Faith-based pedagogues, educators who connect their work as teachers with their religious philosophy, working in America institutions of higher education, often find themselves in a hostile environment. The purpose of this study is to examine the life stories of a specific group of faith-based pedagogues, Bahái educators who in connecting their religious theology to their profession as teachers embody teaching as worship.

In order to construct a context for understanding the relationship between these pedagogues and their students and colleagues in academic settings, I present a brief historical perspective on the relationship between religion and higher education. I devote specific attention to the repositioning of religious theory and authority in America's universities and colleges.

In 2005, I collected tape-recorded life histories of five Bahái educators working in universities and colleges in North Carolina and Ohio. In this dissertation, I examine the open-ended narratives for intertextuality, silence, selectivity and slippage in order to gain a better understanding of the subjects' interpretation of their lives in the context of faith and higher education.

By exploring the presence of Bahái religious principles and secular themes throughout their individual and collective narratives with emphasis on their religious principles, I offer some understanding of how their perception of their role as educators along with their interpretation of religious philosophy, and professional experience help shape their teaching and work environments. Furthermore I compare and contrast the effect of human secularism and religious theory on the academic experiences of teachers and students, utilizing my own narrative as an example. Such an examination also provides an indication of the influence the work of Bahái Faith-Based pedagogues have on the lives of their students and coworkers. Their life stories also provide some indication of the impact of their religious and spiritual thoughts on the communities in which they live. With the modern challenges faced by our society, I found that the narrators' common discourse of peace and unity serve as possible models of leadership for refashioning what I see as a growing national movement towards selfish materialism and global disrespect.