For more than 20 years the Summer Language Institute (SLI) has served as the welcoming point to theological education in the U.S. for MTS and LSTC international students, their spouses and children.  Each year the program includes varied readings and themes, but at its core, the SLI works to create a dialogue between former strangers and between our group and the residents of Chicago’s racial and ethnically eclectic neighborhoods. SLI students encounter not only the challenges that theological study in the U.S. pose, but the deep cultural differences that they will need to sort through in order to live well and negotiate an ever-present unfamiliar new life and study in a new context. 

As a group the SLI students have focused on interfaith dialogue, immigration, love, the Decalogue, homelessness, race, and sexuality, among many other topics.  Above all though, the SLI experience is about developing loving and respectful relations among students from vastly different backgrounds who arrive here in Chicago and ultimately form a community where the strengths in differences find expression and meaning.

For more information about the SLI, contact Rob Worley at rworley@mccormick.edu.