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.jpg) October
19, 2008 Guest – Stephen Schmidt
Program: Honesty and Chronic Illness
Stephen Arthur Schmidt was born March 28, 1933 in
Jefferson City, Missouri to Henry T. and Bertha (Korsmeyer) Schmidt. His father
was a truck gardener who farmed 40 acres. As a child Stephen worked alongside
his dad in the family business.
He attended Trinity Lutheran Grammar School and Jefferson
City High School. After a year of collegiate studies at the University of Miami,
FL he entered Concordia College, River Forest, IL in 1952 and graduated three
years later.
In 1962 he received a call to teach at his
alma mater, Concordia College. During his decade long service at
Concordia he chaired the department of education and briefly the
department of theology and education. While at Concordia, Stephen
received a three-year leave of absence in the mid-sixties to pursue
doctoral studies in the joint degree program of Columbia University and
Union Theological seminary, NY where he studied under Philip Phenix,
Lawrence Cremin, and Robert Lynn. His doctoral dissertation focused on
the work of Paul E. Kretzmann, a paradigmatic Lutheran religious
educator. Stephen received his doctorate in 1969.
His final years at Concordia coincided with a
controversy in the Missouri Synod culminating in the formation of
Seminex (Concordia Seminary in Exile), a group of liberal seminary
teachers who did not agree with the Missouri Synod's interpretation of
scriptural inerrancy. He, along with many other faculty members in the
synod's Concordia, left their positions, often in jeopardy, as a result
of their beliefs.
Next began Stephen's nearly thirty-year career
teaching in Roman Catholic higher education. In 1976 he was hired at
Mundelein College, Chicago, IL, a Catholic women's college operated by
the sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM). In addition to
their undergraduate school, Mundelein College had a graduate program in
religious studies which attracted large numbers of people to its campus
every summer. Stephen was appointed director of the Graduate Program in
Religious Studies at Mundelein in Spring, 1978. In 1991 Mundelein
College was absorbed by Loyola University Chicago, and Stephen then
joined the faculty of the prestigious Institute of Pastoral Studies, a
program in the graduate school that education adults for ministry, and
taught.
In retirement Stephen continued to teach one
course a year at Loyola's Institute of Pastoral Studies until 2005. He
has received a grant from Wheat Ridge Ministries to work with Advocate
Lutheran Hospital, Park Ridge, IL reexamining their mission and values.
He also serves as the editor of Stauros Notebook, a quarterly
publication focusing on theological meanings of illness and suffering,
sponsored by the Roman Catholic religious order, the Congregation of the
Passion.
Throughout his career, Stephen has been an
active member of Grace Lutheran Church, River Forest, Illinois. |
