Power and Partnership

A History of the Protestant Mission Movement

Barnes

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781621896777
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Religione

While the concept of partnership between churches in the Global North and South has been an ecumenical goal for well over eight decades, realizing relationships of mutuality, solidarity, and koinonia has been, to say the least, problematic. Seeking to understand the dynamics of power and control in these relationships, this work traces the history of how partnership has been lived out, both as a concept and in practice. It is argued that many of the issues that are problematic for partnerships today can find their antecedents during colonial times at the very beginnings of the modern missionary movement. For those interested in pursuing cross-cultural partnerships today, understanding this history and recognizing the use, as well as the misuse, of power is crucial as we seek genuine relationships of care and friendship in our fractured and divided world.

1

Problems with Partnership in Protestant Mission

The Need for an Historical Analysis

For the past few decades, mission agencies and churches around the world have tried to work in cooperation and mutuality. The operative word today for these ecumenical relationships is “partnership.”1 While many churches and mission agencies use this term to describe their ecumenical relationships, this study seeks to focus on partnerships as they exist between what Lamin Sanneh calls the churches of Global Christianity (the churches of the North or Western world, also formerly known as “sending” or “older” churches) and the churches of World Christianity (the churches of the South and East, formerly known as “receiving” or “younger” churches). In making this distinction, Sanneh defines Global Christianity as “the faithful replication of Christian forms and patterns developed in Europe. It echoes Hilaire Belloc’s famous statement, ‘Europe is the faith.’ It is, in fact, religious establishment and the cultural captivity of faith.”2 On the other hand, Sanneh notes that World Christianity “is the movement of Christianity as it takes form and shape in societies that previously were not Christian, societies that had no bureaucratic tradition with which to domesticate the gospel . . . World Christianity is not one thing, but a variety of indigenous responses through more or less effective local idioms, but in any case without necessarily the European Enlightenment frame.”3 While recognizing that some theologians, such as Nami Kim, have raised concerns over the simplicity of Sanneh’s binary Global/World divide in Christianity,4 his typology can still be helpful in understanding the history and practice of ecumenical partnerships, as well as in seeking to address the seemingly intractable problems outlined below.

While the term partnership has been used to describe the relationships between Global and World churches, finding concrete ways in which to live out mutuality and solidarity has been, to say the least, problematic. As someone who is involved in ministries of Global/World partnership, a number of questions come to mind. First, why is this so? What were the historical antecedents that led to the concept of partnership? What were the original secular and religious historical contexts in which the term partnership was used, and how has its meaning been understood and contested over time? Secondly, as one who comes from a Western background and represents a church mission agency in the North, what lessons can we, the churches of Global Christianity, learn from this history? Although there have been and still are impediments to partnership by all involved, what specific issues have caused those of us from the churches of Global Christianity to continually fall short in these relationships?

In searching to answer the first of these questions, we will seek to understand the problems inherent in these relationships by studying the history of the concept and practice of partnership. Each of the following eight chapters that form the main body of this research focuses on a different era of history and will follow a similar pattern. The first section of each chapter serves to situate the church’s partnership discourse in its secular historical setting, focusing especially on issues pertaining to North/South political and economic power, as well as how power has been contested. The remainder of each chapter will trace the ecumenical history of partnership from the beginning of the modern Protestant missionary movement right through to current times, focusing especially on the discussions and findings of world ecumenical mission meetings, starting with The Ecumenical Conference of Foreign Missions in New York (1900) and ending with the assembly of the World Council of Churches in Porto Alegre (2006). While the main narrative focuses on ecumenical gatherings, emphasis will also be given to individuals and events that played significant roles in the development of the understanding and practice of partnership.

The study of the historical development and understanding of partnership is important today, for when looking at the literature currently available, there seems to be much discussion on practical contemporary issues such as the sharing of resources or personnel, but very little on the history of Global/World relationships. Partnership is only mentioned in brief passages in David Bosch’s Transforming Mission or Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder’s Constants in Context. In J. Andrew Kirk’s What is Mission? an entire chapter is dedicated to this subject (chapter 10—
“Sharing in Partnership”); however, only a few paragraphs are dedicated to how partnership has been understood historically.

