Why a look at Syriac Orthodoxy?

Because using the term "a closer look" would have been too generous

A discovery I didn’t realize needed to be made

To Ph.D. or not to Ph.D.—that was the question

Shortly after I informed my Senior Vice President at my software company that I would soon retire from a job I had had for the past two decades, I started looking for Ph.D. programs.

My seminary education had been completed with a Master of Arts in Religion in Biblical Studies—focus: Old Testament—and a Master of Divinity in Missiology. I had wanted to start a Ph.D. right after finishing seminary. However, beginning a Ph.D. program wasn’t in the cards for ten years because I was gainfully employed. In addition, several of my seminary professors had wanted to recruit me into Ph.D. programs. Still, time and money were the showstoppers, especially since I had become the primary breadwinner in our house.

Once I was no longer working, I decided to pursue a Ph.D. However, suddenly the financial part was once again the question to be solved. Many Ph.D. programs in the US are simply unaffordable for someone my age who will not benefit from many years of teaching at a university level. I initially looked into Ph.D. programs in South Africa. Along the way, I realized I did not have enough Hebrew under my seminary belt to focus on the Old Testament. In the interim, Dr. Ed Smither invited me to look at the Ph.D. in Intercultural Studies at Columbia International University. Dr. Smither was one of my former professors from seminary days. It seemed a perfect fit to combine my love of biblical studies and missiology. Sign me up! I was accepted into the program and began in August 2021.

A dissertation topic had to be decided upon

One of the challenges of finding a dissertation topic is that you want to find a topic with an authentic research need. The beauty of my Ph.D. program is that it guides you through narrowing down what a) interests you, b) has real-life application, and c) has actual room for research. After thinking about three scenarios, I suddenly had a brain flash! Having lived in Germany for many years of my life (yes, I am German-born and -raised), at one point, we rented an apartment next to a house in which Aramean families lived. Our son was about second grade then, and the boys from the families next door would come to play at our apartment or go over there.

Sadly, I couldn’t communicate with our son’s friend’s mom, who would occasionally bring me delicious food. All I could do was thank her profusely for loving on my tummy! Unfortunately, she didn’t speak German, and I didn’t speak what she spoke. I don’t believe I even knew what it was she spoke. I knew the families had come from Turkey and were called Arameans by everyone. I figured they must be some kind of Turks. I am not sure I gave it that much thought at the time. My dad would tell me they spoke Aramaic, as Jesus had done. I was not quite sure of their religion, but it seemed to be Christian of some sort, not Muslim.

I noticed that the German neighbors below us, who had a gorgeous Golden Retriever, would let the German neighbor kids walk him, but not the Aramaean children. I’d also hear comments from German neighbors with fruit trees that the Arameans had torn the fruit off their tree and similar statements. It bothered me. As my husband is American, what did they say about us, or were we “Western” enough to pass?

The longer I thought about these families, the more I thought there might be room for research on their backgrounds. What had brought them to Germany? What exactly was the experience of their Christian faith? How have their second and third generations fared in a secular German environment? Suppose their youth, like the German youth, had walked away from faith in Jesus Christ. Could a collaboration between Evangelical churches and the Syriac Orthodox community find ways to bring them back to a vibrant faith?

Initially, Dr. Matthew Hirt’s dissertation “A Biblical-Theological Study of Geography for Developing Missions Strategy to the Nations” triggered an interest in me. Dr. Hirt focused a large portion of his dissertation on national identity in light of Scripture, something I also hoped to do. A conversation with him confirmed that this was a field of study that could use more research. I also read a few introductory academic pieces. I realized quickly that not much had been written, especially regarding the faith question and the development of the generations after the initial immigrants to Germany. However, while some sociologically and historically focused materials were available on my target group (also here not in great abundance), faith adherence was generally not considered except as a statement about the culture per see. So what WAS their faith? The more I looked, the more I realized that there was not much information readily available. I would have to create that closer look!

I soon realized that these people I was curious about were of the Syriac Orthodox faith, and most of them had come to Germany from the Tur Abdin region of southeast Turkey. I remember it took me a few weeks not to have to look up “Tur Abdin” to get it right when I spoke or wrote about it. Syriac Orthodoxy was something I had not heard about, even though my husband had grown up in a Greek Orthodox church. It sounded like there would be much to discover about these people that lived in great numbers right in my German hometown of Gießen, Germany, and its surroundings. There were four churches in the area around Gießen, one of them right in the small town where my parents had built the family home in the 1970s. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had whet my appetite to dig deep.