Biola University Cook School of Intercultural Studies professor and associate dean Dr. Leanne Dzubinski was awarded a one-year $5,000 planning grant to examine how Christian ideas about family life were communicated as the gospel was spread. Her research project — “The Christian Home in Twentieth-Century Asia” — is in collaboration with colleagues Dr. Anneke Stasson, professor at Indiana Wesleyan University and Dr. Soojin Chung, professor at California Baptist University.

“The grant is an affirmation that Christian scholarship is important and helps me to be a role model for students as well as their professor,” said Dzubinski.

The grant is part of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities Networking Grants program, which funds collaborative scholarship informed by Christian perspectives and makes an impact on the broader scholarly community. To qualify, research teams must include professors at two or more CCCU institutions.

“The selection committee was impressed with the quality of the proposal and the project’s potential to advance the scholarly community’s notion of Victorian normativity that has hitherto dominated academic discourse about Christian mission and domesticity by highlighting nonwestern perspectives on the Christian home,” said Shirley Hoogstra, president of Council for Christian Colleges & Universities.

Dzubinski’s team will collect data from archives and experts to piece together past and present understanding of the “Christian Home” ideology that has been adapted in various cultures and present their findings in academic papers.

“Understanding how various cultures accepted, adapted, or rejected various teachings can help Western missiologists think in more nuanced ways about what messages are communicated alongside the gospel,” said Dzubinski.

Dzubinski explains missiology as a “multi-disciplinary field” where she and her colleagues will develop their missiology to contextualize the message and meaning of the core gospel message and how it is interpreted in varying cultures.

“We also hope the project will be of benefit to Christian scholars in those regions and prompt further studies from their perspectives about how the Christian Home message was enculturated,” said Dzubinksi.

Apply or learn more about the Cook School of Intercultural Studies.

Written by Vanessa Morales, Biola Reporter Intern. For more information, contact Jenna Loumagne, assistant director of media relations and strategic communications, at jenna.loumagne@biola.edu.