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The contour of a post-postmodern missiology

Missiology: An International Review

Published online on

Abstract

Missiology has been based on the notion of an objective description of another culture and the notion that culture is homogeneous, coherent, and integrated. Such notions have faced serious challenges from globalization and postmodern anthropology, which is a product of poststructuralism, postcolonialism, and postmodernism. The post-postmodern missiology proposed here is built on the epistemological foundation of critical realism and recent social theory. In this missiology the concept of culture is reoriented to the diversity of intra-cultural variations, conceived in spatial terms as mobility, and embedded in power. The diversity in culture leads us to question the validity of much theological contextualization. In its place a polythetic and progressive contextualization is proposed.