Save the date to join us for CCLE XXV July 15-18, 2025 at Concordia University Wisconsin. This will be a milestone event as our 25th conference. We will be celebrating the CCLE’s work so far in restoring classical Lutheran education and looking toward the future!
Bio: Thomas James Korcok (pronounced Korchok) (b. 1961) has a B.A. in History and Political Science from Concordia College, Ann Arbor, Michigan; an M.Div. from Concordia Lutheran Theological Seminary, St. Catharines, Ontario; an M.Phil. from the University of Glasgow in Scotland; and a Ph.D from the Vrije University in Amsterdam. A parish pastor for over 20 years, Dr. Korcok also served as a reserve chaplain to the Lincoln and Welland Regiment of the Canadian Armed Forces retiring in 2021.
In 2001, Dr. Korcok developed Grace Evangelical Lutheran School in Pembroke, Ontario, and taught Logic to the upper grades. This initiated an interest that led to researching the application of the Liberal Arts in an elementary setting. From 2013-2021 he served as Associate Professor of Theology at Concordia University Chicago. There he developed the Center for the Advancement of Lutheran Liberal Arts (CALLA) and oversaw the Classical Lutheran Pedagogy program. In January of 2021 Dr. Korcok accepted a call to serve as Associate Professor at Concordia Lutheran Theological Seminary in St. Catharines, Ontario.
Dr. Korcok is the author of Lutheran Education: From Wittenberg to the Future (CPH, 2013) and Serpents in the Classroom (1517 Publishing, 2022)
Dr. Korcok has many different interests including white-water canoeing, camping, skiing and private aviation.
Presentation Title: “Engaging The World Around Us”
Presentation Description: How are we to engage in the world around us? In these times when discourse is so polarized, that is a difficult question to answer. It can be answered if we rigorously apply our theology to our learning outcomes. When properly understood, Lutheran Classical Education should equip our students to uniquely engage in the world in a manner that is beneficial to the church and their neighbour. In doing so, students become not just passive observers but active participants in societal discourse, capable of contributing in a godly way.
Bio: E. Christian Kopff is a graduate of Haverford College PA (B.A. 1968, summa cum laude) and received his doctorate in Classics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has taught at the University of Colorado Boulder since 1973 in the Classics Department and the Honors Program. From Fall 2004 to 2011 he served as Founding Director of the Center for Western Civilization. He retired in June 2019. As a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, he edited a critical edition of the Greek text of Euripides’ Bacchae (Teubner, 1982). For ISIBooks he wrote The Devil Knows Latin: Why America Needs the Classical Tradition (1999) and translated Josef Pieper, Tradition: Concept and Claim (2008). He has received the Hero of Conscience Award from the American Freedom Alliance for “his commitment to the advancement of
Western ideals and values” (2012) and the designation Magister Magnus from the Consortium for Classical Lutheran Education (2018). He works with the Classicists of the University of Urbino, Italy on the meter and colometry of the choruses of ancient Greek tragedy. He studies ancient texts and traditions, from science to Sophocles, that remain important, including what the ancient Athenians called democracy and the
religion of the Bible.
Presentation Title: “Cicero and Classical Lutheran Education“
Presentation Description: Classical Lutheran education structures students’ world through teaching the arts of language (trivium) and mathematics (quadrivium) and expands their world and vocabulary by teaching the languages and literatures of Greece and Rome. It also introduces students to great people, such as Jesus and Socrates. This talk will explore the importance of another central figure in language, education, philosophy and politics, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC). Cicero was a central role model for the Italian Renaissance of Petrarch and the Florentine Republic. He haunted the imagination of Luther and Melanchthon, whose praise of Cicero converted Protestant Europe from admiring Aristotle. In the eighteenth century he inspired the lives and accomplishments of figures as diverse as Montesquieu, David Hume, John Adams and Edmund Burke. As the great historian, Charles Austin Beard, showed, Cicero’s character and speeches helped America confront the challenge of becoming a republic with an empire in the early twentieth century. Can he achieve a similar position again in our age?
Bio: Rev. John E. Hill is the husband of Angela, father of five married children, and grandfather of 17 grandchildren, born and unborn. He was born and baptized in Paris, Texas and confirmed in Plano, Texas. He holds a B.A. (1986) from Concordia College, Ann Arbor, MI, and a M.Div. (1990) and S.T.M (2009) from Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, IN. He served as pastor of Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Forbes, ND (1990–1995) and Mount Hope Lutheran Church and School, Casper, WY (1996–2015). He has served as President of the Wyoming District LCMS since 2015. His theological pursuits center around exegetical and systematic theology. He takes great interest in Classical Lutheran education and loves cross-country skiing and backpacking.
Presentation Title: “Once and Future Lutheran Education”
Presentation Description: The milestone anniversary of 25 years is a good time to remember and to assess the challenges and opportunities we have faced in the restoration of classical education to our Lutheran schools and homeschools. We have grown! Even more, it is
an opportunity to consider and prepare for the challenges and opportunities of the next 25 years. The marriage of classical and Lutheran is a practical matter for every Lutheran home and church, parent and pastor. Here is an assessment of our present and future path forward.
The annual conference attracts pastors, administrators, teachers, homeschool parents, students, and higher education faculty from al over the country who are interested in classical education, classical curricula, or Lutheran theological materials.
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