Image: Danielle Dokman leads her congregation in Suriname.

Christianity had always been part of Danielle Dokman’s family, but it wasn’t until she was a young adult that she discovered just how big a part it would play in her life. Dokman pursued an undergraduate degree in sociology in her native Suriname. At the same time, she was also involved in the Lutheran World Federation. In her early twenties, she traveled to a council meeting in Colombia where young people were asked to give the devotions.

“Up until that time, I’d only been a liturgist in the church,” Dokman recalls. “I’d never done anything like a reflection. It was very daunting, and I was quite scared. I thought my voice would get high and squeaky and all that. But for some reason, it felt like this was the place I needed to be, and I did the reflection. Afterward, coming down from the podium, I felt in my heart this was what I needed to do. I needed to tell God’s people that God is still here.”

Dokman was driven to pursue her master’s degree in theology at the United Theological College of the West Indies in Jamaica. As a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Suriname, she wanted to contribute not only to academic work but also to addressing issues with churches in the Caribbean.

This led Dokman to start exploring Ph.D. programs. Many required her to be away from her home for six years. With a lack of pastors in her church, she knew leaving for that long would cause a hardship at home. She was drawn to the Luther Seminary Ph.D. program—which is funded by scholarships and includes a stipend—for several reasons, including the length of the program and the fact that she would only have to be away from Suriname for two years.

“When we apply for the scholarship, we as a church have to say what a person is going to do when they come back,” says Dokman, who is in the second year of the program. She is the recipient of the Rev. Mark and Kathleen Helge Endowed Scholarship, which was established in 2014 to support the theological education of international students at Luther Seminary.

“What we have agreed on is that I will continue to be a pastor in the church and do training for lay and clergy leaders to be able to work within the church. I will also do public theology to make our church more visible in society. I’ll be working mostly with our leaders to help equip them to do work within the church and continue with their work outside of the church.”

Reimagining the Ph.D.

In 2015, a task force was formed to craft a new, viable Ph.D. program at Luther to better serve students and the needs of the church. The former Ph.D. program had been suspended a few years prior.

“In this task force, I presented this view of a program where we will have the first year very intensive for the candidates coming to campus, moving as a cohort, taking different seminars, and so on,” says Professor Guillermo Hansen, Martin Luther King Jr. Chair for Justice and Christian Community, and director of advanced theological education at Luther. “Then, they return for two years to their country of origin or region, continuing with courses online, to then come back to finish their dissertation.

“This idea also made the program financially viable, especially considering we wanted to attract international students and domestic students with a global mindset.”

Kathryn Schifferdecker, professor and Elva B. Lovell Chair of Old Testament, said one of the major issues they heard about the former Ph.D. program from international leaders in the LWF and the World Council of Churches is that it took them away from their homes and churches for too long.

“We took those critiques seriously,” she says. “We didn’t want to westernize our international students. We wanted to equip them to be teachers and leaders in their own context.”

Hansen said about 70% of Ph.D. candidates are international, but scholars from North America with a global mindset are also ideal candidates for the competitive program, which is capped at six students per cohort.

“We want people interested in the global scenario, even though their dissertation might not be on that,” he says. “We Lutherans have moved in the last 20–30 years into a much more global self-consciousness, understanding ourselves as belonging to what we call a Lutheran global communion, instead of a federation of independent churches. Institutions here in the U.S., like Luther, can help assist the rest of the Lutheran community and our ecumenical partners by providing academic training of excellence for future faculty or teaching resources for churches around the world.”

Jeni Mullenix, program manager for advanced theological education, says doctoral candidates train to be leaders in their field, including professors who will lead and teach others. She says partner churches worldwide rely on Luther to help educate leaders for them, while Luther relies on those churches to identify candidates for the program.

“For our international students, it’s important for them to return to their home context so that when they’re doing their research, they’re not removed from it for such a large amount of time,” Mullenix says. “They also work with a contextual advisor—a native person in their context who has a Ph.D.”

Hansen said it’s essential for international students to spend part of the program researching and studying in their home context with a contextual supervisor who helps students streamline and focus on the contextual components of their research.

“It’s about understanding that the repository of knowledge does not lie here,” says Hansen. “It’s a way of breaking this classical view that in order to truly learn, you have to come here and stay here. But no, there’s a lot of expertise and knowledge in the regions where these candidates come from. We want to acknowledge and incentivize that. It’s a different kind of community that takes shape, especially with the academic advisor and the contextual supervisor always in communication.”

