Faith in Schools Religion, Education, and American Evangelicals in East Africa [Hardcover]

American Evangelicals have long considered Africa a welcoming place for joining faith with social action, but their work overseas is often ambivalently received. Even among East African Christians who share missionaries' religious beliefs, understandings vary over the promises and pitfalls of American Evangelical involvement in public life and schools. In this first-hand account, Amy Stambach examines missionary involvement in East Africa from the perspectives of both Americans and East Africans.

While Evangelicals frame their work in terms of spreading Christianity, critics see it as destroying traditional culture. Challenging assumptions on both sides, this work reveals a complex and ever-evolving exchange between Christian college campuses in the U.S., where missionaries train, and schools in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. Providing real insight into the lives of school children in East Africa, this book charts a new course for understanding the goals on both sides and the global connections forged in the name of faith.

Amy Stambach is Director of Global Studies and Professor of Educational Policy Studies and Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author ofLessons from Mount Kilimanjaro: Schooling, Community, and Gender in East Africa(2000).This book explores the impact of Americans' faith-based educational initiatives on the lives of school children in East Africa, as seen from the perspectives of American missionaries and East Africans alike.

Each section flows seamlessly into the next in capturing the movement of people, ideas, and cultural values across the two continents . . . Stambach's rigorous field research informed by her keen anthropological and ethnographical perspectives and longstanding cultural experience in the region are richly rewarding to read. Malini Sivasubramaniam,Journal of Education and Christian Belief

Stambach's ethnographic examination of missionary practices takes a radical fol³2