Graham Houghton

Graham Houghton, founding principal of the South Asia Institute of Advanced Christian Studies (SAIACS), in Bangalore, India, was born in 1938 and raised in New Zealand, on a dairy farm in the Manawatu near Palmerston North.

Houghton left high school during his fifth form year with an intention to expand the family farm. However, after a personal religious experience he left the farm, trained for two years (1960-61) at the Bible College of New Zealand, and became the first NZ missionary sent out by OMS International, a multinational Christian evangelism organization. He arrived in India to do village evangelism in 1965 and has worked in that country for many years.

Houghton completed undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, eventually earning his Ph.D. in Indian history from the University of California, Los Angeles with a dissertation titled "The Impoverishment of Dependence." His wife Carol moved to India from Virginia in the United States at an early age with her parents, who were Assemblies of God missionaries, and she has lived in India almost continuously since, with the exception of her university education. Her marriage to Houghton in 1968 was arranged according to Indian custom by her father.

Houghton taught for many years at the Madras Bible Seminary before founding SAIACS in 1982. The SAIACS campus now occupies about four hectares (ten acres) of land on the outskirts of Bangalore, a fast growing city of six million, just over 300 km west of Chennai (Madras) in South India. SAIACS has now expanded to a total of about 100 full-time students, all studying at the masters or doctoral level. Students come from many parts of India, and other nations such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Myanmar (formerly Burma), Sri Lanka, Thailand, and also Australia and New Zealand. Several have come from Africa and Central America.

In 1997 SAIACS was recognized by the University of Mysore as an accredited research institution to the university, enabling SAIACS to offer an accredited Indian Ph.D. programme. This is the first Protestant institution to be so recognized since William Carey's Serampore College in 1818. SAIACS graduates are working as organizational and denominational leaders, faculty at a number of bible colleges, seminaries, and graduate schools, and pastors and missionaries with many indigenous missionary agencies throughout South Asia.

In 2001 the Houghtons were part of a group invited to establish a department of Christianity at Peking University, Beijing, People's Republic of China. Teaching at the masters level has already begun, with a doctoral program planned. The courses have reached both Christian (from the Three Self Church and other Christian groups) and non-Christian students. A new building to house the department is in the planning stage.

After Houghton's formal handing over of the SAIACS principalship in March, 2004 to Ashish Chrispal, he and his wife moved to Cambridge, New Zealand. Houghton is still active in international evangelism, especially the Peking University project.

External links

* [http://www.saiacs.org/Faculty.htm SAIACS faculty page with photo and brief biography of Graham Houghton]
* [http://www.challengeweekly.co.nz/Vol_62_Issue_No_22.html "Challenge Weekly" interview with Graham Houghton]
* [http://www.magazine.ucla.edu/toc/06apr/reaction/ Letter to "UCLA Magazine" by Graham Houghton]