Research of women’s history, gender studies and post-colonial criticism have brought the theme “Women and Mission” back into discussion.

The question as to mission praxis and mission concept can again also be discovered on the agenda of the intercultural theological dialogue of women.

Primarily all women theologians from Africa, Asia and Latin America link the analysis of social, cultural and economic living conditions of women with the question of the mission as Christians to take part in the transformation processes in Church and society.

The Desk for Women’s Research and Feminist Theologies takes up the current discussion processes, documents them and contributes with its own theological impulses to the ecumenical research projects of various institutions. 

An almost exclusively male and in the case of the Catholic missionary movement priest-oriented mission history made the proportion of women involved in the Christian mission movement near to invisible for a long time. 

Meanwhile numerous studies on the life of women in the mission give evidence to the important roles which women, inspite of the restrictions placed upon them by the Church, took over - not only in Protestant but also in Catholic missionary work. They were only rarely able to overcome the deeply patriarchal character and structure of this mission work.

As daughters of their time and culture the women missionaries transported with the Christian message a specific image of women into the mission countries, which they presented to the women who lived there as an ideal. Simultaneously mission work offered women a field for intercultural encounters, which repeatedly enabled reciprocal learning processes of women from differing contexts. The question as to how far these encounters contributed to altering substantially praxis and theory of the mission has to be answered individually from case to case.

The analyses at hand make clear: Women have always understood mission first and foremost as passing on the faith in a life-oriented context. The conviction that a faith which is openly lived out calls us to be followers is a constant factor in the missionary praxis of women.

Coming to terms with the history of the mission from the view point of women in the former mission churches is one of the most important current developments in women’s research. It is only this process which allows us to find answers to the question as to whether and how the (initial) encounter with Christianity was experienced by women as liberating or oppressing.

You will find further information in:

Katja Heidemanns, Frauen in der Mission, in: Christoph Dahling-Sander / Andrea Schultze / Dietrich Werner / Henning Wrogemann (Hrsg.), Leitfaden ökumenische Missionstheologie, Gütersloh 2003.   

Much less attention has been paid to mission-oriented theological reflection of women than to practical mission work of women.

Attempts to trace this reflection often begin at the places of missionary activity of women as nursery nurses, teachers, catechists, etc.. They underline the missiological meaning of the building up of relationships, of the daily care for survival and the integral concern for mankind. 

Have women, because of their special living conditions, developed a different interpretation of the Christian mission than male missionaries? Are they more sensitive to exclusion and violence because of the oppression they have personally experienced themselves? Is there a feminine mission theory characterized by their integral approach, as discovered world-wide by the highly acclaimed Missiologist, Dana Robert, in the faith testimony of women?

As controversial as the debate on these questions is being carried out, one thing, however, cannot be overseen: Because of their life’s experiences and the roles which have been forced upon them, women are demanding theological perspectives and themes which up to now have been neglected in traditional mission theology.

In the discussion context of feminist theologies the theme of “Mission” has at best up to now been only of marginal interest. Only a few female theologians tackle explicitly the missionary dimension of the Christian faith. This is changing under the influence of Postcolonial Studies.

The challenge is to make fertile the discussion stimulated by post-colonial criticism with the missionary dynamics of Christianity for the work on a feminist theology of the mission.

For: “The postcolonial condition describes the persistence of imperializing powers but most importantly it points ‘to the beyond’, to the alternative of justice and liberating interdependence – an alternative we can indeed choose” (Musa Dube).

Further information can be found in:

Katja Heidemanns, Schritte auf dem Weg zu einer feministischen Missiologie, in: Heike Walz / Christine Lienemann-Perrin / Doris Strahm (Hrsg.), Als hätten sie uns neu erfunden. Beobachtungen zu Fremdheit und Geschlecht, Luzern 2003.