Missionary Conference Research Articles

THE MELBOURNE AND PATTAYA MESSAGES IN CONTEXT (May-June 1980)

Seventy years after the first world missionary conference at Edinburgh (1910) three major world missionary conferences were planned, which in one way or another are a continuation of the first one.The World Council of Churches organised a conference on World Mission and Evangelism at Melbourne, Australia, May 12-24, 1980.The Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization held a consultation on World Evangelization at Pattaya, Thailand, June 16-27, 1980.An ad hoc group of mission agencies will convene a world consultation on Frontier Missions, October 27-November 1, 1980 at Edinburgh, Scotland.A comparative evaluation of these world missionary conferences as regards their sponsorship, orientation and goals would be most valuable, but will not be attempted here. We merely present the message and statement issued at the closing of the Melbourne and Pattaya meeting respectively. However, some general information about these conferences will provide some insight into the context of each message. The author was present at both conferences, in Melbourne as fraternal delegate and in Pattaya as observer on behalf of the International Association for Mission Studies.

YOUR KINGDOM COME

A Working Document produced by an Orthodox reflection group meeting in the Saint Serge Orthodox Institute of Theology in Paris from September 25–28, 1978, as an Orthodox contribution to the theme of the World Missionary Conference in Melbourne, 1980.

The Church and the Birth of a Nation: The Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation and Zambia

the necessity of radically rethinking strategy. With the colonial empires in retreat, the ground rules for Christian mis sions to the non-Western world, which had developed as one aspect of the European expansion of the previous five centuries, had to change. Forward-looking thinkers had long urged the creation of indigenous church leadership in mission lands, and the issue had become a major one in Protestant thinking at the second World Missionary Conference in Jerusalem in 1928.1 Little had been done, however, so that concern with rising na tionalism became a major theme in thinking in the 1950s and early 1960s. Many aspects of the problem were discussed. Among them were how to maintain the church as missionaries had to move into the background or possibly leave; how missionaries could best be trained for their new roles; how Christianity should relate to the increasingly self-confident religions of the East; and how to maintain a presence in emerging Islamic states. An aspect that seems to have aroused little comment, even in liberal Prot estant journals that reflected a concern with the church's re sponsibility to the secular world,2 was how missions might best relate to the nationalist leaders themselves. Thus James Robin son, the Black American who founded Operation Crossroads

Kikuyu and Edinburgh: the interaction of attitudes to two conferences

Two conferences of some significance took place shortly before the First World War: the World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh in 1910, and the Kikuyu Conference, held at a Church of Scotland mission station at an out-of-the-way place in East Africa in 1913. In an Ecumenical Age, the fame of the former is likely to endure, the notoriety of the latter to be forgotten. Yet it was the controversy raised by the second conference which caused Lord Morley to remark that the ‘cacophonous’ name of Kikuyu might one day rival in fame that of Trent. Another grand claim was made for Kikuyu by the Bishop of Zanzibar—one with which The Times agreed—that ‘there has not been a conference of such importance to the life of the Ecclesia Anglicana since the Reformation’.

The Christian Encounter with World Religions

The Christian encounter with world religions could be and sometimes is a purely academic question. All the world religions have developed over a long past. They are here. Each has a body of tradition and belief registered in sacred literature and in certain institutions of great importance in the total cultural life of the separate peoples of the world. Viewed objectively, how does Christianity compare with the others and what happens when they actually come in contact, as they cannot avoid doing, as our world shrinks more and more through means of rapid transportation and almost instantaneous communication between the most distant places of earth, and as each gets to know the others? It is an important anthropological and sociological area of investigation which may be carried on with complete objec tivity on the part of the scholar. But it is also a profoundly personal problem to devout fol lowers of the particular faiths, because as loyal followers of one or another it matters a great deal what the answer is. The committed Christian is under a mandate, he thinks, to go into all the world and to make disciples of every nation. He has a treasure he must share. He may even hold the belief that nothing less than the very salvation of peoples of other faiths is involved and that if he fails in his answer to the mandate, the very eternal destiny of those of other faiths is affected. A good many people have been concerned about the problem, especially since the Christian International Missionary Con ference at Tambaram, India, in 1938. There Hendrik Kraemer's book The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World set forth a statement that aroused an enormous amount of discussion.1 Basing his position on what he called Biblical realism, Kraemer practically refused to put Christianity on the level of religion at all. It was a revelation not a religion, utterly unique and therefore not comparable with other faiths. This was essentially the be

Paramountcy to Partnership: J. H. Oldham and Africa

Opening ParagraphThe jubilee of the World Missionary Conference, which was held at Edinburgh in June 1910, should be noticed by students of Africa, since it brought into prominence for the first time, as one of its two secretaries, a man who was to have considerable influence on African affairs and was the first Administrative Director of the International African Institute. This was J. H. Oldham who had been briefly a missionary in India and then secretary of the Missionary Study Council of the United Free Church of Scotland. ‘The conspicuous ability’ he showed in the organization and running of the great conference led to his subsequent appointment as full-time secretary of the Continuation Committee, which was set up to maintain the work of the conference and which became in 1921 the International Missionary Council. In this post, and as the first editor of the International Review of Missions, Oldham was in constant and daily touch with mission affairs from the whole world. He was, in fact, beginning a long career as a missionary statesman, with, from the First World War, his headquarters at Edinburgh House in London. In negotiating then with the Government over German missionaries and their property in India and the British African territories, Oldham began to build up a fund of goodwill in the official world.

