J. Dudley Woodberry

Soon, Smith and Woodberry married and settled down in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they welcomed their first two sons (John and Bob) while Woodberry continued his education at Harvard University. It was here in Massachusetts that Woodberry began his ministry to international students, as a staff member at Park Street Church where Harold Ockenga served as pastor. At Harvard, Woodberry studied under leading scholars in the field of Islamic studies including Sir Hamilton Gibb, George Makdisi, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and Annemarie Schimmel who greatly influenced him though they may not have supported his calling to evangelize to the Muslims. His field of study, Islamic Fundamentalism, was seen as a topic of little value at that time. Woodberry would graduate from Harvard in 1968, having completed his Ph.D. in Islamic Studies and writing his dissertation on "Hassan al-Banna's Articles of Belief."

Dr. J Dudley Woodberry (born 1934) is dean emeritus and senior professor of missions at Fuller Theological Seminary School of World Missions, specializing in Islamic studies. While most of Woodberry's time is currently spent teaching and writing for scholarly publications, he has also served as a missionary and teacher in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan (amongst many other Islamic countries). Woodberry has acted as editor for (from most recent to oldest): Paradigm Shifts in Christian Witness: Insights from Anthropology, Communication, and Spiritual Power (2008); Resources for Peacemaking in Muslim-Christian Relations: Contributions from the Conflict Transformation Project (2006); Muslim and Christian Reflections On Peace: Divine and Human Dimensions (2005); Reaching the Resistant: Barriers and Bridges for Mission (1998); Missiological Education for the Twenty-First Century: The Book, the Circle, and the Sandals (1996); and Muslims and Christians on the Emmaus Road: Crucial Issues in Witness Among Muslims (1991)

Woodberry was born to American missionary parents working in the Chinese province of Shandong in 1934. He became a Christian "in a childlike way" at the age of three while his family was on furlough back in the States. Upon returning to China, Woodberry recalls surviving an incident where he fell into the freezing Yantai harbour and barely survived the subsequent pneumonia. This incident (in Woodberry's own words), "led to a sense that I had been saved for a purpose". Woodberry would later be sent to the China Inland Mission School in Chefoo where, due to the outbreak of World War II, he would be detained as a prisoner of war by the Japanese. Eventually Woodberry (and his brothers and sisters) were exchanged for Japanese civilians in America and, after a year of separation from his parents, he was reunited with them.