Missionology

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The academic study of Christian missionary work, including its history, methods, theology and its effects on the cultures where it takes place
2. A field of religious scholarship examining the practice, aims and history of sending people to spread the Christian faith abroad
3. Scholarly inquiry into the theory and history of Christian evangelism and overseas mission activity across different times and places

Etymology: The word joins two pieces that come from very different corners of Latin and Greek. The first, "mission", comes from Latin "missio", a noun of action from "mittere", "to send", so a mission is literally a sending. The second, "-logy", comes from Greek "logos", "word" or "reason", which gave English a whole family of names for organised fields of study. Put together, a missiology is the study of that sending: the reasons, methods and history of sending people out to spread a religious faith. Notice that the Greek half is a classical borrowing, but the Latin half is older in English than the Greek one would suggest. The pairing itself is a modern coinage, formed in English from those two parts, and the "-logy" ending was a productive English suffix long before this word appeared. The "-logy" form descends through Latin "-logia" and French "-logie" before reaching English as "-logy".

Synonyms: missiology, mission studies