#105: "We Have A New Constantine in Town."
How Will The Work of Mission Change?
There are many of us around the world today who are seeking ways to reimagine the work of sharing the good news of Jesus with the world — both our neighbours as well as those thousands of miles away. We love Jesus so much we want the whole world to hear about him. We love what he teaches us so much we want our neighbours, local and foreign, to have a chance to follow him. We believe he is the good news — He makes all the difference for all humanity. We want the world to know him and experience the difference he makes for us all both here in this life and in the life hereafter. Our work is just beginning — and central to what we are doing is the conviction that the gospel is best to be preached without the help of Western imperialism.
We find the entire narrative of mission as conquest (military, cultural, or theological) that has shaped a great deal of how mission is understood and spoken of around us is so twentieth-century that it cannot be relevant in our world today. We commit to exploring new ways of sharing the good news of the kingdom of God without mixing it with that of the empire. We do this knowing that there are many in the world whose only understanding of mission involves imperialism, such that mission without conquest seems impossible and unorthodox. Of course, at the forefront of mission as conquest is the strong man (who happens to be white for a few centuries now). Today, the strong man’s ways of doing mission — his ideology and praxis (read missiology) and has posture (as one who brings both salvation and civilisation) have been exported around the world — many African Christians are just as colonial in their missions language and posture as Westerners.
Today, in 2025, we are concerned. The current political atmosphere in the United States (the country that not only sends out the highest number of missionaries but also shapes a great deal of world missiology) will, without a doubt, impact mission around the world for many years to come. I wonder what happens at the intersection between “America First” and the American missionary movement. What finances will be available for mission when nationalist pragmatism tells US Christians to focus at home first? What about (Christian) migration to the US that seems to uphold several denominations in the country? Indeed, as the US walks back many of its commitments around the world, what will American mission agencies do? USAID is gone; will YWAM be next? How shall Africans preach their environment-friendly theologies (seeing the devastating impact that climate change has unleashed on their nations) when the books they read say otherwise? These are a few of the many issues to think about.
I have heard some friends speak of the religious environment in the US in terms similar to that of the Roman Empire in the first decades of the fourth century CE when Constantine converted to Christianity and made it the preferred religion of the empire. Some say we have a new Nero while others say, rightly, in my opinion, we have a new Constantine. While this is celebrated by some, others see the dilemma it brings about for mission. Once again, the gospel of the empire begins to dominate the gospel of the kingdom of God. As dangerous as this is, it is easier to deal with than the posture that results from the power that comes with having the emperor on one’s side. Freshly emboldened by the strong-man rhetoric of the American empire, missionaries will be sent around the world seeking to shape world Christianity in the image of the US. Some people around the world may love this idea. However, it has massive implications for the testimony of many non-Western Christians seeking to also share the good news.
A humbler Western missionary movement is critical for the success of world missions today. But I know it is hard to be humble when you have the empire behind you. May God give us the grace.
2. Quotes I am Pondering
[I]t’s always like you are the child, so stay in your place. They tell you we want the youth to take over, we want people to speak up their minds but what have you done with the times they have spoken their minds or are they just children? They need to make up their minds, are we just children or the ones that they expect to take over. — Bisi Adenekan-Koevoets, “Nigerian Pentecostal Diasporic Missions and Intergenerational Conflicts: Case Studies from Amsterdam and London,” Mission Studies 38 (2021) 437.
[T]he extension of African colonies and missions was thought at the time to provide a solution to the increasing economic di≈culties for European expansionist and imperialist nations; Africans became empire’s new workforce, and the ‘‘surplus’’ British subjects displaced by industrialization became their exported overseers, colonialism’s burgeoning managerial staff. — Barbara Harlow and Mia Carter. Archives of Empire: The Scramble for Africa. Vol. 2, London: Duke University Press, 2003, 244.
In African Religion there is more action on peace and less speculation about it. This functions all the time at many levels of life. These include peace and reconciliation in person-to-person relations, in the family, in the neighborhood, in the community, and among peoples (tribes) that may have disputes or fights with one another. Peace is not taken for granted; the fact that people quarrel, have disputes and serious differences, fight and even injure or kill one another is a tragic reality of life. Though not necessarily with success religion, provides for ways of bringing about reconciliation and peace where and when such fights ensue. — John S. Mbiti, "Never Break The Pot That Keeps You Together: Peace and Reconciliation in African Religion” Dialogue & Alliance, Vol 24, No 1, 2010.
I pray that you will be faithful to the work God has for you this week.
One of the most discouraging things for me is to see current and former American missionaries support Trump. To see them propagate a nationalistic, power-hungry form of Christianity around the world. But then, American missions have always been twisted up in the same self-righteousness and arrogance that has bound white American evangelicals to MAGA.
The legacy of Constantine is certainly mixed. These days, it is increasingly popular to blame Constantine for nearly everything that is wrong with Christian praxis. Some of that blame is warranted while some of it is not. But Constantine did some things well. Thus you give the current American president — whose name is not worthy of mention — far, far too much credit by referring to him as a New Constantine. Insofar as Constantine was an emperor/king/dictator and the current American president both acts like and wants to be an emperor/king/dictator, you do have an argument. But for all of his flaws, Constantine did apparently experience something of a Christward conversion, however incomplete it may have been. (Notably, he refrained from being baptized until he was on his death bed.) The current American president, however, has never experienced anything remotely like a Christward conversion. Indeed, though he has frequently boasted about various of his sins (especially his sexual immoralities and adulterous infidelities), he has also boasted that he has never repented because he has never done anything that calls for repentance. While it would foolish (and probably eisegetical) to call him The Antichrist™, he certainly demonstrates an antichrist (small -a-) spirit at every turn.
Has the evangelical label been (mis)appropriated by those with nothing in common with classical evangelicalism? Of course. (Note well that the evangelical revivals led to the abolition both the slave trade and slavery itself as well as to various other gospel-inspired social reforms: e.g., prison reform, labor reform protections for workers, child labor laws, expansion of the electoral franchise to those other than wealthy landholding men of European descent, etc.) Does the support of so-called evangelicals (especially in the USA but elsewhere as well) for the narcissistic, misogynistic, racist, coup-attempting, conman who mocks the teachings of Jesus and currently occupies the White House besmirch the name "Christian"? Absolutely. Is it a tragedy that so many American Christians are unable to see this? It is. But calling the current US president "a New Constantine" both feeds the myth that he would like to build for himself and mocks the entire Christian world — outside of the Roman Empire, where half of the Christian population at the time lived, as well as inside of it — of the fourth century.
Note well that if 1) you were not my friend and 2) I did not greatly respect your opinions, I would have not taken the time to comment.