Question

The World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910, was the birthplace of the modern ecumenical movement.’ (K. S. Latourette).

To what extent is Latourette’s claim justified in terms of the Conference itself and the development of the World Council of Churches?

Abstract

This paper argues that the World Missionary Conference of Edinburgh, 1910, cannot claim to be ‘ecumenical’ in the modern sense, and thus should not be considered the ‘birthplace of the modern ecumenical movement’. To establish this, the Conference is evaluated in terms of its geographical and ecclesiastical ‘ecumenicality’ and found wanting on both counts. The ‘modernness’ of Edinburgh 1910 is then assessed by comparing it with previous mission conferences and subsequent ecumenical movements, including the World Council of Churches. Particular note is made of the imperialism and triumphalism that pervaded the Conference. Finally, the World Missionary Conference is held up to Latourette’s own analysis of the characteristics of the modern ecumenical movement; of his four characteristics, the Conference makes, at best, minor contributions to two and is at odds with the other two. Thus Latourette’s claim that the Edinburgh Conference should be thought of as the ‘birthplace of the modern ecumenical movement’ is shown to be unpersuasive.

Essay

In 1954, Kenneth Scott Latourette famously claimed that, ‘The World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910, was the birthplace of the modern ecumenical movement.’¹ He supported this assertion by adducing seven evidences that the Conference ‘marked a distinct advance over its predecessors,’² namely: (a) its representative nature; (b) that it enlisted and empowered a younger generation of leaders; (c) its institutional continuity with later ecumenical organisations; (d) its rigorous preparations for deliberations; (e) the presence of members from so-called ‘younger churches'; (f) the network of ecumenical relationships established at and in preparation for the Conference; and (g) its ecclesiastical breadth as a result of its self-limiting of scope.³ Broadly, these may be collected into arguments for the modernity of the World Missionary Conference (a – e) and for its ecumenicality (e – g). These categories also encompass the challenges offered to Latourette’s view, and so form a useful framework for deliberation.

Before embarking upon this discussion, however, it is important to consider Latourette’s assumption that the ecumenical movement ‘was in large part the outgrowth of the missionary movement';⁴ for if this is proven false then the rest of his argument fails with it. The missionary movement largely sees church unity as a means to the end of evangelisation; only occasionally do they acknowledge the relationship operating also in the reverse direction.⁵ The ecumenical movement, on the other hand, sees church unity as a necessary end in itself, with more effective evangelism a happy by-product. The two are related, but not identical as they are aimed at different ends, and must not be conflated.⁶ Yet, with this qualification granted, Latourette’s assumption may be permitted.

Was the World Missionary Conference of 1910 truly ‘ecumenical’? Edinburgh was initially planned as the ‘Third Ecumenical Missionary Conference’, but the word ‘ecumenical’ was dropped in July 1908 to avoid confusion arising from its recently acquired technical sense.⁷ Nevertheless, Latourette rightly argues that the presence of Anglo-Catholics represents a significant advance upon previous conferences, which were largely gatherings of evangelicals.⁸ This feat was achieved by a voluntary limitation upon the scope of the Conference in two important respects. Firstly, it was agreed by the international organising committee in July 1907 that ‘no resolution shall be allowed which involves questions of doctrine or Church polity with regard to which the Churches or Societies taking part in the Conference differ among themselves’.⁹ Secondly, the scope of the Conference was limited to missions in regions that could unambiguously be described as non-Christian, thus excluding Latin America and Russia.¹⁰ These measures were sufficient to quell the of Anglo-Catholic elements in the Church of England, resulting in their participation in the Conference. As J. H. Oldham wrote to John Mott, they had ‘never done anything of the kind before, and I think this marks an important event in the religious history of this country.’¹¹ Yet the Conference remained ‘decidedly Protestant, and broadly evangelical’.¹² There were no representatives of the Roman, Orthodox or the fledgling Pentecostal movement amongst the delegates.¹³ Thus, though it was ‘more comprehensively ecclesiastical’¹⁴ than its immediate predecessors, the World Missionary Conference of 1910 was still far from being ‘ecumenical’ in the ecclesiastical sense.

The second argument adduced by Latourette in characterising the Conference as ‘ecumenical’ is the presence of members of the ‘younger’ churches.¹⁵ Their presence was a ‘breath of fresh air’ that ‘stirred into being a whole series of national Christian councils all over the world’.¹⁶ Though numerically few,¹⁷ these delegates were accorded a status out of proportion with their number; six of the forty-seven public addresses were allocated to them, and all were active in the discussions.¹⁸ Yet most missionary societies failed to fulfil even the modest request from the international organising committee that they include ‘one or two natives from mission lands’.¹⁹ Stanley concludes:

What proved decisive was Thompson’s conviction that the ‘younger’ churches were not yet ready to take their place in such exalted company: ‘I do not think the time is ripe for the inclusion of delegates appointed by the Churches in non-Christian lands in any great Conference such as ours.’²⁰

Thus, the Conference as a whole remained predominantly Anglo-American in spite of individual efforts by Mott and Oldham to the contrary.²¹ Once again, whilst it represented an advance on previous conferences, the World Missionary Conference of 1910 fell short of being comprehensively ‘ecumenical’ in the geographical sense.