Selections from the World Missionary Conference News Sheet

Selections from the World Missionary Conference News Sheet

Indoctrination of Teachers of English in the Soviet Pedagogical Institute

T. WValter Wallbank, Contemporary Africa (New York, 1956); I. K. Ingram, Europe and Africa (London, i945); R. I. Lovell, Struggle for South Africa, 1875-7899 (New York, 1934); J. E. Hearn, A History of Southern Rhodesia to 1902 (Ph.D. dissertation, Southern California, 1956). 2. Native Education Inquiry Conmnission, 1951, p. 3. (Note: Government reports consulted in the Archives of Rhodesia and Nyasaland are abbreviated here as follows: DNE for reports of the Director of Native Education, Miss. Conf. for minutes of proceedings of the Southern Rhodesia Missionary Conference, Leg. Ass. for debates of the Southern Rhodesia Legislative Assembly). 3. Native Affairs Committee of Inquiry, 9io90I91r. 4. Mason, op. cit., p. 252. 5. Miss Conf., 1913. 6. Conmzission Appointed to Enquire into the Matter of Native Education, 1925, p. III. 7. Leg. Ass., 1927. 8. Ibid. 9. International Review of Missions, XVI (January, 1927), 24-25io. Education Policy in British Tropical Africa (London, 1925). ii. Chap. 75, Statute Laws of Southern Rhodesia. 12. Advisory Board for Native Development,

Missionary Conference on Literature in the Congo

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The Son of Man and History

In an age like the present, when the good will to establish a reasonable order of international life on earth is beset at every turning by impediment and frustration, there exists a temptation, if not to think of history as irredeemable, at least to moderate considerably our confidence in the relevance of Christianity to mundane affairs. We should not be surprised to find an increased tendency to mysticism, or if the hold of external reality over the mind is too strong to permit such with-drawal of the soul into itself, a lapse may set in towards an apocalyptic judgment on history with a hardened sense of the opposition of God to the world. In evangelism the effect may be to give preference to the Home Mission task of the Church over its Foreign Mission and ecumenical commitments. Certainly a change has come over the face of things and over our own temperaments since the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of 1910. There has been a screwing down of the lights. There has been a retractation of many hopes. In 1910 the Christian Churches stood on the tip-toe of missionary enthusiasm. The doors were swinging open in all lands to the entrance of the Christian Gospel. The day of the Son of Man was believed to have come near. Optimism with relation to history was of the order of the day. Today the world-scene has grown clouded and ambiguous.

Pioneer Protestant Preachers of Early California

UNQUESTIONABLY life in California's gold days was characterized by highly pathological conditions, even to the extent of social insanities. Most of the gold hunters were young men, homeless, far away from the counsel and restraints of the family fireside. The nature of their feverish daily occupation made it strikingly akin to gambling-the whirl and the excitement of it all made outright gambling seem a natural if not inevitable concomitant. To the casual onlooker gambling could easily have appeared to be universal. The same might be said of drinking. And, it may be added, both practices are quite understandable. The moral atmosphere was rather despairingly appraised by William Roberts, Superintendent of the Oregon and California Methodist Mission Conference, who wrote in a letter from Oregon City to Isaac Owen, September 26, 1849, Oh tell me about that land of wickedness and gold and death: is there any salvation? It has long been a favorite indoor sport of authors, script writers, and not a few popular lecturers to aver, or at least broadly to insinuate, that in the hectic days of '49 everybody was doing it. Judges and clergymen used to elbow their way, so one remembered, to the tables, and used to play with the rest. That the few women of the community were generally degenerate fancy ladies is taken for granted-there is virtually no historical record of respectable women of the period. Did all of those thousands of adventurers who trekked to California park their morals east of the Missouri? And did the hordes of Argonauts who rounded the Horn or crossed the isthmus sink their ethical ideals in the depths of the Pacific?

