The Director
Dr. Mary Jane Haemig serves as
Director of the Thrivent Reformation
Research Program. The Program makes available to researchers microforms of
16th and 17th century imprints that shed light on the European Reformation,
especially in Germany.
The collection, which includes over 42,000 titles, focuses on the Reformation as
an intellectual, spiritual, and practical movement — the ways that the
Reformers'
teachings were "translated" and used by the common people.
For Haemig the study of Reformation history
is deeply tied to the Gospel. She wants her students to understand that the
importance of the Reformation lies in the rediscovery of the basic Christian
truth: "God in Christ never ceases to reach out to humankind and give them all
that is His."
The reformers understood that "you don’t have to spend your time trying to reach
God because God has reached down to you. You should spend your time helping your
neighbor," Haemig says. "Or to put it another way: God doesn’t need your good
works. Your neighbor does."
The study of history gives people a familiarity with the challenges faced by the
church. "Similar problems, similar heresies, controversies and organizational
issues keep popping up," Haemig says. "Those who have no of sense of history are
like children without parents. Good parents give their children some sense of
how to handle life’s challenges. History does the same thing for the church."
Haemig joined the Luther Seminary faculty as Associate Professor of Church
History in 1999 after serving as Assistant Professor of Religion at Pacific
Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, where she had been since 1994. In
1991 and 1992 she served as a teaching fellow at Harvard Divinity School and
Harvard-Radcliffe Colleges.