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United Lutheran Seminary has established the Bengt Runo Hoffman Chair of Lutheran Spirituality and Ethics, a fully endowed faculty position dedicated to teaching, scholarship, and formation grounded in Lutheran theology and lived faith.
With a private gift of $2.3 million, the Hoffman Chair represents a permanent investment in preparing leaders to engage the Church and the world with theological depth and thoughtful ethical discernment.
As ULS celebrates its bicentennial and looks toward its third century, the chair reflects an enduring commitment to the people at the heart of theological education and to the kind of leadership an increasingly complex world requires.
“The establishment of the Hoffman Chair is both an investment in the future of theological education at ULS and an affirmation of what we believe faithful leadership requires, and as a Luther scholar myself I am delighted that our late colleague Bengt Hoffman will be honored in this distinctive way” said the Rev. Dr. R. Guy Erwin, president of United Lutheran Seminary.
Theological education brings intellectual rigor and the formation of faithful leaders into conversation. Those preparing to serve must learn to think deeply and systematically, wrestle seriously with the moral and ethical questions of their time, and discern how theological convictions take shape in lives of faith and service.
That work cannot be separated from spiritual formation. Ethics and spirituality together shape how leaders think, discern, and serve.
“The formation of faithful leaders requires us to attend both to the life of the mind and the life of faith,” said the Rev. Dr. Teresa Smallwood, vice president for academic affairs and dean. “We need leaders who can think deeply and systematically, engage the moral and ethical questions of their time, and bring that discernment into the Church and the world. The Hoffman Chair strengthens our capacity to form those kinds of leaders.”
The Hoffman Chair will provide sustained faculty leadership in this work, supporting teaching and scholarship in Lutheran spirituality and ethics as well as mentoring, research, writing, and engagement with the wider Church.
Its reach will also extend beyond the classroom through public lectures, retreats, scholarship, and resources for clergy, lay leaders, congregations, and communities.
The chair is named in honor of the Rev. Dr. Bengt Runo Hoffman (1913–1997), a Lutheran pastor, theologian, educator, missionary, and ecumenical leader whose life and work brought rigorous scholarship into conversation with a deeply lived spirituality.
Born in Sweden and ordained in the Church of Sweden in 1938, Hoffman served as a parish pastor before his ministry took him into the wider Church and world. Following World War II, he served as a missionary in China and later worked with the World Council of Churches in Geneva in refugee and postwar reconstruction efforts. He also served as director of Lutheran World Service and earned his Ph.D. from Yale University.
Hoffman joined the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg in 1967 and was installed as Professor of Ethics and Ecumenics in 1969. At Gettysburg, his teaching and scholarship brought together Christian ethics, ecumenism, spirituality, and the relationship between faith and moral life. He was particularly influential in exploring the contemplative and experiential dimensions of Lutheran theology, including in Luther and the Mystics and, posthumously, Theology of the Heart.
Beyond his scholarship, Hoffman was remembered as a mentor, retreat leader, poet, and teacher who encouraged students to connect intellectual formation with prayer, compassion, and service. Naming the chair for Hoffman carries that legacy forward, joining the study of ethics with the formation of a faith that is lived in relationship with God and neighbor.
Naming the chair for Hoffman carries that legacy forward through a new generation of students and leaders. His commitment to Lutheran spirituality, grace, sacramental life, and lived faith will continue to inform teaching and scholarship devoted to questions that remain vital for the Church.
An endowed chair provides permanent support for a faculty position and the work surrounding it. The principal of the Hoffman Chair endowment will remain invested, with annual earnings supporting the work of the chair in perpetuity.
The $2.3 million founding gift fully endows the Hoffman Chair and provides a permanent foundation for its work. Building on that extraordinary commitment, ULS will seek to grow the endowment to $3.5 million, expanding the resources available to support teaching, scholarship, formation, and engagement with the wider Church and world.
That permanence takes on particular significance as United Lutheran Seminary marks 200 years of theological education.
Across generations, the Seminary’s mission has depended upon teachers and mentors who challenge students to think carefully, engage deeply, ask difficult questions, and carry what they learn into lives of faithful service. The Hoffman Chair ensures that spirituality and ethics will remain an important part of that work for generations to come.
As ULS enters its third century, the Bengt Runo Hoffman Chair of Lutheran Spirituality and Ethics is an enduring investment in people prepared to bring faith into conversation with the moral questions of their time and to serve the Church and the world with wisdom and discernment.
A $2.3 million founding gift has fully endowed the Bengt Runo Hoffman Chair of Lutheran Spirituality and Ethics. Additional gifts will help ULS grow the endowment toward $3.5 million, expanding the chair’s capacity to support teaching, scholarship, formation, and engagement with the wider Church for generations to come.
