“After Bread, Education:” Coptic Educational Reform, Presbyterian Missionaries, and Christian Knowledge in 20th-Century Egypt

Abstract

The figure of the efendi, a member of the emerging middle class defined by his orientation toward knowledge, has become a key subject in historical studies of modern Egypt, as has the educational space of schools and universities. In both cases, however, the existing historiography has focused largely on Muslim efendiyya and on educational reforms concerned with Islamic institutions and the Muslims who interacted with them. This dissertation expands existing discourse on the efendi by considering the figure of the Coptic efendi as he interacted with the Coptic educational reform movement of the early 20th-century. Drawing on Al-Karmah, the educational magazine published by St. Habib Girgis beginning in 1904, it argues that Coptic educational reformers sought to creative a normative modern Coptic subject who exemplified the values of the efendi. Likewise, taking school curriculum as a key primary source, it shows how Girgis redeployed the textual methods associated with missionary and colonial education to protect unwritten, oral, and relational forms of Coptic knowledge. It also considers how missionary educators responded as their Coptic counterparts gained access to educational techniques Protestants had once considered their unique contribution, and then traces the trajectories of both Presbyterian missionary and Coptic Orthodox educational projects, ultimately using these histories to engage with Lamin Sanneh’s World Christianity framework and argue that resurgence within historic churches like the Coptic Orthodox Church expands the World Christianity framework to include not only newly-founded churches, but also new institutional frameworks and revitalization within churches that predated European colonialism.