J. Dudley Woodberry
Dr. J. Dudley Woodberry (born 1934) is dean emeritus and a senior professor of Intercultural Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary, focusing on Islamic Studies. He spent many years teaching and writing, and he has worked in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and other Muslim-majority countries. He has edited several books on Christian-Muslim relations, including Paradigm Shifts in Christian Witness (2008), Resources for Peacemaking in Muslim-Christian Relations (2006), Muslim and Christian Reflections On Peace (2005), Reaching the Resistant (1998), Missiological Education for the Twenty-First Century (1996), and Muslims and Christians on the Emmaus Road (1991). Woodberry’s work centers on respectful understanding and witness among Muslims, combining theology with social sciences and a awareness of the history of Muslim-Christian encounters. He promotes a holistic approach to intercultural outreach that is theologically grounded and informed by mission history and church growth.
Woodberry was born in 1934 to American missionary parents in Shandong, China. He became a Christian at age three during a furlough in the United States. After surviving pneumonia following a fall into the Yantai harbor, he felt he had been saved for a purpose. He attended the China Inland Mission School in Chefoo, was detained as a prisoner of war by the Japanese during World War II, and was later exchanged for Japanese civilians.
His early life moved between the United States and Asia. He grew up in Upstate New York, studied at Union College (BA), and began a ministry tour of Latin America before deciding to pursue seminary teaching. A trip to Lebanon helped confirm his calling to focus on outreach to Muslims. He then studied at Fuller Theological Seminary, earning a Master of Divinity, and an MA from the American University of Beirut, where he also studied with Arab Christian scholars and other notable figures.
Woodberry and his wife, Roberta Smith, lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while he pursued further study at Harvard University, where he completed a PhD in Islamic Studies in 1968, with a dissertation on Hassan al-Banna’s Articles of Belief. After Harvard, he and his family moved to Pakistan, where their third son, David, was born. His work included advocacy in Kabul for two Pakistani missionaries who had been jailed for distributing the Gospel of Luke, using his knowledge of the Qur’an to secure their release. He later worked in Saudi Arabia pastoring a church before government actions closed it; he helped reopen house churches by referring to Islamic writings.
Woodberry then returned to the United States to teach at Reformed Bible College (now Kuyper College) in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He later moved to California to teach jointly with the Zwemer Institute (now the Zwemer Center) and Fuller Theological Seminary, eventually becoming dean of Fuller’s School of Intercultural Studies. His program emphasizes a threefold core: Word (theology of mission), World (behavioral sciences like anthropology), and Church (lessons from mission history and church growth).
In the early 2020s, former students and other scholars inspired by Woodberry began plans to continue his legacy through the Woodberry Institute, a group later renaming and repurposing a Christian NGO as the Woodberry Intercultural Institute. Dudley Woodberry’s son, Robert Dudley Woodberry, serves on the board.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 12:26 (CET).