Ecumenical Missiology

Ken Ross

• Publisher: Regnum
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781911372028
• eBook ISBN: 9781912343492
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

We are together on our Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace. One very significant dimension of this ecumenical movement together in faith, is our movement together in mission, guided by the document Together Towards Life. It has been developed through a unique global and ecumenical process, and affirmed and received by the 10th WCC Assembly in Busan, Korea. On our way forward in our local, regional and global contexts, we need to continue to share and to receive, to study and to serve, to work and to pray, as we participate in the mission of God. This book is an invaluable resource for the journey ahead. Olav Fykse Tveit, General Secretary, World Council of Churches

SECTION ONE

TRACING CHANGING LANDSCAPES AND NEW CONCEPTIONS OF MISSION

Compiled and introduced by Kenneth R. Ross

Introduction

The ‘ecumenical century’ is widely acknowledged to have begun with the World Missionary Conference held at Edinburgh in 1910. However, scarcely had its Continuation Committee begun the task of implementing its vision when the First World War broke out. It soon became apparent that this shattering event had permanently altered the way the world was understood. Mission too would need a new interpretation. This turned out to be but the first of a series of episodes which changed the landscape in which people were living. Each called for a new conception of Christian mission.

This section will trace the changing landscapes across the century and discern the outlines of the new conceptions of mission which were formed in response. A primary frame of reference for this exercise will be the conferences which were held approximately every ten years by the International Missionary Council and, after that body’s integration with the World Council of Churches in 1961, by the WCC Commission on World Mission and Evangelism. These conferences will be allowed to speak for themselves through extracts from their findings. Introduction and commentary will set them in context and make reference to leading figures and publications by which they were influenced. ‘(These primary texts are reproduced exactly as they originally appeared including, especially in the earlier years, expressions that display attitudes to such matters as race and gender that would not be acceptable today. Part of the observation of changing landscapes is to see how such attitudes changed in the course of the century.)

The purpose and importance of these world mission conferences is captured in a statement made by the first of them at Edinburgh in 1910: ‘Assuredly, then, we are called to make new discoveries of the grace and power of God, for ourselves, for the Church, and for the world; and, in the strength of that firmer and bolder faith in Him, to face the new age and the new task with a new consecration.’¹ This is what succeeding generations have sought to do. As the landscape has changed, so understanding of mission has deepened and broadened. New discoveries of the grace and power of God have indeed been made. From these there is much to be learned as mission theologians and practitioners meet the challenges posed by the world of the 21st century.

¹ ‘Message to Members of the Church in Christian Lands’, World Missionary Conference, 1910, The History and Records of the Conference (Edinburgh and London: Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier; New York, Chicago and Toronto: Fleming H. Revell, 1910), 109; cit. Wolfgang Günther, ‘The History and Significance of World Mission Conferences in the 20th Century’, in International Review of Mission, 92.367 (October 2003), 521-37, at 521.

THE WORLD MISSIONARY CONFERENCE, EDINBURGH 1910 – A FOUNTAIN-HEAD

•Representative gathering of the entire Protestant missionary movement

•Christendom framework of the ‘Christian World’ and the ‘Non-Christian World’

•Sense of opportunity and obligation to take the gospel to the whole world

•In-depth research, study and reflection informed the conference

•Divisive doctrinal and ecclesial issues excluded

•Greater co-operation and collaboration needed for the sake of effectiveness in mission

•Birth of the modern ecumenical movement

The Nature and Purpose of ‘Edinburgh 1910’

From the mid-19th century the western Protestant missionary movement adopted the practice of holding a major international conference on a decennial basis. The World Missionary Conference, usually remembered as ‘Edinburgh 1910’, stood in this succession. It was distinguished, however, by the range of its participants, the breadth and depth of its enquiry, the scale of its ambition, the sense of urgency and opportunity with which it was imbued, and the magnitude of its historical legacy in mission and ecumenism. Its leaders were united in the conviction that they stood at a moment of unprecedented opportunity in terms of fulfilling the Church’s task of taking the Christian message to the whole world. They were convinced that they had arrived at a moment when political, economic and religious factors had combined to create opportunities for worldwide missionary advance which, if not grasped now, might never recur. The conference therefore convened with a strong sense that it had a role to play in world evangelisation which would prove to be historic.

An informal alliance of British and American missionary societies, with support also from continental Europe, provided the leadership and organisation for the conference. The American Methodist layman, John R. Mott, well known as a leader of the Student Volunteer Movement and the Young Men’s Christian Association, chaired the organising committee and the conference itself.¹ The secretary was a young man from Scotland, J.H. Oldham, a masterful thinker and organiser who would later become a major figure in the twentieth-century ecumenical movement.² The participants were drawn from the missionary societies and church mission boards of the western Protestant churches. Only agencies having missionaries in the foreign field and with foreign missions expenditure of at least £2,000 annually were invited to be represented, and they were entitled to an additional delegate for every additional £4,000 of foreign missionary expenditure.³ On this basis 176 missionary societies and boards sent delegations – 59 from North America, 58 from continental Europe, 47 from the United Kingdom and 12 from South Africa and Australia. The delegates were overwhelmingly British and American – 509 from Britain, 491 from North America, 169 from continental Europe, 27 from the white colonies of South Africa and Australasia, and 19 from ‘the younger churches’ of India, China and Japan. Only one African attended and there were no delegates from Latin America, the Caribbean or the Pacific.

