Mission & History
Mission
As a center to support research and leadership education on
American religion, the Louisville Institute seeks to nurture inquiry and conversation
regarding the character, problems, contributions, and prospects of the historic
institutions and commitments of American Christianity. In all of its work, the Louisville
Institute is guided by its fundamental mission to enrich the religious life of American
Christians and to encourage the revitalization of their institutions, by bringing together
those who lead religious institutions with those who study them, so that the work of each
might inform and strengthen the other.
History
In late 1990, Lilly Endowment Inc. (an Indianapolis-based private philanthropic foundation) launched the Louisville Institute,
based at the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Created in 1937 by three
members of the Lilly family through gifts of stock in their pharmaceutical business, Eli
Lilly and Company, the Endowment supports the causes of religion, education, and community
development. The Religion Division of Lilly Endowment works with people and institutions
of promise to generate knowledge, communicate insights, nurture practices, and renew and
sustain institutions that help to make accessible and effective the religious resources
upon which a flourishing and humane society depends.
By sharing in that task, the Louisville Institute
expresses its own conviction that strong religious communities grounded in enduring
traditions of thought and practice are indispensable to a good society. As a program of
Lilly Endowment, the Louisville Institute builds upon the Endowment's long-standing
support of both leadership education and scholarly research on American religion,
including American Catholicism, American Protestantism, the historic African-American
churches, and the Hispanic religious experience.