Crossing Boundaries: Christian Higher Education in Africa —A Review Essay

Trisha Posey is Director of the Honors Scholars Program and Associate Professor of History at John Brown University.

In May 2013, I was part of a group of faculty from John Brown and Cornerstone Universities that visited Uganda Christian University (UCU) in Mukono, Uganda to participate in workshops on the integration of faith, learning, and service. On the Sunday of our visit, the team spent the morning worshiping with the students and staff of UCU. Most of the songs we sang during the service were American praise and worship songs from the 1990s, many of which came from and are still sung in American evangelical churches. The student worship group leading the service sang mightily, but most other voices were subdued during this part of the service—the voices of the American visitors seemed at times to be the loudest in the chapel. In pondering why this was the case, I wondered if it might be because the music still seemed somewhat foreign to a group of people steeped in the lively story-saturated percussive music of East Africa. What was lost in translation in the movement of Western praise and worship music to East Africa? This idea of translation of the faith across cultural boundaries became a dominant theme during our time at UCU.

The subject of cross-cultural encounters in the context of Christianity is nothing new—it goes all the way back to Pentecost. New manifestations of old questions are popping up, though, and one of the most significant discussions in recent years has been on the nature of Christian higher education in the Global South and the relationship of Western Christian colleges and universities with their new peers in the developing world, specifically Africa. Christian higher education in Africa has experienced explosive growth in the past three decades. Forty-six Christian universities have been founded in Africa during this time, constituting over one quarter of all new Christian universities started around the world.¹ Just as explosive has been the response to this phenomenon by Christian scholars of higher education. A number of recent articles and books explore the impact of the changing nature of Christian higher education (CHE) on African states, public life, and development, as well as the potential influence of new African Christian colleges on Christian colleges in the West. This new literature shows the potential in and the challenges of CHE in Africa; it also raises new questions about the influence African CHE will have on Christianity as it continues moving to the Global South.

Higher Education in Africa, a Brief History

Of course, African CHE did not emerge ex nihilo; a complete understanding of CHE in Africa requires knowledge of the broader history of higher education on the continent. Y. G.-M. Lulat’s comprehensive A History of African Higher Education from Antiquity to the Present: A Critical Synthesis provides a useful starting point here.² Lulat’s text reminds us that higher education in Africa goes back to the ancient period, when Alexandria served as the center of learning for the Western world. For the purpose of understanding CHE, much of the value of this text lies in its description of African higher education from colonialism forward. From the very beginning of their work in Africa, missionaries were heavily involved in education, sponsoring Bible schools and primary and secondary educational institutions. Mission schools contributed to the larger colonial project, providing industrial and vocational training for the creation of a class of Africans who could serve as middle managers in the colonial bureaucracy. This approach influenced attitudes toward colonial higher education in Africa. For example, the 1922 Phelps-Stokes Commission, a reporting group sponsored by a U.S. mission agency that influenced colonial education policy, privileged vocational training for Africans over liberal arts education.³ Not all Western colonial leaders agreed with this approach; some preferred a Western-style liberal arts education for Africa’s leaders. At the heart of this debate, similar to the one carried out by Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois in the United States, was the question of the purpose of education. Should education be used to build habits of industry and encourage economic growth, or should it focus on the intellectual development of African leaders?

The debate over the nature of higher education in Africa lost much of its energy in the lead-up to decolonization. Recognizing the need to educate African leaders for independence, colonial governments began investing heavily in African higher education. In Uganda, for example, Makerere University, which had been established as a technical school in 1922, became part of the University of East Africa (which also included universities in Kenya and Tanzania) in 1963. Officially part of the University of London system, the University of East Africa conveyed degrees under the authority of its mother institution. In 1970, Makerere split from its sister institutions and the University of London, becoming its own entity. Many other African universities followed the same route—moving from technical schools to full-fledged universities under the authority of the colonial government and then breaking ties during the early period of independence in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

During this time, international support for African higher education was strong. Organizations like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank fully supported higher education movements like those in Uganda. However, during the 1980s, support for African colleges and universities waned as international funding agencies began to focus more on primary and secondary educational needs, which they saw as more pressing⁴ In the meantime, demand for college education in Africa rose, which increased the pressure to admit students without the resources to educate them well.

