ABSTRACT
As Christianity has crossed frontiers and interacted with cultures, violence has been a recurrent issue. To be sure, violence in mission has many dimensions: the behaviour – violent or non-violent – of the Christian missionaries who bear the good news; the approaches that the people who convert to Christ adopt as a result of their conversions; and the responses of non-Christians to the conversion of friends and family members. As well-honed human reflexes and well-developed assumptions come into conversation with the Christian gospel, violence hovers over mission. Missionary practitioners do not always realize this. Often they have given little thought to the implications of the Christian gospel for violence; as a result, they have devoted relatively meagre evangelistic and catechetical attention to a Christian approach to violence. In this, the missionaries have not been greatly helped by missiologists. 1 A few missiologists deal with violence, en passant, as an issue in mission. 2 Andrew Kirk goes much further. Repeatedly he addresses the issue of violence as a missiological issue with intense intellectual and personal engagement. Unlike other missiologists, he devotes entire chapters to violence. In What is Mission?, Andrew’s introductory survey of missiology, one of 11 chapters, is entitled ‘Overcoming Violence and Building Peace’. In his more recent Mission under Scrutiny, one of 10 chapters is entitled ‘Overcoming Violence with Violence: Is it Ever Justified?’. These lengthy treatments are the work of an unusual scholar whose thinking is earthed in the real world. 3
