Is Acts Really “The Most Overtly Missionary Book”?

Abstract

The aim of this article is twofold: first, to challenge the white reading of the book of Acts, and second, to offer an alternative reading by placing the story of the marginalized people, the colonized people, at the center. The first part of this article interrogates how white pentecostal scholars read the book of Acts as a missionary book and identify themselves with the disciples in the book of Acts. After presenting the problems with this reading, I propose an alternative interpretation of the movement in Acts as a migration movement instead of a missionary movement. Reading it from a migration point of view centers on the story of a marginalized group of people trying to find a safe place to live because of the sociopolitical instability in their homeland.