While these changes were happening at public universities, private Christian colleges and universities began popping up all over the continent. Over half of them grew out of seminaries and theological colleges that had been founded by missionaries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.⁵ Uganda Christian University, for example, grew out of Bishop Tucker Theological College, an Anglican seminary founded by missionaries in 1913. UCU became a full university in 1997 and received a government charter (the first in Uganda) in 2004. Other universities such as Northrise University in Zambia (founded in 2003) grew out of partnerships between African Christians and American Christian educators. From the late 1990s to the present, enrollment at Christian colleges and universities in Africa has grown steadily, and at some universities the enrollments have experienced a veritable explosion. UCU now has 11,000 students and is about one-third the size of Makerere University.⁶

What is “African” about African CHE?

What makes CHE in Africa particularly “African”? This is one of the questions addressed by Christian Higher Education in the Global Context, a compilation of the proceedings of the 2006 conference of the International Association for the Promotion of Christian Higher Education (IAPCHE). IAPCHE, founded in 1975 through the work of scholars at Potchefstroom University in South Africa, brought together Christian colleges and universities in the Reformed tradition to develop a community of like-minded institutions and promote quality Christian higher education.⁷ The conference papers and responses in Christian Higher Education in the Global Context, therefore, have a strong Reformed tone to them, but they address broadly key questions of CHE in the international context. Given the Reformed emphasis on the concept of worldview, many of the papers and responses explore the concept of the “African worldview” and its real and potential implications for CHE. For example, Samson Makhado argues in his essay: “The two worldviews differ in their anthologies (understandings of reality), their anthropology (view of man or view of society), their epistemology (theories of knowing), and axiology (norms and values).”⁸ The assumption among scholars like Makhado is that singular African and Western worldviews exist and that these worldviews are inherently contradictory.

Not all African scholars contrast Western and African worldviews in such stark terms; some simply highlight the ways in which African ways of knowing and understanding could promote new ways of thinking and teaching in global CHE. Moshe Rajuili, for example, points out that an age-old pedagogical technique in Africa, the use of proverbs and riddles, provides a unique space for promoting critical thinking and problem solving and can be a transformative mode of teaching and learning in a multi-cultural environment.⁹ An example of this is the African Bible Commentary, created by “African scholars who respect the integrity of the text and use African proverbs, metaphors, and stories to make it speak to African believers in the villages and cities across the entire continent.”¹⁰ The power of narrative and story is central to the African educational experience, and African CHE gives Western scholars an opportunity to recapture this power in their teaching.

Defining one “African Christian worldview” is highly problematic because of the multiplicity of Christian denominations on the continent. Catholicism, Pentecostalism, and Anglicanism are the three dominant Christian traditions in Africa, but the Christian landscape is irreducible to tidy categorization. Among the sixty-eight African Christian colleges and universities listed in the IAPCHE database of international Christian colleges and universities, sixteen are Catholic, nine are Seventh-Day Adventist, four are Pentecostal, and the others are either Baptist, Methodist, or defined as broadly Protestant.¹¹ It is probably fair to say that these colleges and universities take different approaches to teaching, the relationship between faith and reason, and the role of Christianity in public life.

While not specifically about CHE in Africa, Christianity and Public Culture in Africa, edited by Harri Englund,¹² provides insight into the ways that Christianity has influenced African public life, revealing along the way that there is no singular African Christian worldview. For example Marja Hinfelaar’s essay on the political divide among Christians that occurred in Zambia following President Frederick Chiluba’s declaration of Zambia as a “Christian nation” in 1991 shows that there is not always agreement between Christian denominational leaders about the relationship between faith and public life. As Hinfelaar contends, Zambian Christians split along denominational lines in response to the declaration, with Pentecostals supporting the declaration as a way to prove their political loyalty and other Protestants and Catholics rejecting it out of a concern for its potential impact on religious pluralism.¹³

The prevalence of Pentecostalism has significant implications for African CHE, though scholars of Pentecostalism hold a variety of views on its nature. Some emphasize its highly stylized “health and wealth” approach to the Gospel,¹⁴ and others challenge this view as reductionistic. As Michael Perry Kweku Okyerefo argues, many Ghanaian Pentecostal churches engage in social service ministries such as orphan care and medical treatment. According to Okyerefo, the prosperity gospel

does not simply implore its adherents to look up to a miracle-working God or ignore poverty-creating conditions. It raises the consciousness of people to combat poverty through the skills they have acquired in these churches while all the time committing themselves to God’s blessings.¹⁵

Pentecostalism, with all of its diverse (even contradictory) manifestations, is a dominant form of Protestant Christianity in Africa, yet only four African Christian colleges and universities identify themselves as Pentecostal. What implications will this have as Pentecostal students enter Christian colleges and universities with understandings of the integration of faith and learning that differ from their Reformed, Anglican, or Wesleyan instructors?

