Maternal Agency and Care in the Missio Dei: A Practical-Theological Synthesis for Global Mission

Abstract: Mission theology often names the maternal while overlooking maternal agency and care. The article offers a practical-theological synthesis, bringing together my published work on maternal-thinking and motherlessness, a bounded case study of a Colombian congregation, and selected historical examples. Drawing on Sara Ruddick’s maternal-thinking, extended by a fourfold practice of preservation, growth, acceptance, and release, and on the idea of a maternal commons, it asks what these sources reveal about mothers and mothering in the missio Dei. The Colombian case shows how one US-based mission organisation’s assumptions about family, gender, and church belonging, treated as universal, marginalised local women’s maternal agency, while the congregation’s mothers and grandmothers helped sustain its communal life during crisis. Historical and textual examples suggest that this agency is a recurring, though often unrecognised, source of Christian faith, including under persecution. The case is bounded and does not represent all mission contexts, but it raises questions for mission agencies as mission initiatives increasingly emerge from the Global South. The article closes with four practical implications, for theological education, the recognition of maternal care, mission methods and policies, and reciprocal learning, and invites mission practice and policy to recognise maternal agency as one of the places from which Christians learn to discern and practise the missio Dei.