Towards a missiology of marriage and sexuality: A review of Timothy Tennent’s theology of the body

Abstract

Missiologists have written little in response to many of our modern world’s newly emergent and influential sexual lifeways, ideologies, surrogacy practices, and family formations. The 2020 book written by missiologist Timothy Tennent For the Body: Recovering a Theology of Gender, Sexuality, and the Human Body represents an exception. Thus, it merits sustained attention from other missiologists wishing to consider such realities. This article reviews Tennent’s exposition of a “theology of the body,” focusing on his arguments regarding marriage and celibacy as missional icons of the gospel, and explores the relevance of the book’s topic for missiology. It commends Tennent for addressing an important and timely topic that ought to be addressed by missiologists. It suggests that Tennent might have more fully achieved his laudable goal of framing a suitable argument for the public square had he interacted more with anthropology, not just theology, and had he explicitly interacted with the writings of professional missiologists on fundamental missiological principles. The article proposes that missiology, despite its relative silence till now, has discipline-specific strengths for engaging contemporary challenges related to sex and marriage and Christian witness. It encourages missiologists to direct our future missiological conversations, research, writing, and curricular development accordingly.