A related question is whether different Christian traditions in Africa can embrace common educational goals. From the literature on the varieties of Christian practice in Africa, this does seem like a challenge. Nonetheless, the growth of CHE in Africa provides hope for transcending narrow denominational differences in the pursuit of shared educational objectives. As George Marsden shows in his survey of the American landscape of CHE, one of the values of religious institutions is that they “can also be important contributors toward helping their supporting religious communities grow beyond narrowly sectarian, inward-looking, and partisan interests.”¹⁶ Just as the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) has served to bind together educators from a variety of Christian backgrounds, so can the CCCU and organizations like the Center for the Promotion of CHE in Africa do the same for African Christian educational leaders. Douglas Campbell uses the analogy of the Trinity to express his hope for “true dialogue, true intimacy, and true oneness” among Christian scholars and educators in the global context.¹⁷ The same might apply to African scholars as well.

Unique Challenges to African CHE

Any examination of the state of CHE in Africa inevitably must address the enormous challenges facing African Christian colleges and universities. The most obvious challenge is brain drain, which James Otieno Jowi identifies as “the highest-rated risk of internationalization.”¹⁸ This provides a unique dilemma for African Christian colleges and universities, which lack qualified teachers and must rely on part-time faculty to teach their courses. This is a persistent theme in Christian Higher Education: A Global Reconnaissance, edited by Joel Carpenter, Perry Glanzer, and Nick Lantinga. The contributors to this volume, who are Christian educators from around the world, agree that integrating faith and learning in an environment in which university faculty play only a minor role on campus is a significant challenge. Carpenter points to a study of teaching at Uganda Christian University that indicates that most professors have “very little idea of what a Christian perspective on their discipline might be.”¹⁹ At Kenya’s St. Paul’s University, according to Faith Nguru, “most of the courses are staffed with part-time teachers and these instructors do not receive much guidance in teaching from a Christian perspective.”²⁰ Glanzer asserts that hiring full-time Christian staff at Christian colleges and universities is axiomatic for the survival of the Christian educational mission in Africa. To continue relying heavily on part-time faculty, he maintains, could result in “fostering the survival of the institution at the expense of either the Christian mission or academic integrity.”²¹ And he boldly states that at times it might be necessary to allow the “death of an institution” if its replacement will be an institution with more staying power.

A common source of concern, more common among African than Western scholars, is the divisive nature of ethnicity and language in the Christian academic setting. African institutions of CHE combine a multiplicity of ethnic and language groups—the residence halls and faculty offices in many of these institutions ring with a mixture of dozens of languages, all representative of deep cultural separations that can lead to conflict. Nguru, in describing Kenyan CHE, notes:

The governance structures of Christian higher education institutions are staffed by individuals from polarized ethnic communities. Some have not yet overcome the demons of ethnicity and this colors their leadership practices in such institutions. For example, some Christian leaders may be driven by their ethnic communities to appoint some of their own to positions of authority regardless of their competencies in performing given tasks.²²

While Christianity is a powerfully unifying religion, the real-world reality is that ethnic conflict, even among Christians, is still present. Managing these tensions will be one of the continuing tasks of Christian educational leaders in Africa.

An additional worry is the impact of massification—the increase in enrollment at colleges and universities—on Christian colleges and universities in Africa. As massification continues, African private universities have become the “second choice” for the growing numbers of students who do not qualify for more competitive public universities. Private universities have been stigmatized for becoming fallback options.²³ If African Christian colleges and universities are to be culture-shaping centers of excellence, they must overcome the perception that their students are less likely to become the future leaders of the nation.²⁴

There are also concerns about the effects of the lack of resources on research output from African universities. This is by no means a problem associated only with Christian colleges and universities—all African universities suffer from a lack of support for research. The statistics here are striking—research output from Africa accounts for only 1% of the world’s total, and 70% of the African scholarly output is supported by external research grants.²⁵ At Makerere University, the 1999-2000 budget included only $80,000 for research.²⁶ Teferra and Altbach highlight the irony of the African emphasis on research and publishing for academic promotion when support for such endeavors is scarce. They claim that “Africa, as a continent, finds itself on the very edge of the knowledge periphery… and appears to be increasingly isolated from the center.”²⁷ Carpenter notes that this should be a concern for African Christian colleges and universities.²⁸

However, the unique nature and history of CHE in Africa provides some hope in this area. Jowi argues that the growth of international institutional networks and developing partnerships between NGOs, research organizations, and African universities could provide a way to develop African higher educational resources. If this is true, African Christian colleges and universities, with their history of Western engagement, have an advantage here. In addition to denominational and missionary support, African Christian scholars have the opportunity to engage with a growing international network of Christian educators who can provide them access to resources and opportunities for collaborative work.

