Lecture: Re-Worlding mission - Toward a politically engaged missiology of transformation
Join us for the first of this term’s online seminar talks to engage with the latest research from a range of theological and ecclesiological thinkers.
In India, where religious plurality, minority oppression, caste struggles, and democratic aspirations continually shape the public sphere, Christian theology often contests oppressive structures while articulating alternative visions of justice, community, and the common good. By placing these Indian theological voices in dialogue with broader currents of political theory, public theology emerges not only as a mode of critique but also as constructive participation in plural democracies.
The seminar presentation reimagines Christian mission as a politically engaged process of “re-worlding” through the lens of Missio Insurrectio, an insurgent, decolonial, and reparative participation in God’s transformative activity amid global crisis. Critiquing both colonial legacies and contemporary missiological frameworks for their complicity in structures of domination, it argues that mission must move beyond managerial-centered paradigms toward a praxis that dismantles epistemic hierarchies and restores marginalised communities as agents of theological authority. By framing mission as uprising, reparative limit-rupturing, and polycentric, the seminar highlights the need for concrete practices of justice, including economic redistribution, institutional accountability, and ecological repair. It envisions mission as a dynamic, Spirit-led movement of resistance and renewal, where the church embodies radical hope by participating in God’s ongoing work of healing and re-creating the world from within sites of political struggle.
About the Speaker
The Reverend Dr Allan Palanna is Westminster Abbey’s 2026 Commonwealth Theologian-in-Residence.
He is a Presbyter of the Church of South India, Karnataka Southern Diocese, and currently serves as Professor of Christian Ethics in the Department of Theology and Ethics at the United Theological College, Bengaluru, India. He earned his PhD in Theology and Religious Studies from the University of Kent, Canterbury, under the supervision of Professor Robin Gill. Dr Palanna has previously been a research scholar and taught Ecumenical Social Ethics at the Ecumenical Institute of the World Council of Churches (WCC), Bossey, Switzerland.
Dr Palanna’s research critically engages with Christian social ethics within the Indian socio-political context, with particular attention to ethics of healthcare, theology, and the church’s public witness. He is also the editor of Mission Statement and Priorities of the Church for the Decade 2021–2030 (Chennai: Church of South India, 2022), a volume commissioned by the Church of South India.
About the Koinonia Seminars
The Koinonia Seminars are a series of online seminar talks aimed at theology professionals, clergy and ordinands whilst also being accessible to those interested in theolog
