A multiperspectival critical analysis of Mekdes Haddis’s A Just Mission: Laying Down Power and Embracing Mutuality

Abstract

This article presents a multiperspectival critical analysis of Mekdes Haddis’s A Just Mission: Laying Down Power and Embracing Mutuality. It begins by providing background information on Haddis, outlining her personal journey and the motivations behind her book. The analysis proceeds with reviews from three senior scholars—Al Tizon, Tite Tiénou, and Xiaoli Yang—each of whom explores the book’s contributions and weaknesses, focusing particularly on issues of race, power, justice, decolonizing missions, and mutuality in mission partnerships. In the subsequent section, Haddis addresses salient critiques regarding universalism, triggering language, ‘white saviorism’ and identity politics, and the dissonance between her stated aspirations for mutuality and the practical prescriptions she proposes. These critiques and responses are synthesized and analyzed by William Green, who further explores their broader implications. The article concludes with an assessment of the utility and appropriateness of A Just Mission for scholars of mission, mission leaders, practitioners of mission, and pastors.

Keywords

Race racism power justice mutuality colonialism evangelicals white saviorism indigenous leadership short-term missions mission partnerships

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