Nelly Van Doorn-Harder

Associate Professor of Theology
Surjit S. Patheja, M.D. Chair in World Religions and Ethics

Using new tools to help solve the world’s oldest problems

Nelly Van Doorn-Harder

If you want genuine interfaith dialogue you’ll need to do more than talk about it says Nelly van Doorn-Harder. You will have to make a short video about it or perhaps author an on-line blog on the topic.

As Valpo’s Surjit S. Patheja Chair in World Religions and Ethics, van Doorn-Harder spends a good deal of time thinking, writing, and teaching about interfaith dialogue and how to address the conflicts swirling around the world’s major religious groups. But she tries to spend even more time coming up with creative ways to actively increase interfaith communication and tackle age-old issues.

“I’ve long had the dream of creating products on interfaith issues that are not just books or writing,” van Doorn-Harder says. “I want to make short videos or solicit screenplays or use the internet. That’s one of the reasons it is exciting for me to be at Valpo – because we have an Art Department and a Drama Department and an academic network I can tap into.”

That Van Doorn-Harder is teaching at Valpo rather than offering opinions on cable news networks or running an international think tank seems somewhat remarkable. A Dutch national, she began her career directing a refugee agency in Cairo, Egypt. Muslims were the primary population group in the project, and that experience led her to a post teaching Islamic Studies at an Indonesian university (where she helped found an Institute for the Study of Religion and Interfaith).

Van Doorn-Harder’s area of expertise is the contemporary daily practices of Islam in Southeast Asia and Christianity in the Middle East – global topics that could not be more timely. Since coming to Valpo in 1999, she has coordinated an annual conference focusing on how reconciliation among the world's faiths might become a force for peace-making in local communities. Van Doorn-Harder is regularly quoted in the national and international media on current Islamic issues and she writes about Islam and Christianity for publications as diverse as Indonesian high school textbooks, a new Encyclopedia of the Koran, and a forthcoming publication about children and faith (van Doorn-Harder is authoring the section on Islam.).

She is one of three scholars serving as a core member of a Lutheran World Federation committee on improving interfaith dialogue around the world. And this past fall, van Doorn-Harder held the rotating Coptic Studies Chair at the American University in Cairo, and traveled throughout Europe speaking at conferences.

How do these cosmopolitan experiences impact her classroom? “Because of my background and current international work I have the opportunity to talk with my students about real-life situations and pressing international debates,” van Doorn-Harder says.

Nothing is more pressing, she thinks, than the religious revolution happening around the globe and the resulting urgent need for new peace-making paradigms. “Just talking about peace doesn’t work. People need to be involved at more practical, interactive levels,” she says. Thus her experimentation with video, the internet, drama, and any other medium that provokes a thoughtful reaction.

“Our world is getting smaller and all of us – whether we are pastors or nurses or engineers – will be confronted with people of other faiths or nationalities. Whether we like it or not, the whole world is reshaping itself and we are in the middle of it.”

Our Valpo