The Legacy of Tübingen I (1964)

Abstract

People who do not remember are like trees with their roots cut and rivers with their feeders dried up. While there may still be water and foliage, neither river nor tree can sustain life for much longer; soon both will be gone. Humans need to remember--at least now and then--where they come from and what their calling is so to be able to stay human and act accordingly. While the day-to-day demands tend to swallow us up until nothing distinctive is left, remembrance makes us reconnect with the roots of our being and with what we have set out for to accomplish. Once we forget who we are and what we stand for, we not only lose focus and orientation, we lose ourselves. The consultation known as "Tubingen I" was held fifty years ago on account of a joint invitation by the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and hosted by the German Institute for Medical Missions at Tubingen, Germany. Tubingen I was neither the first nor the biggest get-together of people working in medical missions concerned about the future of such engagement and something more. Tubingen I, rather, was a consultation of experts tasked to advise the LWF and the WCC on how best to grapple with the challenges faced by church-related hospitals and health-care programs notably in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Yet, despite the secluded week-long deliberations of 19 (1) consultants, Tubingen I turned out to blaze the trail of a new understanding of the churches' involvement in health-care and healing, leading over time to significant practical changes. While the then-acting secretary of the World Council's Division of World Mission and Evangelism Charles H. Germany was confident that the "statements of the Tubingen Consultation will surely find an echo in the thought of Christian medical people throughout the world," (2) this came as a total surprise to most of the other participants. As Lesslie Newbigin stated in the Preface of the consultation report, In the course of the week spent together, certain common convictions were given to the group, and they felt bound to express them in a statement. Although this statement was not immediately published, the offices in Geneva began to receive very large numbers of enquiries about it. Many thousands of copies have been distributed in response to requests.... In a way which was not expected [the statement] seems to have spoken to the condition of many who were wrestling with the problems of medical missions, and ... with the healing ministry in one form or another. (3) In order to better understand the impact of and the legacy left by that very event, I will first situate Tubingen I within its historical and institutional context; second, analyze its finding; and conclude by looking at what happened to the insights gained in those days during the half century passed since. Tubingen I within the context of its time As previously stated, Tubingen I was not the first nor was it the biggest consultation addressing the challenges faced by medical missions and church-sponsored medical programs in the middle of the 20th century. Already in 1948, that is three years after World War II, the Church Missionary Society in London (CMS) published an elaborate statement on its medical policy (4) calling for the realignment of medical missions: "Realignment is designed to meet recurring need as circumstances alter.... Realignment may involve the use of new methods and the abandonment or subordination of old ones." (5) The new methods the statement envisioned were recognized as being "of great simplicity and of outmost importance." (6) They anticipated nearly everything of what some thirty years later would become known as Primary Health Care (PHC), namely: to focus on "preventive medicine," on "proper ... sanitation, working, and housing conditions," on "food supply, (7) on child welfare, (8) on the training of nurses, midwives, and auxiliaries, (9) on refresher courses for lay workers,1" on intersectoral and interdenominational cooperation, (11) on hospital outreach, (12) and, last but not least, on "the compilation of regional statistics and reports. …