Engagement with Western CHE

The nature of engagement between Western and African scholars of Christian Higher Education dominates the literature on CHE in Africa. While most of the scholars in Christian Higher Education in the Global Context and Christian Higher Education: A Global Reconnaissance see the value of international collaboration in CHE, there is much hand wringing over the question of power in these texts. Many contributors seem to sympathize with Jowi’s assessment of the internationalization of higher education, which he says has “progressed into the uneven process of knowledge exchange where knowledge from the west readily finds place in the curriculum of African universities.”²⁹ Rajuili, for example, warns that the curriculum of African CHE needs to address more adequately the dependency syndrome that plagues the African educational system.³⁰ It seems that African CHE, like much of Africa, is still struggling to come to terms with the colonial legacy of Christianity.

Nevertheless, many contributors to the texts reviewed for this essay are hopeful that continued collaboration between Western and African institutions of Christian Higher Education can be mutually beneficial. Western Christian scholars can provide insight into the benefits and challenges of CHE, insight born out of a long experience of Christian education in the West. Marsden’s chapter in Christian Higher Education provides an example of this. His re-telling of the history of CHE in the United States and prediction of a “renaissance” of CHE reminds us of the vibrancy of teaching, learning, and scholarship in the Christian context.³¹ It also provides a strong warning of the need to find an effective balance between engaging in culture and maintaining the integrity of the faith. These lessons will prove valuable to African leaders of CHE.

Western Christian scholars also might provide useful collaborators in African scholars’ efforts to contribute to the global academic community. By facilitating access to journals, conferences, and key publishing venues, Western Christian scholars can help shift the balance of knowledge-creation more toward their African counterparts.³² However, this must involve a re-thinking of the relationship between Western academics and African scholars. For, as José Ramón Alcántara-Mejía puts it, Western culture “can only recognize itself when it incorporates in its worldview other perspectives.”³³ The African scholars in these texts emphasize the positive contribution they, as Africans, can make to Western CHE. The question is whether Westerners are ready to adopt a listening posture.

There is hope in this area—a hope, ironically, that is highlighted by the earliest history of Christian education in Africa in the missions movement. Patrick Harries and David Maxwell’s edited volume The Spiritual in the Secular explores the way in which missionary and African collaboration led to new and in some cases transformative knowledge being introduced to Western universities and governments. Contrary to the common idea that missionaries were simply cultural imperialists destroying African knowledge, Harries and Maxwell claim that “many missionaries developed new ways of understanding their situation, and in the process they brought African ways of ordering and understanding the human and natural environment to the attention of the world.”³⁴ The Spiritual in the Secular contains many stories of effective partnerships between missionaries and Africans and the knowledge-shaping contributions of these partnerships to the world of European and American ideas. To be sure, many scholars in the emerging field of anthropology dismissed the writings of missionaries for lacking objectivity. Nevertheless, as Harries, Maxwell, and the contributors to the book demonstrate, several missionaries who collaborated with Africans had a significant influence on colonial policy and social reform in Africa.

One wonders if this collaborative spirit can be recaptured for a new age. Many scholars of CHE seem to think so. Carpenter, beautifully paraphrasing the work of Andrew Walls, says that:

Christian intellectuals have done their best work when they cross boundaries, moving out of their customary haunts, taking risks, entering other worlds, becoming vulnerable once again as basic learners, and making their way as guests, on someone else’s turf and terms.³⁵

This is a challenging call to Western Christian scholars. It also provides hope for CHE in Africa. If, as Jowi proposes, internationalization is key to the effective development of higher education in Africa, and if shared “purpose, mission, and philosophy” are essential to this collaboration, then Western and African Christian scholars have much to be optimistic about. As IAPCHE proves, a shared commitment to the Gospel and to its implications for higher education has provided, and can continue to provide, mutually enriching opportunities for African and Western educators.