REVIEWS OF BOOKS

Book reviewed in this article:A GERMAN MISSIONARY STUDY Spiritual Revolution in the East. By Walter Freytag, Ph.D.THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN CHINA China Rediscovers Her West: A Symposium edited by Yi Fang‐Wu and Frank W. PriceDangerous Opportunity: The Christian Mission in China To‐day. By Earle H. BallouOn the Shantung Frontier: A History of the Shantung Mission of the Presbyterian Church of the U.S.A. By John J. HeerenNESTORIANS IN CHINA Nestorians in China. By A. C. MouleA JEWISH PORTRAIT OF THE MAN OF NAZARETH The Nazarene: A Novel Based on the Life of Christ. By Sholem Asch.THE CHRISTIAN APPROACH TO ISLAM Studies in the Relationship between Islam and Christianity, Psychological and Historical. By Lootfy LevonianAFRICA BANTU Africa Bantu. By Luiz Figueira.AFRICAN FAMILY LIFE African Family Life. Reports and Papers read at the General Missionary Conference called by the Christian Council of South Africa, and held at Pretoria, June 1940.LETTERS OF A LAYMAN Laical Letters. By Henry Barnett.

Digest of Findings at Four Missionary Conferences on the Moslem Problem in China

Digest of Findings at Four Missionary Conferences on the Moslem Problem in China

REVIEWS OF BOOKS

Book reviewed in this article:THE RELIGIOUS QUEST OF INDIA: Indian Theism: From the Vedic to the Muhammadan Period. By Nicol Macnicol, D.Litt.THE ORIGIN OF BELIEF IN A GOD: GJDSTRONS UPPKOMST. Af NATHAN SÜDERBLOM, D.D. StockholmUNITY AND MISSIONS: UNITY AND MISSIONS: CAN A DIVIDED CHURCH SAVE THE WORLD? By Arthor Judson Brown, D.D.THE STUDY OF AFRICAN LANGUAGES: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF AFRICAN LANGUAGES. By CARL MEINHOF.CHRISTIAN LITERATURE IN THE MISSION FIELD: CHRISTIAN LITERATURE IN THE MISSION FIELD. A survey of the present situation made under the direction of the Continuation Committee of the World Missionary Conference, 1910. By J. H. RITSON, D.D., ChairmanCHRISTIAN LITERATURE IN THE MISSION FIELD: Rangoon, Burma, established in 1816 by the American Baptist Missionary Society.THE RELATIONS OF AMERICA AND JAPAN: The Japanese Problem in the United States By H. A. MillisTHE PREPARATION OF MISSIONARIES: THE FOURTH REPORT OF THE BOARD OF MISSIONARY PREPARATION (FOR NORTH AMERICA). Edited by F. K. SANDERS, Ph.D., DirectorA NEW MISSIONS CODE: THE MISSIONS CODE. Compiled and Published by Authority of the Foreign Editor: CHARLES L. BOYNTON

THE WORK OF CONTINENTAL MISSIONARY SOCIETIES1

International Review of MissionVolume 4, Issue 2 p. 283-302 THE WORK OF CONTINENTAL MISSIONARY SOCIETIES† First published: April 1915 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-6631.1915.tb00781.x † This article is based on the annual reports of the continental missionary societies. In most instances these are for the year 1913; for a few societies, notably the Basel Society, the latest report was unfortunately not available, and the figures are taken from the report for 1912. In the case of a few of the smaller societies where no report was at hand, the latest (10th) German edition of Warneck's Geschichte der protestantischen Missionen and the China Mission Year Book for 1914 have been consulted. For the Swedish societies, the figures are as a rule based on the ‘Missionary Statistics for 1913,’ published by the Working Committee of the Swedish Missionary Conference, and in the case of the Dutch societies on the Nederlandsch Zendingsjaarboekje for 1914, though the reports of individual missionary societies have also been consulted. Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume4, Issue2April 1915Pages 283-302 RelatedInformation

THE MEETING OF THE CONTINUATION COMMITTEE OF THE WORLD MISSIONARY CONFERENCE: LAKE MOHONK, SEPT. 26, to OCT. 2, 1912

THE MEETING OF THE CONTINUATION COMMITTEE OF THE WORLD MISSIONARY CONFERENCE: LAKE MOHONK, SEPT. 26, to OCT. 2, 1912

THE WORLD MISSIONARY CONFERENCE AT EDINBURGH AND ISLAM.

The Muslim WorldVolume 1, Issue 1 p. 59-66 THE WORLD MISSIONARY CONFERENCE AT EDINBURGH AND ISLAM. Charles R. Watson, Charles R. WatsonSearch for more papers by this author Charles R. Watson, Charles R. WatsonSearch for more papers by this author First published: January 1911 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-1913.1911.tb00005.xCitations: 1AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume1, Issue1January 1911Pages 59-66 RelatedInformation

Edinburgh, 1910. An Account and Interpretation of the World Missionary Conference

Edinburgh, 1910. An Account and Interpretation of the World Missionary Conference

The World Missionary Conference and Some of Its Lessons

The World Missionary Conference and Some of Its Lessons