150 years of witness in Egypt

The idea of seminary in America comes with certain prepackaged images: a grassy quad where students mill about, thick  books tucked beneath their arms, with oak trees, Ionic columns, whitewashed colonial chapels, and classrooms of    red brick in the background. But the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo (ETSC) broke the mold.It began in 1863 on  the riverboat Ibis, which sailed up and down the Nile between Fayoum and Luxor in Upper Egypt evangelizing, distributing  tracts, and training leaders. It wasn’t until 1926 that its permanent campus was established in Abbassiya near  central Cairo.

“ETSC holds a strategic position in the Middle East,” says Darren Kennedy, PC(USA) teaching elder and professor of theology at the seminary, “in that it teaches and shapes the leaders for the largest Protestant  denomination in the Middle East,” the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Egypt (EPCE), which has about 100,000 members…..

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*Parker is Professor of Christian History at the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo, Egypt

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