry in the lutheran movement and this is at page 294 of transform by the journey it says the reformation movement which which acquired the tag lutheran was born in a university setting mark luther himself was an intellectual and encouraged the development of education at forl he argued that the health of any community depends on having many able learned wise honorable and well-educated citizens consequently the additive lutheran implies an appreciation of the life of the mind as fundamental to human experience it does not set limits on intellectual inquiry but rather promotes its free exercise nothing is close to study and all academic disciplines are freely explored on their own terms did you write that well yes i wrote that oh my god that is so good well all that that is fabulous i love that quote i included at the end of the book the texts of rosiaur i had prepared what was the title of the brosiaur what is luther college or something like that yes so i had prepared that a couple of years before at the request of president augerson and his assistant uh and so that was used in the the uh introduction of new new faculty at luther college they used it as a kind of study document for what is luther college or what is it all about and they use that for a number of years and i think i i even did a revised version at one point when they made uh created a new mission statement so that the version that you were using would be in harmony with a new mission statement so that's one of the things i worked on in my retirement and we decided well this would be a good thing to include at the end um as a kind of concluding statement and for the for the listeners of this rocket cast that's why you've got to get this book you can still get it it's still in print at the lutheran at the luther college bookstore um the reason why i love this is it's so true to lutheranism and you know in the modern era we we don't we think that the lutherans don't really like change you know that joke about how many lutherans does it take to change a light bulb change but yet luther was this revolutionary figure who was all about change and all about provocatively changing the status quo and in an in an academic way in which we can all participate in this exercise so wow that that was just so spot on and um i just thank you for that for that work and for this book and you can buy the book at a great reduced price and it's a bargain and i'm not just saying that it is so good and you can get books from this so like i i actually bought a book on lauer larson at a garage sale about a year ago i haven't read it yet um i'm also at some point going to read the diary of uh lurs bith corn um but there's just so much rich history here of a region of this college and of as a lutheran it is absolutely love it and i think what really hit me with that is people kind of fight that tag lutheranism and i think about what what are we really fighting about that this lutheranism is this revolutionary idea that invites change that invites inquiry and that these align with a lot of people i think when they when they react to that um so thank you so much for sharing your time with us i'm wondering whether in conclusion whether you could kind of thought where do you you know at with all the experience you have of luther college where would you like to see the college go into the future i think we all have opinions if on luther college where where do you kind of like to see it go into the future if you have any thoughts on that well i think uh we will rediscover the value of a lutheral arts college after a period of time in which a lot of people have been raising questions about that um because the development of a critical intellect is very important to the health of society in general and uh it's perfectly legitimate to be trained to be a plumber a carpenter all sorts of other things that are necessary to the well-being of people uh but we do need to have people who have studied the history and tradition of critical thought and critical thinking and i think liberal arts colleges are in a good position to continue that tradition and i hope that they succeed some of them will some of them won't but in general i think that's a very important part of higher education in society as a whole it's some spot on you know one of the criticisms of the liberal arts education will is what are you going to do with your english degree or what are you going to do with your music major but one of the magic things about the liberal arts degree is surprisingly enough all of my friends that went to luther college they're all doing really interesting things and none of them are employed so in response to that i don't know exactly what you're going to do with it but that you will do it in a creative purpose-driven way does follow from that education yeah and you become the sort of person who is interesting and creative and uh contributes significantly to the wealth and health of society in general transformed by the journey what a way to conclude this particular podcast will thank you so much you're very welcome and thank you for all the wonderful friends that have tuned in to the rocking cast
In this episode, I interviewed Dr. Wilfred Bunge, professor emeritus of religion at Luther College.
Dr. Bunge served as a professor of religion from 1962 to 1999 and was the co-author of Transformed by the Journey, a book covering 150 years of history from its founding through its sesquicentennial date of 2011.
Dr. Bunge discussed the writing of Transformed by the Journey and shared his own journey from a farm outside of Spring Grove, Minnesota to Luther College to Harvard and back to Decorah, Iowa serving over three decades in the religion department.
For those of you who love ideas, the liberal arts, and Luther College, this is the episode for you! In one hour, we covered all things Luther College from Wil's own journey at Luther and his observations about other leading lights in Luther history including Vilhelm and Elisabeth Koren, J.W. Ylvisaker, Elwin Farwell, and Weston Noble.
Much gratitude to Dr. Bunge for sharing his journey and for his service to Luther College!