Laudatio Dr. Dorottya Den Hulster-Nagy
Dear Promovenda,
Dear Colleagues,
Dear Guests,
Dr. Nagy, your cradle stood in Romania, in a double minority setting: as member of the Hungarian minority and as a member of a Lutheran Church. In addition you were born as a female. It is far from usual in that context for a woman to embark on a study of theology. You did.
You express your thanks to three generations of women of that context, “who were the first to shape the way of thinking, beliefs and behavior of a new life”. Your grandmother who played an important role in your life died three weeks ago. We remember her with gratefulness. You have been given outstanding values and treasures of love for neighbors and strangers from them.
You emphasize the importance of autobiographical theology with regard to the Chinese Christian Communities. What you offer is a powerful one from your own personal biography, with migration as a recurrent theme in your own life.
After finishing your high school in Romania in 1996, you migrated to Hungary for your theological studies in Budapest, at the Evangelical-Lutheran Theological University. Then another migration followed, to China, in 1999, as you received a Scholarship by the International Network in Advanced Theological Education to study Chinese Christianity and Contextual Theology at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Hong Kong. In 2002 you received your Master of Theology degree in Budapest and were ordained as a minister of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Hungary.
In 2003 another migration followed. You gained a scholarship from the Stipendium Bernardinum, which exists 300 years next year, to study at Utrecht University. You are a fruit of the important work of this scholarship fund.
Your professional experience shows you are not an ivory tower scholar, but a pastor in the heart of hearts. At different times you have worked as pastoral counselor among migrants, minority people and the marginalized like refugees, teenage mothers, female prisoners and international students. You strongly side with them in solidarity, as a migrant and a minority person yourself. Even while studying in Hong Kong you worked as pastoral counselor among international prisoners. You “practice what you preach” by living out the everyday realities of theology and migration, by blooming where you are planted. Your outstanding language abilities, including a basic knowledge of Mandarin are put in the service not only of your academic work, but also of your church related ministry.
Since 2007 you have worked as chaplain and pastoral counselor at the Saffier Foundation in the Hague. That work has given you the inspiration and has kept you alive to finish the demanding academic work of writing a PhD thesis.
You are to all of us an example of a successfully integrated “nieuwe Nederlander”.
We first met in 1998 at the Evangelical-Lutheran Theological University in Budapest when I taught an elective on Mission History. I remember that you presented a paper on a Hungarian missionary, Irene Kunst, who worked in China in the beginning of the 20th century. In the discussion that followed we spoke about the significant Chinese minority present in Hungary and about the changes in the dynamics of worldwide mission.
You practiced your academic skills through actively participation in academic forums like the Central and Eastern European Association for Mission Studies, and the Missiological Research Fellowship of the Protestant Institute for Mission Studies, a peer tutoring forum of exchange. Your contributions always stood out by your high standards.
In the course of the supervision process I came to understand better my role as a midwife. This dissertation was not an easy birth. It was a great relief also to me, when the news reached me: a healthy manuscript has been born…
In your dissertation you deal with the interdisciplinary discourse between migration and theology from a theological missiological perspective focusing on the case of two Chinese Christian Communities in Romania and Hungary.
In this pioneering and courageous research you show your ability to do thorough research, using all relevant primary and secondary sources, reflecting on it in an appropriate way and your ability to take positions yourself independently. Your manuscript is of excellent analytical quality.
The integrative quality is somewhat on the weaker wide. I know you love to show hospitality and to offer your guests delicious meals. What you present us with in this study gives the impression that more time would have been needed for the meal to be cooked well, for the various themes to integrate and the tastes to blend together. This is no wonder, because what you have accomplished since we last met at the IAMS conference in Balatonfüred in August is incredible. Your study shows some other gaps. Little attention is paid to the imbedding of the Chinese Christian Communities in the whole Chinese Community in Hungary and Romania. Also, sometimes you take short cuts in positioning yourself and in dealing with certain theories.
Dr. Nagy, your dissertation is a significant study for Hungary and CEE. It is a valuable contribution to dealing with issues of minority, ethnicity and Christian identity. Introducing the concept of “neighbor” as a fruitful concept to bringing people together is of great importance. With that concept you refer back to Leviticus 19, the heart of the Torah, where the commandment to love your neighbor, because he is like you, is applied also to the ger, the foreigner. You finish your dissertation with the significant words: “This study is an invitation to people who share in each others place, to discover that they are equal, and in this way to be woven together”.
In Post-Communist settings like Hungary and Romania this is not only important vis a vis the Chinese Christian Communities, but to the whole of society. It is an important aspect of the Vergangenheitsbewaltigung.
The challenge you now face is to translate these notions of theology and migration to the grassroot level of the majority societies in Post Communist Europe, as a tool of reconciliation. With your double academic and pastoral mindset you are in a unique position to do so.
Dr. Nagy, we need your expertise, academic mindset and Christian spirituality in our region. Allow me to challenge you to affect the next generation in a credible way with your own autobiographical theology. You will meet with significant difficulties as you try to break the numerous prejudices, but your ability to persevere and your trust in the one Without Whom you cannot do anything will help you through. You have observed last month in teaching a class on climate changes in the Worldwide church including taking students on an exposure visit to the one of the Chinese Christian Churches in Budapest, that spreading knowledge about the migrants is a very important first step in that process. It was as one of the highlights of this semester to them.
More comparative studies are needed in this field in the Post Communist world, not only of other ethnic groups than the Chinese, but also with other countries.
Dr. Nagy, welcome in the “Jongeneel family”, one of the new concepts you introduced in your dissertation. You fulfill both the role of academic daughter and granddaughter. It is characteristic for you that you refer to your first promoter with a Hungarian honorary title: János bácsi, truly a shift from formality to familiarity.
Jan, my own Doktorvater and colleague promoter, this is your 38th promotion, the last one before you turn 70 in two weeks time. Only the future will bring about the fruit of your tireless effort in supervising so many students from all over the world.
Dr. Nagy, a new phase starts now in your life. I congratulate your family and colleagues, especially your husband Izaak and your parents. wishing you all God’s blessing.
I have spoken.
Dr. Anne-Marie Kool
16th December 2008.
