Mission and Vision

Mission

The Lumen Research Institute is a global collective of Christian scholars who pursue questions of social concern through collaborative and interdisciplinary research efforts.

Vision

Global Collective – Fellows participating in the work of the Institute are drawn from colleges and universities around the world. As a result, the questions they pursue come with the advantage of engagement from a host of culturally diverse perspectives.

Christian Scholars – In order to grapple with the full complexity of questions facing our global society today, Christianity and the perspectives it offers proves to be inherently necessary. On one level, the absence of a Christian perspective makes for an incomplete appraisal of reality. On another level, Christian scholarship provides a means whereby any grouping of academic disciplines can be brought together in fruitful dialogue.

Social Concern – Institute fellows pursue questions concerning the challenges people face in their everyday lives. These questions require more than pragmatic solutions because the human condition and the communities people populate necessitate broader consideration. Institute fellows address the challenges of human existence with regard to historical and contemporary wisdom as well as Christian understandings of the nature, purpose and ends of the created order.  

Collaborative – Just as one disciplinary perspective often proves to be insufficient, one person’s perspective often proves to be insufficient in relation to responding fully to questions facing society today. Institute fellows depend upon working together as they pursue a more appropriate appraisal of what our world can become.

Interdisciplinary – While the modern academy is in many ways still organized along disciplinary lines, the challenges people face in their everyday lives are not. Rarely is one disciplinary perspective sufficient. A web of disciplinary perspectives, representing a diversity of global perspectives, proves necessary.