Modern Christian mission – a non-colonial endeavor? A thematic case study of Interact’s mission in sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

This study has its background in the neocolonial critique of Western aid organizations and the colonial critique of Christian mission. Many Christian organizations are very active within the international field today, but few studies have been made on modern mission and how these Christian organizations have handled the critique that their early mission in Africa is tightly bound with the progress of colonial actors (See for instance Inayatullah 2019, Rieger 2004), as well as the neo-colonial critique that colonial dynamics may remain today (ibid). Against this backdrop, I wanted to investigate how modern missionary organizations handle this critique, and if there is such a thing as non-colonial mission. Therefore, I conducted a qualitative case study on Interact, a Swedish Christian denomination which has dispatched missionaries in Africa for more than a hundred years. I conducted indepth interviews with some key actors in Interact’s work in Africa and analyzed some of Interact’s web data and policies to find out how they have navigated the colonial critique and what they do today to maintain equal power relations to their African partner organizations, as well as prevent neocolonial risks. These findings are later discussed using postcolonial and neocolonial theory, as well as the white savior complex. This paper argues that Interact is embracing some of the historic postcolonial critique, but that they need to address it more to generate implications in their operations today. They address many neocolonial challenges on their website and in person, but some of their ambitions regarding mutuality and local ownership are not institutionalized enough. I propose that Interact should draw from Rieger’s notion of “mission as inreach” (2004, p. 219-22) and Inayatullah’s notions of propose rather than impose (2019, p. 432), give more space to selfevaluation and joint evaluation, as well as invest more in international missionaries coming to Sweden.