Faith in schools : religion, education, and American evangelicals in East Africa

marcelle mentor | January 28, 2011

Topics: Check It Out!

Title: Faith in schools : religion, education, and American evangelicals in East Africa 

Author :  Amy Stambach 

Publisher: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press

Call number: LC433.A353 S73 2010

 

From the Publisher:

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.

About the author:

Amy Stambach is Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she is also an affiliate of the Department of Anthropology and Director of the Global Studies Program. Professor Stambach’s early research and publications (including her first book Lessons from Mount Kilimanjaro: Schooling, Community, and Gender in East Africa) are the result of two years of anthropological fieldwork in the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania.  More recently, she has expanded her interests to include a study of the educational initiatives of transregional religious groups who work in governmental and private settings. This research informs several recent publications, including her forthcoming book, Faith in Schools: Religion, Education, and American Evangelicals in East Africa (Stanford University Press). Professor Stambach teaches courses on Anthropology and Education; Theories of Social and Educational Change; and Global Studies: Themes, Theories, Methods. She is interested in the various cultural, political, and social contexts within which human rights regimes are understood around the world.

 On the web:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7573/is_201005/ai_n55488516/

http://www.tcrecord.org/content.asp?contentid=16266