For over a century, Luther Seminary has called its beautiful campus in St. Paul, Minnesota, home. Apart from its buildings in the Collegiate Gothic style, the campus is also the site of the log cabin Old Muskego Church. The chapel was constructed in 1844 by devoutly Lutheran Norwegian immigrants in Wisconsin. In 1904, the chapel was transported, piece by piece, to Luther Seminary’s campus.
Luther’s students and faculty are now leaving all of that behind. Last week, the seminary’s board of directors announced that they have voted to sell the campus. The Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal has reported that the value of the site is greater than $8.7 million.
While the seminary was once the bustling home of those aspiring to become pastors in the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination, it has in recent years grown increasingly quiet. More and more students have opted to simply take classes online on a part-time basis. Meanwhile, international students have become a large portion of those populating the physical campus. Luther Seminary remains, however, the ELCA’s largest seminary.
Over the decades, those aspiring to be pastors in mainline denominations such as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have grown increasingly older. The number of pastors who work full-time jobs in addition to their time preaching on Sundays has also grown. Online learning options therefore make more sense to this majority for whom being a pastor is a capstone achievement rather than a life mission.
The seminary is seeking to purchase a much smaller physical location in Minneapolis, at which “periodic in-person learning” will take place. Evidently, the online model will take over, with occasional seminars to reinforce the seminary’s mission. This model, said the seminary’s president, the Rev. Robin Steinke, will make the school more “nimble.” She explained, “The way students learn and prepare for ministry has changed. Now is the right time to align our resources with that reality and evolve how we deliver on our mission.”
Luther Seminary has experienced an endless downward spiral of lower and lower enrollments alongside financial difficulties. Its enrollment has fallen from more than 600 students in 2007 to 183 students in 2024, when measured by full-time student equivalency, according to the Association of Theological Schools. Its current president arrived at the school after the previous president resigned following multimillion-dollar deficits. Many, if not most, mainline seminaries have experienced similar fates.
Luther Seminary’s decline also matches that of the ELCA more generally. According to religion statistician Ryan Burge, from 2003 to 2023, the membership of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America declined 46 percent. While the ELCA had just under 5 million members in 2003, that number fell to 2.79 million baptized members in 2023. (RELATED: How a Church Fought Back Against a Liberal Takeover — And Won)
What is astounding about Luther Seminary’s decline is that almost all students receive a full-tuition scholarship. Even still, potential students don’t think losing several years of income is worth the value of the degree. The problem, at base, is that the ELCA is struggling to attract candidates for ordination.
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The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is a left-leaning denomination. It has, since its formation, ordained women as pastors. In 2009, the denomination allowed “LGBTQIA+ individuals” to be ordained. On abortion, the denomination says, “A developing life in the womb does not have an absolute right to be born, nor does a pregnant woman have an absolute right to terminate a pregnancy.” Officially, the church says that it “lacks consensus” on the topic of homosexuality, but the reality is much different.
This Pride Month, the week before the ELCA’s largest seminary announced the upcoming closure of its campus, the denomination’s presiding bishop, Elizabeth Eaton, delivered a message to her church in which she said the teachings of the apostle Paul and Martin Luther call people to “honor the full dignity of every person: every sex, every gender, and every body.” (RELATED: How Naivety Is Allowing Unbiblical Progressivism Into Evangelical Churches)
“We have a chance to renew our commitments to the LGBTQIA+ community,” she further said, “to speak with grace and unity that we are a part of God’s great creation.”
On its website, Luther Seminary prominently features a “land acknowledgment” about its campus: “Luther Seminary is on Miní Sóta Makhóčhe, the homelands of the Dakhóta Oyáte. The Ojibwe, Ho-Chunk, Cheyenne, Oto, Iowa, and the Sac & Fox also inhabited Minnesota land.”
Perhaps Luther Seminary will decide to give back its stolen land.
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