Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The modern mission movement had a heavy emphasis on the ‘lostness’ of the unreached. However, this emphasis goes astray when it produces pride, as if the missionary comes with the gospel and has nothing to learn from the people they live among. One way to correct this error is to integrate insights from Desmond Tutu’s ubuntu theology, which emphasizes that the individual grows in humanity through relationships. In biblical terms, each person is made in God’s image, and only together does each person or community become who God intends them to be. Thus, this article proposes that mission needs to consider ubuntu alongside the emphasis on ‘lostness’. Such an approach requires humility and vulnerability on the missionary’s part.
Source: African Christian Theology.
DOI: 10.69683/g43zwa13
Author: Stephanie A. LOWERY
Institution: Africa International University
Language: English
Subfield: Religious studies
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4409171185