Graham Houghton

Who is Graham Houghton?

Graham Houghton, founding principal of the South Asia Institute of Advanced Christian Studies, in Bangalore, India, was born September 27th 1937 and raised in New Zealand, on a dairy farm in the Awahuri near Feilding.

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 at the Bible College of New Zealand, and became the first NZ missionary sent out by the then Oriental Missionary Society, a multinational Christian faith mission, a multinational Christian evangelism organization. He arrived in India to do village evangelism in 1965 and has worked in that country until 2005.

Houghton completed undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, eventually earning his Ph.D. in South Asian History from the University of California, Los Angeles with a dissertation titled "The Impoverishment of Dependency." His wife Carol moved from Virginia in the United States at an early age with her parents, who were Assemblies of God missionaries. 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.