Harvey C. Kwiyani, Decolonizing Mission (London: SCM Press, 2025)

reviewed by Paul Thaxter

Harvey Kwiyani lays out a well considered case for the need to decolonise mission in order to facilitate and improve contemporary mission praxis and theory, recognising that all followers of Christ are called into the worldwide mission of God. From the start, the coming of God’s kingdom was challenging to imperialism, as he notes in the chapters “Jesus and the Empire” and “Imperializing Jesus”, yet much incorporated military language within the mission glossary highlights the close link between Western imperial expansion and the spread of Christianity, especially over the last 500 years. Through careful historical research, and well chosen examples, Kwiyani demonstrates this interdependence of mission, empire, wealth, power, perspective and influence. For many non-Western people, this is obvious. In Chapter 1, Kwyani shares about his personal family experience growing up in Magomero, Malawi, where David Livingstone’s family had their colonial estate. Such experiences are so multitudinous across the globe yet hardly acknowledged even in current Western missiological discourse.

This intentional critique is seeking to open up new spaces in missiological thinking not dominated by Western discourse and seeks not just to decolonise missionary language but also to create new language to describe and demonstrate God’s mission in the world, aided by many new voices. In view of Christian demographics, this is long overdue as he emphasises when he quotes Andrew Walls saying, “Western theology is too small to answer the questions of all world Christianity.”

I would have appreciated a longer chapter on “Mission According to the Colonized” in which he quotes some key African thinkers such as John Mbiti. Kwiyani presents a genuine open challenge to Western missiologists: “Can you eat our missiology with us?” There is the plea for a much more authentic conversation and, amongst the church beyond Western paradigms, to encourage mission praxis into a greater reliance on a posture of humility, prayer and the Holy Spirit. He concludes thus, “We need to learn how to engage in God’s mission among God’s people in God’s world, simply as God’s co-labourers, servants and slaves – with no armies to make the way before us and no empires behind us.”

This book is well worth the challenging read. It is historical research which is academically well evidenced. I found it both intentionally provocative and collaborative, inviting the reader into a deeper discussion so often avoided or ignored or dismissed by those with a dominant Western mindset. In my UK experience, the history and impact of the British Empire, colonialism and the spread of Christianity is rarely taught and little known, and where it is done, it so often focuses on its perceived benefits. Christian missionary histories likewise tend toward collusive narratives which describe the benefits of what has been achieved with little credit to local Christians, and so often no admission of their complicity in the denigration of people, place and culture. This book can be helpful in developing more cultural awareness and sensitivity about ourselves and others. I recommend it for those interested or engaged in mission today both locally and internationally, ministers, mission organisations and Christian ministerial colleges, and those engaging in (Western?) postcolonial studies. I doubt though whether the term post-colonial or post-imperial will ever be apt to describe the world in which we live. We will still need tools to recognise the various disguises of empire. All the more reason to decolonise the mission of God.

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