To date, the most complete study on this topic has been done by Lothar Bauerochse in his book Learning to Live Together: Interchurch Partnerships as Ecumenical Communities of Learning. Although Bauerochse’s main focus involves case studies on the relationships between German Protestant churches and their African partners, the first section entails an historical analysis of the term “partnership.” In his analysis, Bauerochse states that “the term partnership is a term of the colonial era . . . It is a formula of the former ‘rulers,’ who with it wished to both signal a relinquishment of power and also to secure their influence in the future. Therefore, the term can also serve both in colonial policy and mission policy to justify continuing rights of the white minority.”5 This understanding then serves as the lens through which he interprets the partnership discourse, reminding the reader that although the term was meant to connote an eventual leveling of power dynamics in relationships, it was also used by those with power to “secure their influence in the future.” This analysis is largely true. As we will see in chapter three, when the term partnership was introduced into the colonial debate, it was closely aligned with the concept of trusteeship. Later, as will be discussed in chapter six, the term partnership was also used in the late colonial period by the British as a way to maintain their colonies while offering the hope of freedom in the future; a step forward from trusteeship, but short of autonomy and independence.

During colonial times, once the term partnership was introduced into ecumenical discussions, many arguments identical to those used by colonial powers for the retention of their colonies were used by church and missionary leaders to deny autonomy to the younger churches. Later, when looking at partnership in the post-World War II era of decolonization, Bauerochse admits that partnership began to be used in the ecumenical movement to connote relationships much different than those proposed by British colonial policy. However, he also states that “if we consider
. . . the way the British idea of partnership was fitted into the entire context of the coming into being of the commonwealth (‘a unity with joint ideals, a unity of freedom, as an example for the world’) structural parallels are also apparent here.”6

While admitting that much of what Bauerochse writes is, in the main, true, to interpret the history of ecumenical partnerships solely through this lens does not seem to give an entirely accurate interpretation of events. While the term “partnership” may indeed be a product of colonial times, it is argued here that the antecedents for an alternative interpretation, one focused on equality and mutuality, have been present for at least two centuries, going back to the beginnings of the modern missionary movement and the formation of mission societies. Missionary statesmen such as Rufus Anderson and Henry Venn emphasized the planting of self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating churches, as well as the importance of vernacular translation of the scriptures. Importantly, and distinct from colonial policy which stressed that a people should be mature enough (as judged by Western standards) to govern themselves before power could be devolved, these early missionary leaders believed that the only way for local churches to grow was to have authority, power, and leadership devolved to them at an early stage, without putting an emphasis on the emerging World churches necessarily showing themselves worthy, responsible, or having “caught up” with the churches of Global Christianity.

Therefore while admitting that its secular use originated in the colonial discourse, when injected into ecumenical discussions at the beginning of the twentieth century, the term was also infused with an alternate meaning; the ideal of relationships between autonomous churches, regardless of cultural differences, age, or maturity, being draw together by God’s Spirit. Instead of partnership simply being co-opted by the ecumenical movement to protect Global Christian hegemony, I believe that the interpretation and use of partnership was contested from the very beginning of its utilization in describing Global/World relationships. In this study, this dichotomy is vital for understanding and interpreting the historical narrative. From the beginning of the narrative until the 1960s, colonial arguments and interpretations tend to dominate the discourse. And although after this time blatant paternalism was rarely expressed openly, it is clear that latent feelings of superiority and paternalism can be seen in the way many Global Christian partner churches related (and still relate) to those of World Christianity. However, one also needs to recognize that, just as colonial interpretations linger today, conversely and differing from Bauerochse’s interpretation, I believe that, far from simply being a post-World War II phenomenon, an alternative view of partnership was already present. Thus, later in the narrative, when ecumenical gatherings used words like solidarity, fellowship, and koinonia to describe partnership, they were not simply products of postcolonial discourse, but could trace their understanding from the very inception of the modern missionary movement.

While an historical analysis of the understanding and use of partnership in the ecumenical movement is helpful and worthwhile in itself, it can also serve a larger purpose. As Bauerochse notes in his study, “historical recollection can be an important aid in understanding current problems and difficulties in partnership relations . . . and can also provide a stimulus for developing new forms of such relationships.”7 In this spirit, this book will follow or trace four themes or issues that, given the contested history described above, seem to constantly reappear in the historical narrative and which, especially for those of us from a Global Christian perspective, continue today as barriers to living out relationships of mutuality. While each theme is treated as a separate issue, it must be noted that in reality they all touch, influence, and reinforce one another, each contributing in its own way to the problem of living out partnership. It should also be noted that while it will be more obvious in some themes than others, the contestation of power is inherent in all four, especially during and after the period of decolonization.

The first theme focuses on the issue of the home base, or those that made up the constituencies of Global Christian churches. From the beginning of the modern missionary movement, it is clear that overseas mission was the purview of a small minority of Global Christians who believed that it was their calling to tell others about Christ. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, while missionaries felt there was a divine mandate to share the gospel, they struggled with how to excite the masses of church members back home to support them. In addition, those that did give their support saw the missionary vocation as simply planting Global Christianity into foreign mission fields. As the World churches grew and took on more responsibility for their own futures, missionary leaders struggled with how to convey this new reality to the average church member.

As early as 1928, after the Jerusale...