GROWING into our values

he was succeeded by President James Kenneth Echols (19972011), who became LSTC’s first African American president and the first person of African descent to serve as president of a Lutheran seminary in North America.

During Echols’s tenure, the Center of Christian-Muslim Engagement for Peace and Justice, an endowed chair in ChristianMuslim studies and interfaith relations, and the Albert “Pete” Pero Jr. Multicultural Center were created.

It was also Echols who nominated Billman for the role of dean in 1999. In preparation for that position, the future dean interviewed every member of the faculty to hear their aspirations for the school and how they thought she might help those come to fruition.

Billman said what became clear after her faculty talks was a unanimous agreement to diversify the faculty. There were four faculty searches in the first full year of Billman’s deanship.

“We brought Professor Linda

Thomas to LSTC, our faculty’s first woman of color; Craig Satterlee, a white man who, as a legally blind scholar and teacher, challenged LSTC to address disability as an important aspect of inclusion; Dr. Antje Jackelén, a European white woman and professor of systematic theology/religion and science; and José R. Irizary, a Latino professor.”

This was a rock star line-up in the making. The faculty hired in 1999 and 2000 would later be named among the Who’s Who in the world of the Lutheran church. In addition to still teaching at LSTC, Dr. Thomas is the director of the Albert “Pete” Pero, Jr. and Cheryl Stewart Pero Center for Intersectionality Studies. Dr. Craig Satterlee serves as bishop of the North/West Lower Michigan Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Dr. Antje Jackelén recently concluded her term as the Archbishop of the Church of Sweden and is a Distinguished Affiliate Faculty adjunct professor of systematic theology/religion and Science at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. Dr. José

By Keisha T. Dyson

Irizary became President of Austin Theological Seminary in 2022. After all the hard work of hiring those faculty members, Billman says her work was not done. She quickly learned more support was needed to make the environment as welcoming and open as it was in the dream—a commitment that requires continued learning and renewed commitment.

Noticing the difficulty of talking openly about race, Billman and registrar Pat Bartley started what became known as the first Women of Color, White Women’s Dialogue Group Efforts were also made to initiate conversations about sexuality with the LGBTQIA+ community.

“When I started at LSTC, students were almost one hundred percent in the closet if they were gay or lesbian because they would not have stood a chance to be ordained if they were completely open about their sexual orientation. Trying to open conversations about that was a long and very careful process.”

Over time, Billman has come to believe that we grow into our values. “I see the stories I’ve told about the challenges we faced as hopeful I see them as LSTC making progress, and that progress needs to continue. And I believe it will continue as we keep practicing the values that unite us, trusting the calling God gave us to become a beloved community of both justice and compassion.”