Developing Missional Fatherhood as a Faith-Based Model for Family Resilience Among Father-Absent Households in South Africa

Abstract

Father absence remains a persistent social problem in South Africa and is associated with significant pressures on family functioning, child development and community life. This article further develops Freeks’s concept of missional fatherhood as a faith-based model for strengthening family resilience among father-absent households in South Africa. The study employs an integrative literature review with qualitative thematic synthesis and a concept-development orientation. Missional fatherhood is grounded in the missio Dei and proceeds from the theological conviction that God is a missional and sending God. To understand the concept, mission must be understood in its deepest theological sense: God is the author of mission; God has sent and continues to send; Christ is central to this mission, and the Holy Spirit enables people to participate in the mission of the triune God. Consequently, missional fatherhood is people-oriented rather than institution-oriented or programme-focused. People participate in God’s mission by being sent towards other people, families and communities through responsible presence, sacrificial service, spiritual formation and restorative care. By placing Freeks’s concept in dialogue with missional theology, South African fatherhood scholarship, social fathering, family resilience, relational ecology and Ubuntu, the article further develops the concept as a broader theological and relational response to father absence without diminishing the responsibility of biological fathers. It argues that missional fatherhood offers a theological and relational contribution to addressing father absence by understanding fathering as missional praxis through which people participate in God’s continuing restorative work among families and communities.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Religions, 2026 · DOI ↗