The International Missionary Council

Abstract

AbstractThis article reflects on the 40‐year history of the International Missionary Council (IMC) from its formation at Lake Mohonk in 1921 to its integration within the World Council of Churches at the WCC's 3rd Assembly in New Delhi in 1961. It does so by analyzing the explicit or implicit answers that were given within IMC circles to three fundamental theological questions. The first question is: What is the theological basis and justification for the Christian mission to all of humanity? A second question came to be regarded by the first IMC secretary, J. H. Oldham, as of primary importance: What is a Christian view of race and racial justice? A third question lay at the heart of the changing relationship between the IMC and the WCC: To what extent does the mission of the church require its visible unity? In investigating the various answers to these questions given within IMC meetings between 1921 and 1961, the article also pursues a fourth question: What answers did non‐Western church and mission leaders give to these three questions, and were their answers heard by the white Europeans and Americans who directed the IMC throughout its history? The article pays particular attention to the Jerusalem meeting in March–April 1928 and the debates supporting and opposing integration within the WCC at what was technically the first assembly of the IMC in Ghana in December 1957–January 1958.