Robert P. Vande Kappelle

Dr. Vande Kappelle was born and raised in Costa Rica, a picturesque country in Central America. A product of his multicultural surroundings, he came to the United States as a teenager and eventually enrolled at The King's College in Briarcliff Manor, NY. During his undergraduate years he played varsity soccer and traveled widely representing the college as pianist and public speaker. He studied religion and psychology while completing a major in Modern Foreign Languages. Following graduation he taught Spanish at King's before enrolling at Indiana University (Bloomington, IN), where he was granted an MA in Latin American Studies. He furthered his education at Princeton Theological Seminary, where he fulfilled the requirements for the MDiv and PhD degrees, concentrating in biblical studies. At Princeton he spent two years as a graduate assistant and then successfully defended his doctoral dissertation, "Evidence of a Jewish Proselytizing Tendency in the Old Greek (Septuagint) Version of the Book of Isaiah." At this time he became ordained as a Presbyterian minister and worked as a pastor for two years in New Jersey before he relocated to Pennsylvania to teach religion and philosophy at Grove City College (1975-1980). In 1980 he went to Washington & Jefferson College (W&J), serving as Chair of the Religious Studies Department and College Chaplain until 2014, when he retired from full-time teaching and continued in the capacity of Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies. In addition to teaching in the Special Studies program at Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, NY, Dr. Vande Kappelle serves as mentor to Body in Spirit, a Bible study and discussion group convened to study his writings.

A multi-linguist who has studied nine languages, Dr. Vande Kappelle has authored forty books, including biblical commentaries, volumes on ethics and church history, and study guides on faith, theology, literature, the arts, and spirituality, in addition to various articles and chapters for scholarly journals and texts. He received two National Endowment for the Humanities grants, including one at Princeton University, where he participated in the postdoctoral seminar "Pagans and Christians in the Roman Empire" and another at the University of Pennsylvania, where he participated in the Summer Institute in Near Eastern Archaeology, sponsored by the American Schools for Oriental Research. Dr. Vande Kappelle is listed in Who's Who in Biblical Studies and Archaeology, Who's Who Among Executives and Professionals in Education, four times in Who's Among America's Teachers, and three times in Who's Who in America. In 1991 he received the "Citizen of the Year" award from Community Action of Southwestern Pennsylvania for Washington County.

His fascination with other cultures and places has led him to travel through five continents. In 1975 he spent the summer in Spain as leader of a summer study abroad experience for a consortium of colleges. A sabbatical trip through southern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa in 1989 enabled him to visit many religious and archaeological sites. In the summer of 1993 he traveled to Mexico on a fact-finding team with W&J faculty, after which he presented a paper at an international conference of the Society of Biblical Literature in Munster, Germany. He attended an international clergy conference in Cuba in 2005.

Dr. Vande Kappelle is married to the Reverend Dr. Susan Vande Kappelle, an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and a Gestalt Pastoral Care minister. They have two children and six grandchildren.