Published
October 1, 2004
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Abstract
The scholarly analysis of accreditation among Bible schools and colleges
remains a significant historiographical lacuna. This article examines the emerging
impulse towards accreditation within the Bible school movement in western
Canada during the turbulent 1960s, a critical decade in the development of
evangelical theological education in Canada. The central focus is the origin,
activities, and influence of a conference known as the Canadian Conference of
Christian Educators (CCCE), an annual gathering of evangelical educators that
began meeting in 1960. The prominent presence of personnel from the newly
formed Accrediting Association of Bible Colleges (AABC), who were keenly
interested in extending their organization into a region with the largest
concentration of Bible schools in the world, raised expectations among Canadian
evangelical educators about the possibility of a new level of respectability and
recognition for their schools among public universities in Canada. Bible college
educators in Canada soon discovered that AABC accreditation did not mean the
same thing within the post-secondary educational landscape of Canada as it did
in the United States. This resulted in an ambivalent relationship between AABC
and the emerging Bible colleges in Canada, and prompted some Canadian leaders
to investigate other avenues towards academic recognition. Illustrating the
polarized response towards accreditation within the Bible school/college
movement are two brief institutional studies of Mennonite Brethren Bible
College in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Prairie Bible Institute in Three Hills,
Alberta. The differences reflect the variegated character of an evolving
evangelicalism in western Canada. By the end of the 1960s, the significant
American influence within the CCCE had been displaced by Canadian initiative
and leadership, thus signalling the beginning of a new chapter in evangelical
higher education in Canada.
