Faith Seeking Conviviality: Reflections on Ivan Illich, Christian Mission, and the Promise of Life Together

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Faith Seeking Conviviality traces the journey of a U.S. missionary into Brazil (and beyond), seeking to be faithfully present while also questioning the default settings of good intentions. Taking Ivan Illich as the primary theological guide on that journey, Faith Seeking Conviviality narrates the discovery of a renewed imagination for Christian mission that arises as a response to two persistent questions. First, given the colonial history of Christian missionary expansion, on what basis do we go on fulfilling the Great Commission (Matt 28:16-20) as Christ’s disciples? A second question, intimately related to the first, is: What makes it possible to embody a distinctively Christian presence that is missionary without being manipulative? In doing theology with and after Ivan Illich, Faith Seeking Conviviality does not offer a pull-off-the-shelf model for mission, but rather a framework for embodying the incarnational logic of mission that entails a convivial turn–delinking missionary discipleship from the lure of techniques and institutional dependence in order to receive and to share the peace of Christ relationally.