When Dinah Dutta was 14, her father – a Christian pastor – gave her a choice.

She needed to decide if she would be Christian or Hindu.

The family lived in India and, like most Indians, many of the family members were Hindu.

“It was a hard decision,” she recalls. “There are so many things I liked in the Hindu religion. It was a hard decision to become a Christian. But I found a lot of faith and hope in Jesus Christ.”

Now, Dutta, a 46-year-old medicinal chemist at Kansas University, is taking her Christian faith to a new level. She recently was certified as a parish ministry associate and started as minister of evangelism and outreach at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, 2211 Inverness Drive.

It’s an unpaid position, but she will preach, lead Bible studies, visit church members in their home and do many of the other duties a pastor would do. In addition, she preaches once a month at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Valley Falls.

Dutta – whose first name is pronounced “DEE-nah” – decided to pursue the certification at the urging of her pastor, the Rev. Jeff Lilley, and members of her church.

“It’s not me who wants to do this,” she says. “It’s me who wants to do science and chemistry. God is helping me do which I don’t want to do, to do the things I don’t think I can do. God helped me to do this.”

Biblical basis

Dutta’s father was a Christian minister who was program director for a Christian radio station in India. He died in December.

She calls him a “faith father” to her in addition to a biological father. Many of her beliefs came from him.

“Dad said, ‘Don’t take people at their word. Read the word of God – find out for yourself,'” she says.

Even though he was a pastor, she never considered ministry until recently. She was educated in India and came to KU in 1997 to pursue a career in cancer research.

In 2003, though, she decided to start taking classes toward the parish ministry associate certification. It’s a program started in 1993 by the Central States Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, and it allows congregation members to receive seminary-level training to help their peers.

“When I first got to know Dinah, it was clear she wanted to do ministry in some way,” Lilley says. “She needed a way to focus. She had the desire but not the clear way to make that happen.”

Lilley says the program was a perfect fit for Dutta, and Dutta has been a perfect fit at the church.

“She’s just a person who is unabashed about her faith and also appreciative of the way God works in other people’s lives,” he says. “She really brings a different perspective. She isn’t white. She isn’t from the Midwest. She has a different religious background. She’s a Christian by choice.”

Church and science

When Dutta introduces herself to someone, she always tells them three things:

¢ She’s a medicinal chemist at KU.

¢ Her husband is Apurba Dutta, also a KU medicinal chemist.

¢ She’s a Christian, and she attends Good Shepherd.

Dutta says even though her family represents two different religions, that has never presented any conflict.

Likewise, she doesn’t see the conflict between science and religion that some Christians do.

“Science helped me grow in my faith,” she says. “It makes me want to help people.”

In some ways, her curiosity drives both her faith and her research. She wanted to be a scientist early on, always fascinated by the way things work.

But she’s come to realize her work is different at church than it is in the laboratory.

“At work, I have to prove I’m a good chemist, so the grants will come and the reviews will be good,” she explains. “In God’s work, I don’t have to be perfect to serve God.”

Future faith

Some parish ministry associates use the program as a springboard to seminary and full-time ministry.

Dutta says she has no such plans, though she admits she never expected to take her ministry this far.

“I’ve been praying a lot about it,” she says of seminary. “There’s so much need around. Why spend time and money while there is so much need, and the need is now?”

Dutta says she hopes her background – both being a chemist and being from India – can help to strengthen her service in the church. If nothing else, she says, she wants to help people feel more comfortable talking about their faith.

“I feel I’m very bold to confess my faith, with my background and experience,” she says. “Here, people don’t talk about their faith.”