BELONGING MEANS means each individual in this community is welcome and has a share in the seminary. If we fail to emphasize that we all belong to one another and to God through Christ, the seminary’s efforts at inclusion and welcome will shrink into assimilationism, tolerance, or one directional hospitality that treats members of the community as perpetual guests or as newcomers who must adapt to fit in. Diversity and inclusion can be improved through policies and initiatives. A shared experience of belonging to one another and to the seminary’s mission requires more: everyone in the community bears responsibility to transform our common culture. If each person is to claim the community as theirs, it will take more than an ethos of politeness. Just as Jesus addresses each one who belongs to his flock by name, a culture of belonging can come about when no one exists as an “other.” When people belong, everyone’s distinctive identity, contributions, and value receive recognition. Institutional canons or longstanding traditions must be reexamined to rid them of prejudicial impulses and outcomes. Those reexaminations are especially incumbent on the seminary’s faculty, staff, and administrators, who steward the institutional culture over time.
A CHRISTIAN PRACTICE: Baptism. Baptism joins us to the living Christ and to every other person who belongs to his body. Through baptism God puts to death all conventional standards people use to measure or protect value and privilege. The waters of baptism do not dissolve or dilute anyone’s individuality and distinctive identity; instead, those aspects of who each of us is, with an identity in Christ, infuse the greater body of Christ with expressions of new life and new possibilities. As a result, we commit to one another as companions joined in unity, not uniformity.
~ from Luther Seminary's Calling to ABIDE