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ABSTRACT

Imposition or Exposition? Power, Christianity, and Education observed in Nakitokolo Presbyterian School.

Tyler Mattheis

Faith-based, church-based, and religiously motivated organizations were, prior to the explosion of Non-Governmental organizations, the primary if not the sole provider of social services such as education which governments and colonial administrations either did not or could not provide.

Since the onset of secular-driven development championed by Western development organizations touting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the new scriptures and economic self-sustainability as the righteous goal of development programs, Religious organizations, though having “deeply established roots as key, and sometimes sole, providers of social services” have had a disproportionately small amount of literature describing their activities, their mandate, and their successes. Against this backdrop, a question remains largely unexplored: What is the role of Faith Based Organizations in Development Education?

This thesis uses Nakitokolo Presbyterian School as a case study on the mandate and issues surrounding the development strategies of Faith-Based Organizations. It explores four main questions regarding Faith-Based Organizations:

• What are the motivations behind faith-based non-profit development organizations? Are they generally altruistic or are they driven by status of a non-profit, a need to establish converts, or any other possible motives?
• What biases do educators have in a development setting? Do religiously affiliated professionals differ from their secular counterparts in their biases?
• What is proselytizing? What is its effect on education?
• How does power affect relationships between students and teachers, and between the FBO and the community? How is that power both manifested and wielded in that context?

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