DARREN CRONSHAW reviews Teaching all Nations: Interrogating the Matthean Great Commission...
Mitzi J Smith and Jayachitra Lalitha (eds.),
Teaching All Nations: Interrogating the Matthean Great Commission
Fortress, Minneapolis, 2014.
ISBN-13: 978-1451470499.
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“Mitzi Smith challenges the exaltation of teaching over social justice in Matthew. Her refocusing away from Jesus as teacher of the nations to Jesus as God with us is one of the highlights of the book…” |
It is a curious fact of the history of mission and of Biblical interpretation that colonial practices have been promoted by adducing Matthew 28:16-20 as the ‘Magna Carta of mission’, not least by labeling it the Great Commission.
Two main problems of the so-called “Great Commission” are that Matthew does not call it that, and it has not always been used wholistically. Focusing, as it does, on teaching, readers who have selected it above other mission commissions have by implication elevated teaching over mercy ministry, and proclamation over service. Moreover, the teaching it seems to have encouraged subordinated dialogue and conversation with the other to the more dominant genre of one-directional instruction.
As Gosnell Yorke comments in the preface of Teaching All Nations, the Bible has been a humanising and liberating agent in many contexts, but also at times a brutal and blunt tool of oppression. During the time of European colonisation and American imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Matthew 28:16-20 has been the dominant passage of missionary motivation. This has brought liberation as well as oppression, but its dual (and dualistic) influence is only recently being critiqued by writers such as R S Sugirtharajah and Muse Dube. This volume brings a range of other writers into the necessary conversation.
The editors are Mitzi J Smith is associate professor of New Testament and early Christian studies at Ashland Theological Seminary in the US. Jayachitra Lalitha is associate professor of New Testament and Greek at Tamilnadu Theological Seminary in India. They have assembled 14 academics and/or activists from Africa, Asia, United States and the Caribbean who draw on Biblical studies, womanist and feminist criticism, history and art history, post-colonial and missiological perspectives. The writers contribute 14 chapters in five parts that critically reflect on the Great Commission and its use or abuse.
Beatrice Okyere-Manu, David Gosse and Mitzi Smith in part one, examine the historical nexus of colonialism and mission, in chapters on Africa, the Caribbean and African slaves. Missionaries taught liberation from sin, but colonial mission practice propagated race and class stratification, let alone slavery and other sinful inequalities incongruent with the Gospel.
Part two offers womanist, feminist and postcolonial critiques. Jayachitra Lalitha offers a postcolonial Dalit feminist inquiry about why women were absent in the later part of Matthew 28, and challenges the Indian vernacular translation of nations as jaathigal, meaning caste groups. The passage ought to be read, she maintains, in the context of Jesus’ opposition to Empire, and applied to Dalit women in ways that liberate them from Brahmanism and patriarchy. Lynne St Clair Darden examines the role of African American women missionaries, and how they inadvertently propagated racism and classism. Mitzi Smith challenges the exaltation of teaching over social justice in Matthew. Her refocusing away from Jesus as teacher of the nations to Jesus as God with us is one of the highlights of the book: “As God with us, in Jesus social justice and teaching do not strive for mastery over each other and are not at war in his incarnate body. But Jesus’ practice of social justice and teaching organically constitute the interactive presence of God with us”.
In part three, themed around art and theology, Sheila F Winborne illustrates how art can exercise power and control, especially with renderings of a white Christ. Michelle Sungshin Lim appeals for an awareness of the “white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy” that denigrates religious practices of the other. She uses Minjung theology to appeal for listening to and empowering the poor in the global South. Rohan Gideon advocates in another direction for listening – to the voices and agency of children, as was discussed at Edinburgh 2010 and affirmed by the Child Theology Movement.
Christian education is the focus of part four, especially considering the psychological and moral damage on black peoples. Karen Crozier reclaims Jesus’ Kingdom of God message and its implications for fully-orbed emancipation. Anthony Reddie adopts a human development framework and highlights the importance of fostering identity and self-esteem. Lord Elorm-Donkor discusses the absurd discrepancy of mission growth alongside sociopolitical degeneration in Africa, and reframes the Matthean commission to include love of neighbor as summarising “everything Jesus commanded his disciples”.
Part five introduces some voices from beyond the academy. MarShondra Scott Lawrence calls Christians to love and promote social justice for our urban “glocal ghettos”. June Rivers draws on her family heritage and short-term mission experience to elevate the importance of not one but several texts as mandates for missionary engagement, and which not only talks about but embodies the love of Christ.
Teaching All Nations is an important volume for three main reasons. Firstly, it is a multi-voiced interrogation of Matthew 28:16-20. To understand its use and influence we need to hear from those who have been motivated as well as those who have been influenced by it. Secondly, although the different writers bring differing perspectives and emphases, a common call is to pay attention to the social justice and service elements of mission. These elements of wholistic mission resonate with other aspects of Jesus’ ministry and other passages commissioning His disciples to mission, but they are also implicit in a broader interpretation of Matthew 28. Thirdly, it is important to evaluate the use and abuse of the Matthean Great Commission as a tool of colonial oppression, but it is also appropriate to take a fresh look at the passage as a post-colonial challenge of Empire, an invitation to liberating interdependence and a call to cooperate with Jesus who is with us in His kin*dom and wholistic ministry. The Great Commission and its history of interpretation deserve post-colonial critique, but interpreted in the larger context of the Gospels it also has its own post-colonial contribution to the message of liberation. As such, Teaching All Nations is worthwhile reading for students and teachers of postcolonial criticism, Biblical and Matthean studies, missions and mission history, and global theology.
A shorter version of this review was originally published in Australian Biblical Review 62 (2014), 91-92.
To buy this book, follow this link – Teaching All Nations: Interrogating the Matthean Great Commission.