Complex ecclesiastical diplomacy lay behind the composition of the conference and the framing of its enquiry. A major objective of the organising committee was to secure the participation of the Anglo-Catholic or ‘High Church’ Anglican missionary societies – the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa.⁴ In order to do so, they had to concede that territories where Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic churches predominated should be regarded as already evangelised, not a view usually taken at that time by Evangelical Protestant missions. Hence Latin America, much of the Middle East and eastern Europe were effectively excluded from the consideration of the conference. Its discussion was framed around the ‘Christian world’ of western Europe and North America, and the ‘Non-Christian world’ of Africa, Asia and the Pacific. The question was how to take the gospel of Christ from the former to the latter. To further allay apprehensions among the societies and boards invited to participate, the International Committee agreed ‘to confine the purview of the Conference to work of the kind in which all were united… No expression of opinion should be sought from the conference on any matter involving any ecclesiastical or doctrinal question on which those taking part in the conference differed among themselves’.⁵ This meant that the conference was necessarily oriented to practical issues of method, administration and co-operation in missionary work.

A distinctive feature of Edinburgh 1910 was that it did not aim to be a rallying of the faithful supporters of the missionary movement. Whereas earlier gatherings had concentrated on a demonstration of enthusiasm, Edinburgh aimed to be a working conference, its subtitle being ‘To consider Missionary Problems in relation to the Non-Christian World’. It was distinguished by its attempt to achieve a more unified strategy and greater co-ordination within the worldwide engagement of Christian mission. The aim of the organising committee was that it should be ‘a united effort to subject the plans and methods of the whole missionary enterprise to searching investigation and to co-ordinate missionary experience from all parts of the world’.⁶ It was driven by the belief that the missionary movement had arrived at a unique moment of opportunity. There was a great sense of urgency to the conference, prompted by a conviction that the opportunity could be lost if the right strategy were not formed and implemented. ‘Never before,’ stated its flagship text, ‘has there been such a conjunction of crises and of opening of doors in all parts of the world as that which characterises the present decade.’⁷ In the words with which Mott entitled the book he published soon after the conference, it appeared to be ‘the decisive hour of Christian missions’.⁸

Much of the drive and inspiration of the conference derived from the delegates’ realisation that their goal of world evangelisation was much more likely to be achieved if there were a greater degree of co-operation and collaboration among the western missionary agencies. The only formal resolution of the conference came on the report of its Commission on ‘Cooperation and the Promotion of Unity’. The conference unanimously resolved that a Continuation Committee be formed, ‘international and representative in character… to maintain in prominence the idea of the World Missionary Conference as means of co-ordinating missionary work, of laying sound lines for future development, and of evoking and claiming by corporate action fresh stores of spiritual force for the evangelisation of the world’.⁹ The conference resulted in structures quite quickly being put in place to facilitate co-operation between missionary agencies.

Its significance, however, went much further. Though its terms of reference explicitly excluded consideration of divisive doctrinal and ecclesiastical questions, the Edinburgh Conference spawned an epoch-making vision of church unity. The Asian delegates, though few in number, were particularly influential in voicing an aspiration for greater church unity, drawing on movements in this direction which were already underway in their contexts. They in turn took fresh impetus from the dynamic of the conference. A direct line of continuity runs from the Edinburgh Conference to the formation of the Church of South India (1947), the Church of North India (1970), a single non-denominational Protestant Church in China (1951), and the United Church of Christ in Japan (1941).¹⁰ Though the conference was an exclusively Protestant affair, there were moments when it looked to a wider church unity. Silas McBee, editor of The Churchman, read a letter from Bishop Bonomelli, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Cremona, in which the Bishop wrote that he recognised amongst the Edinburgh delegates elements of faith ‘more than sufficient to constitute a common ground of agreement, and to afford a sound basis for further discussion, tending to promote the union of all believers in Christ’.¹¹

Dr R. Wardlaw Thompson of the London Missionary Society told the conference: ‘I long for the time when we shall see another Conference, and when men of the Greek Church and the Roman Church shall talk things over with us in the service of Christ.’¹² Thus the conference proved to be the widely acclaimed starting point of the twentieth-century ecumenical movement, with a direct line of continuity running through to the formation of the World Council of Churches in 1948. ‘Edinburgh 1910,’ wrote Hugh Martin, ‘was in fact a fountain-head of international and inter-church co-operation on a depth and scale never before known.’¹³

Nonetheless, in many respects the expectations of Edinburgh 1910 were disappointed. The world was not evangelised in that generation. The gospel was not carried to the entire non-Christian world. Within a few years of the conference, the energies of the ‘Christian world’ would be consumed by a war more destructive than any experienced hitherto and a great deal of the worldwide evangelistic effort would be put on hold. Nor would this prove to be...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• Foreword
• Editorial Introduction
• Section 1: Tracing Changing Landscapes and New Conceptions of Mission Compiled and introduced by Kenneth R. Ross
• Section 2: Core Themes Across a Century
• Section 3: Together Towards Life
• Bibliography
• List of Contributors
• Index
• Back Cover