Lingering Questions

While the volume of scholarly literature on CHE in Africa has grown substantially over the past five years, there are still lingering questions. One is the nature of the relationship between the African Church and African CHE. How much do local churches in Africa engage with African CHE? What is the influence of African CHE on the African Church? Given the heavy Western influence on African CHE, does this mean that African Christian colleges and universities are disconnected from the local context of Christianity, politics, and society?

A second area of silence is the co-curricular programming on African Christian college and university campuses. All of the recent literature on African CHE focuses on academic issues, and yet, as many African scholars point out, Africans believe in educating the whole person. What does this look like for co-curricular programming on African Christian college campuses? How do ethnic and language differences influence residence life? Do African Christian colleges have robust medical and student life resources? And what role do athletics play in campus culture?

Another underdeveloped theme is the real and potential impact of African CHE on African economic and community development. The scarcity of resources at many African colleges and universities as well as the perceived “crisis” of postsecondary education in Africa has meant that few governments have seen African colleges and universities as partners in the development process.³⁶ Yet the nature of the Gospel, with its emphasis on service and care for the orphan and the widow, positions African Christian colleges and universities perfectly for effective partnerships with NGOs and governments in economic and community development initiatives.³⁷ What do discussions about development look like on Christian college campuses? Do they tend to focus more on large-scale national economic development or on small-scale local community development? Have there been efforts by leading institutions of CHE in Africa to establish a strong presence in shaping development policy? What might that look like?

Finally, to what extent do African Christian colleges and universities serve as culture-shaping institutions in their local communities and nations? As Carpenter notes, the language of nation-building is common in the stated missions and visions of Christian universities in the Global South. This could mean that African Christian colleges and universities play an influential role in the political and economic systems of the nations in which they operate. However, given the newness of so many of these institutions, it is too early to gauge the impact they are having. And, as Glanzer wisely reminds us,

Christian higher education is and will likely remain a minor segment of higher education in almost every country and within a global higher education system that is largely governed, funded, and directed and controlled by an educational administrative apparatus associated with secular nation-states, professional societies, and elites.³⁸

This should serve as a reminder to all of us that while CHE is expanding rapidly in the developing world, we must not myopically view this trend and think that it will mean earth-shattering changes in Africa. On the other hand, African Christian colleges and universities graduate thousands of students every year. Where do these students end up working? To what extent do they influence government policy? The work of NGOs? Understanding the answers to these questions can provide a sense of the place of African CHE in the African cultural landscape.

Conclusion

During the church service I attended with my colleagues at UCU, there came a moment when the music shifted from American praise and worship hymns to African songs sung in Luganda, the dominant language of Uganda. At that moment, the room came alive with voices shouting songs of praise and the student worship group began dancing. Our visiting group, none of whom knew Luganda, had to stop and listen. But in the listening, we were able to appreciate and admire the beautiful, if foreign, expression of a faith in Christ that we share deeply with our African colleagues. It was a transcendent moment for me in which I realized that my African peers have much to teach me when it comes to Christianity and education.

In the same way, I have been encouraged by what I have learned from the African writers in these texts on CHE in Africa. There is an optimism that imbues discussions about the future of CHE on the continent. To be sure, challenges lie ahead. But these challenges, as the collaborative work of Faith Nguru, Moshe Rajuili, Joel Carpenter, Perry Glanzer, and other committed Christian scholars demonstrates, provide a unique opportunity for the advancement of Christianity and Christian Higher Education in both Africa and North America.