He adds, “We want students to start to think with different categories—that their context matters, and, ultimately, the location for theological reflection and biblical interpretation is their context. The context is integrated into this process of learning, and they are involved academically and scholarly at this level. The context has to be mediated somehow, it has to be interpreted, and has to be theologically engaged.”

Turning the Focus

Ee Yan Tan ’23 Ph.D. was a parish worker at a Lutheran congregation in her home country of Malaysia doing nonprofit work around freedom of religion and interreligious relations when she embarked on a search for a Ph.D. program. Although Tan, a former lawyer, already had an M.A. with a concentration in the Old Testament as well as an M.Div., she wanted to further her studies, especially after she learned the Malaysian Theological Seminary was searching for faculty. Tan, who grew up in the Lutheran church, heard about Luther’s Ph.D. program when Hansen visited Malaysia to introduce the program.

“The Malaysian seminary was really interested in this program because it allowed one of their faculty members to also work with me as a contextual adviser from my home country,” notes Tan, who says the financial aid offered was helpful as well. “And I did end up working with a faculty member from the seminary.”

Tan was accepted into the first reimagined Ph.D. cohort that was formed in 2018. Her thesis was “Theology of Election in Prophetic Literature,” a biblical theme she could apply to her context in Malaysia.

“The program gave me time for in-depth studies,” says Tan, whose academic advisor was Schifferdecker. “It gave me access to resources in terms of books, professors, and the academic community.”

One of the things Tan appreciated about the program was the mix of international students in her cohort. “It was interesting to hear from people from other cultures and backgrounds,” she says. “We had such rich conversations during our coursework together.”

Tan was recently hired as a faculty member at the Malaysian Theological Seminary to teach the Old Testament. She also preaches and is starting a youth ministry at a Lutheran congregation.

“This Ph.D. program opens the door for students of the global church to work with theologians in their own country,” she says. “For churches in Malaysia, where theological education is not as advanced or as developed as in other countries, we rarely think about the resources already in our country. But this program turns the focus in that direction to draw on the gifts we already have in our own country.”

Planning for the Future

Last year, Dokman shared a plenary presentation at the LWF’s preassembly of the Latin American, Caribbean, and North American Region in Bogotá, Colombia. In September, she was invited to preach at the opening worship of the LWF’s 13th assembly in Krakow, Poland. “Danielle exudes joy,” says Schifferdecker. “She’s already a global leader, and my expectation is that this degree will open more doors for her to continue in leadership. It will open doors for teaching and equipping leaders in the Lutheran church and other Christian churches in Suriname. In addition, our Ph.D. students like Danielle and Ee Yan bless our domestic students at Luther as they teach them about biblical interpretation in the global church.”

“I’m excited to see all of them becoming teachers in their contexts and raising up even more leaders,” she continues. “What the Ph.D. helps to do as well is to fill that gap of scholarship from the Global South. I could see Danielle or Ee Yan publishing their dissertations, for instance, as books. To have biblical interpretation from the perspective of women in the Global South is very valuable for the whole church.”

Last year, Dokman studied Caribbean theology and biblical interpretation in Jamaica with her contextual advisor, Dr. Oral Thomas, president of the United Theological College of the West Indies, while working on her doctoral area of emphasis—biblical prophecy in the Old Testament. When she finishes the Ph.D. program, she’s looking forward to figuring out how to make the Lutheran church in Suriname function better and be more active within society.

“During my time as a pastor, a lot more issues concerning the church in the Caribbean came up,” says Dokman. “The hunger became even more to want to do something to lend my voice not just to the academic work but also to the churches in the Caribbean, for us to address issues. In my church, for instance, I feel like it doesn’t have a voice. Public theology is not our forte. I want to be able to contribute a positive spin to how my church interacts with society on this front.”

Hansen believes Luther’s Ph.D. program is making a difference by attracting strong candidates who will play a major role in teaching around the world. The program wouldn’t be possible without the support of Luther President Robin Steinke and the faculty, who do a “magnificent job,” he says, of engaging students on multiple levels.

“I’m very confident that our students are going to play and are already playing a critical, fundamental role—not just for their churches—but in the shaping of the traits of global theology as well,” Hansen says.