This Currents feature presents the perspectives of two member school presidents on a religious, social, or cultural topic. In this issue, they discuss the role of Christian mission work today given the context of our global and interfaith perspectives.

Joseph P. Daoust, S.J.
President, Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley

In every age, the farewell words of Christ to his disciples remain in full force for all those who would follow him: "Go out to the whole world; proclaim the Good News to all creation." (Mark 16:15) Evangelization, preaching the good news which Jesus preached, is the perennial obligation of all Christians. 

But evangelization takes different forms in different times and contexts. In our postmodern globalized world, there is virtually no one who has not heard the words of the gospels in some form. But most do not believe the words they hear, often because, as Gandhi observed, "If I had to face only the Sermon on the Mount, I should not hesitate to say, ‘Oh, yes, I am a Christian.' But negatively I can tell you that in my humble opinion, what passes as Christianity is a negation of the Sermon on the Mount." Unlike the earliest Christian centuries ("martyr" is the root Greek word for witness), our witness of the faith is not very convincing.

Francis of Assisi urged, "Preach the gospel at all times; if necessary use words." Today, words are probably less important than these other principal means of evangelization: witness, dialogue, and the promotion of justice. (Cf. John Paul II Redemptoris Missio n. 41.) 

And the ultimate purpose of evangelization is not necessarily conversion to Christianity, but conversion of hearts to the message Jesus preached: "God is love, love one another, whatsoever you do for the least of your brothers and sisters," etc. Bringing everyone we meet closer to God and that vision of God and humankind is what evangelization aims at, no matter what religion anyone belongs to. For in the next life, ultimately we will not be Christian or Muslim, Jewish or Hindu, but we shall see God face to face as God's own daughters and sons.

In this perspective, every follower of Christ, or organization which calls itself Christian, is called upon to preach the good news Jesus brought to us all about who God is and who we are. That mission remains as urgent today as it was on the mount of the Ascension 2000 years ago.

Keith A. Russell
President, American Baptist Seminary of the West

We seem to be a little hesitant at the Graduate Theological Union to have a sustained conversation about Christian mission. As the GTU strives to be a place where "religion meets the world," it chooses to talk more about its interfaith future than its ecumenical roots. Yet, there needs to be continued discussion about "missiology" among Christian seminaries. Hopefully, these two vital conversations can be held together so that each informs the other.

Christians need to confront our historic "westernization" of the gospel we have been presenting and confess our complicity in being instruments of imperial domination as much as instruments of liberation. Repentance is the first step before defining future global Christian mission. We in the evangelical church need to confess our failure to take the context of our neighbors seriously and to bring "our gospel" to other places and cultures with sensitivity to culture and history. A Baptist leader in Nicaragua told me recently that the most damaging thing that we Americans import is our "prosperity theology" in a land of abject poverty. Part of the task of the seminaries is to revisit the past mission involvement to gain some perspective on our mistakes and to get insight on how we might now repent.

Having confessed our historic complicity with evil, we must however face the challenge and the need to "spread the gospel" in our complicated world. Christian mission is being fulfilled in expected and unexpected ways around the globe; it is growing by leaps and bounds in Africa and Latin America. We must, however, engage in mission in a way which is sensitive to and cognizant of the values and beliefs of others.

Christian mission might best be pictured as an engagement in which one beggar shares bread with another. We come with our offering to a needy world and then share what we bring, not as a superior to an inferior or as the powerful to the weak. We are not in a war with other religions but are one of several sharing a story about what is ultimate and how life gets meaning.