1. Joel Carpenter, “New Christian Universities and the Conversion of Cultures,” Evangelical Review of Theology 36 (2012): 14.
2. Y. G.-M. Lulat, A History of African Higher Education from Antiquity to the Present: A Critical Synthesis (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005).
3. Ibid., 215.
4. David W. Chapman and Ann E. Austin, “The Changing Context of Higher Education in the Developing World,” in Higher Education in the Developing World: Changing Contexts and Institutional Responses, eds. David W. Chapman and Ann E. Austin (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002), 3-21.
5. Faith Nguru, “Development of Christian Higher Education in Kenya: An Overview,” in Christian Higher Education: A Global Reconnaissance, eds. Joel Carpenter, et. al. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2014), 43.
6. N.V. Varghese, Growth and Expansion of Higher Education in Africa (Paris: International Institute for Educational Planning, 2006), http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001502/150255e.pdf (Accessed January 10, 2014). See also www.ucu.ac.ug (Accessed January 10, 2014) and http://northrise.org (Accessed January 10, 2014).
7. John Hulst, “Highlights of IAPCHE’s History,” in Christian Higher Education in the Global Context: Implications for Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Administration, ed. Nick Lantinga (Sioux Center, IA: Dordt College Press, 2008), 22-23.
8. Samson Makhado, “Response to Doug Bloomberg,” in Christian Higher Education in the Global Context, 219.
9. Moshe Rajuili, “Developing a Curriculum, Employing a Pedagogy, and an Administration of Christian Higher Education that Addresses Competing Worldviews in Southern Africa,” in Christian Higher Education in the Global Context, 88.
10. Tokunboh Adeyemo, ed., African Bible Commentary (Nairobi: WordAlive Publishers/Zondervan, 2006), ix.
11. http://www.iapche.org/GCHE%20Website%20Files/Africa/Africa3.pdf (Accessed October 22, 2013).
12. Harri Englund, ed., Christianity and Public Culture in Africa (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2011).
13. Marja Hinfelaar, “Debating the Secular in Zambia: The Response of the Catholic Church to Scientific Socialism and Christian Nation, 1976-2006,” in Christianity and Public Culture in Africa, 59-60.
14. Birgit Meyer, “Going and Making Public: Pentecostalism as Public Religion in Ghana,” in Christianity and Public Culture in Africa, 149-166; and Damaris Parsitau, “Arise, Oh Ye Daughters of Faith: Women, Pentecostalism, and Public Culture in Kenya,” in Christianity and Public Culture in Africa, 131-145.
15. Michael Perry Keweku Okyerefo, “The Gospel of Public Image in Ghana,” in Christianity and Public Culture in Africa, 213.
16. George Marsden, “A Renaissance of Christian Higher Education in the United States,” in Christian Higher Education, 275.
17. Douglas G. Campbell, “Response to Jose Ramon Alcantara-Mejia,” in Christian Higher Education in the Global Context, 115.
18. James Otieno Jowi, “Internationalization of Higher Education in Africa: Developments, Emerging Trends, Issues and Policy Implications,” Higher Education Policy 22 (2009): 274.
19. Carpenter, “Introduction: Christian Universities and the Global Expansion of Higher Education,” in Christian Higher Education, 63. UCU is working to address this issue through the work of their new Institute of Faith, Learning, and Service.
20. Nguru, “Development of Christian Higher Education in Kenya,” 56.
21. Perry Glanzer, “Conclusion: Evaluating the Health of Christian Higher Education around the Globe,” in Christian Higher Education, 302.
22. Nguru, “Development of Christian Higher Education in Kenya,” 59.
23. Damtew Teferra and Philip Altbach, “African Higher Education: Challenges for the 21st Century,” Higher Education 47 (2004): 34.
24. Carpenter, “New Christian Universities and the Conversion of Cultures,” Christian Higher Education, 20; and Carpenter, “Introduction,” Christian Higher Education, 14.
25. Jowi, “Internationalization of Higher Education in Africa,” 273.
26. Damtew Teferra and Philip G. Altbach, eds., African Higher Education: An International Reference Handbook (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003), 10.
27. Teferra and Altbach, “African Higher Education,” 40.
28. Carpenter, “New Christian Universities and the Conversion of Cultures,” 20.
29. Jowi, “Internationalization of Higher Education in Africa,” 274.
30. Rajuili, “Developing a Curriculum, Employing a Pedagogy,” 86. See also José Ramón Alcántara-Mejía, “Transculturalizing the Humanities in Christian Higher Education,” in Christian Higher Education in the Global Context, 109, for a similar argument from a Latin American scholar.
31. Marsden, “A Renaissance of Christian Higher Education in the United States,” 256-275.
32. Gaiya, “Revolution in Higher Education in Nigeria,” in Christian Higher Education, 39.
33. Alcántara-Mejía, “Transculturalizing the Humanities in Christian Higher Education,” 109.
34. Patrick Harries and David Maxwell, “Introduction,” The Spiritual in the Secular, eds. Patrick Harries and David Maxwell (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012), 4.
35. Carpenter, “New Christian Universities and the Conversion of Cultures,” 30.
36. Ane Turner Johnson, et. al, “Higher Education Policy Networks, and Policy Entrepreneurship in Africa: The Case of the Association of African Universities,” Higher Education Policy 24 (2011): 86.
37. Grace Karram, “The International Connections of Religious Higher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: Rationales and Implications,” Journal of Studies in International Education 15 (2011): 487-499.
38. Glanzer, “Conclusion,” Christian Higher Education, 296.