RITE AND REASON:The modern ecumenical movement could be said to have begun a century ago in Edinburgh, writes IAN ELLIS
THIS MONTH marks the centenary of the 1910 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh. It was a meeting of immense significance for the whole church, but for many reasons that were not foreseen at Edinburgh itself. Those who organised the conference had done so meticulously, with eight themes assigned to eight preparatory commissions, each engaging by correspondence with missionaries around the world.
The eight commissions, as they were titled, were: (1) Carrying the Gospel to all the non-Christian world; (2) The Church in the Mission Field; (3) Education in relation to the Christianisation of National Life; (4) The Missionary Message in relation to Non-Christian religions; (5) The Preparation of Missionaries; (6) The Home Base of Missions; (7) Relation of Missions to Governments; and (8) Co-operation and the Promotion of Unity.
Yet, the aim of the conference was not simply an exchange of information or a heightening of missionary awareness. It was, first and last, strategy. The watchword of the day was “The evangelisation of the world in this generation”, echoing the confidence and high ambitions of the missionary-minded.
The conference had the strategic purpose of seizing new opportunities for mission that had arisen at the time from new lines of communication and expanding travel and commerce, not least across the British Empire. The conference – a global meeting of representatives of Protestant missionary societies and church leaders across denominational boundaries – was typically conservative in theological outlook. Yet, despite the conservatism, it is noteworthy for today’s church that interfaith issues were discussed with a genuine respect and sympathy for other religions.
This, no doubt, was due to the experience that missionaries had of people of other faiths in other lands, and those religions’ recognition of the deity, their piety and, although with differences, their moral life.
Undoubtedly, the mindset of the Edinburgh 1910 gathering was one that saw the world as simply divided between Christian and non-Christian lands, that typically adopted military metaphors for Christian outreach and that had a supreme confidence in western superiority. Flowing from Edinburgh 1910 was, first, the conference’s continuation committee, which developed into the International Missionary Council.
Then came the life and work and faith and order movements, the former springing from the sense of social responsibility following the devastation of the first World War and the latter arising from the recognition that, if missionary societies were expected to co-operate in their work and not duplicate effort, the churches themselves should attend to their own relationships.
So was born the modern ecumenical movement.
The life and work and faith and order movements merged in 1948 to form the World Council of Churches, and in 1961 the International Missionary Council joined. Then, of course, the early 1960s brought the Second Vatican Council which, in its spirit of aggiornamento, or “bringing up to date”, happily allowed the Roman Catholic Church to enter into ecumenical life. The historical missionary “line” led from Edinburgh 1910 to the International Missionary Council to the World Council of Churches. It thus tended towards a more liberal approach to mission. This, in turn, led to the emergence of the more evangelical “Lausanne” missionary movement, so called because of its covenant statement drawn up at a 1974 congress in the Swiss city.
This dividing of the historical missionary movement into two trajectories – more liberal and more conservative – is itself reflected in the fact that two world missionary conferences were scheduled for this year, one in Edinburgh and the other, in the Lausanne tradition, in Cape Town. A challenge for both the missionary and ecumenical movements today is to bridge that gap, but, thankfully, this is an issue already well on the radar of the churches, with a very broad-based Global Christian Forum already having been brought together in Nairobi in 2007.
Canon Ian Ellis is Church of Ireland rector of Newcastle, Co Down and editor of the Church of Ireland Gazette. His book marking the Edinburgh 1910 centenary, A Century of Mission and Unity, is published this month by Columba Press, Dublin