Credo: the average Anglican is a black, female teenager

From The Times
July 19, 2008
Cathy Ross

Recently a friend informed me that missiology is really just “a white man’s theology.” As a student of missiology and a woman, I felt the need to counter this. Yet what is missiology? Well, my friend was right that it began with white men taking Christianity, commerce and civilisation beyond Europe. This is exactly what missiology endeavours to study. It is a critical reflection on theories of mission, research into mission and critique on how mission is done.

This may sound rather theoretical, but the current Lambeth Conference, with its theme of empowering bishops for mission, demonstrates the importance of missiology in how we live out the Gospel in our world.

Current missiological studies now identify migration as a key mission issue. One in five Europeans migrated between 1800 and 1925, the largest migration movement in history. This coincided with the high tide of the Western missionary movement as well as Empire. These movements unleashed powerful forces of change which we have felt the impact of in Europe, and in particular in England, ever since. the rest