That the World Missionary Conference of 1910 fostered and improved ecumenical relationships no-one will deny.²² Yet this too was limited in scope since networks were largely formed amongst Anglo-American evangelicals, the predominant demographic. The major advance on previous conferences in this regard was that the delegates were representatives of the missionary societies rather than missions enthusiasts; thus the relationships formed were amongst those already active in the missionary movement, and so more readily converted into tangible results.

Thus, the Conference was not fully ecumenical in the geographical or ecclesiastical sense. Yet it may still be admitted that Edinburgh was the ‘birthplace of the modern ecumenical movement’²³ if it can be shown that it was in some sense ‘modern’ in a way previous movements and conferences were not. But was Edinburgh 1910 truly the herald of a ‘modern’ era or simply another step (albeit a significant one) along the way?

In establishing the ‘modernity’ of the World Missionary Conference it is necessary to consider the ways in which it has continuity with future developments and discontinuity with past initiatives. Latourette acknowledges the importance of previous conferences, notably in London (1878 and 1888) and New York (1900), stating that ‘Edinburgh 1910 was the outgrowth and climax of earlier gatherings’.²⁴ Yet he argues that the Edinburgh meeting was an advance in several respects. Some of these have already been highlighted, including the presence of Anglo-Catholics and members of ‘younger’ churches, and the limiting of the scope and membership of the Conference. To these Latourette adds: (a) the significant preparation done for the Conference, in the form of the eight Commissions and the employment of a full-time Secretary (Oldham) to oversee them; (b) the enlisting and empowering of a younger generation of leaders; and, most significantly, (c) the organisations formed directly or indirectly as a result of the Conference, particularly the appointment of a Continuation Committee to carry forward the work of the Conference.²⁵

The Commissions were not a new initiative at Edinburgh, but the scope of them was unprecedented.²⁶ ‘Missions were becoming a matter of induction and experiment in which method was everything,’²⁷ and this impacted on the ecumenical movement in several significant ways. Firstly, commission members and correspondents were chosen on the basis of their qualifications, rather than their denominational affiliations, thus promoting an ‘ecumenical atmosphere’.²⁸ Getting people of such diverse ecclesiastical and geographical backgrounds to collaborate was a significant milestone for the ecumenical movement.²⁹ Secondly, the content of the reports issued by the commissions pointed up the need for ecclesiastical unity in order to achieve global evangelisation. Thirdly, this pattern of questionnaires and reports for deliberation by the Conference was adopted by later gatherings, including meetings of the International Missionary Council in 1928, 1938 and 1948, the Conference on Life and Work at Oxford in 1937, and the first Assembly of the World Council of Churches in 1948. Thus the World Missionary Conference was closer in methodology to the ecumenical conferences and movements that followed it than those that preceded.

The two names most commonly associated with the World Missionary Conference are John Mott and Joseph Oldham, its Chairman and Secretary respectively. These two men were propelled to a new preeminence as a result of the Edinburgh Conference. In Mott’s case, the Conference came at a crucial time, having recently been offered a position at Yale as the head of a newly reformed Divinity School.³⁰ Oldham’s suggestion that ‘the climax of your life work’ might come from the Edinburgh Conference was to prove prescient,³¹ and Mott admitted that that thought ‘may yet be the determining factor’ in declining the invitation, a decision he made within a few weeks of so writing.³² Oldham himself, though initially reluctant to be part of the Continuation Committee formed as a result of the Conference, was eventually persuaded by the ‘advantages of enlisting [Mott’s] tremendous energies in the service of the missionary movement’.³³ Thus the Edinburgh Conference was instrumental in more tightly binding these two laymen to the ecumenical mission movement.³⁴ Yet it is also true that the change effected by the conference was one of scale rather than direction, for both were already involved in ecumenical missions organisations and (the Yale invitation not withstanding) likely to remain so.³⁵

The Continuation Committee itself was also a notable influence upon later ecumenical institutions. From its actions sprang an ecumenical journal, The International Review of Missions, and the International Missionary Council (I.M.C.), thus ensuring the ‘institutionalisation of communication and co-ordination between mission actors’.³⁶ Yet Latourette’s claim that the Continuation Committee was also ‘in part responsible for the two organizations, the World Conference on Faith and Order and the Universal Christian Council for Life and Work’³⁷ is overstated. Specifically, the assertion that ‘It was as a delegate to the Edinburgh Conference that Bishop Charles H. Brent saw the vision which led him to initiate’ the Faith and Order movement has been strongly challenged.³⁸ There seems even less justification for connecting the World Missionary Conference to Life and Work, since the primary driving force behind that organisation, Nathan Söderblom, was not even present at Edinburgh.³⁹ Nevertheless, it is true that both organisations readily adopted the idea of forming their own Continuation Committees.

One of the strongest arguments against continuity between the World Missionary Conference and subsequent ecumenical movements was its noticeable imperialism. In ruling out discussion of South American mission fields, the Conference relegated the global south to a secondary place, reinforcing the belief that ‘mission was what the West did to the rest of the world’.⁴⁰ Commission VIII reported on ‘the duty of the Church in the West to transmit to the Church newly planted in the mission field as rich and full and complete an interpretation of Christianity as possible’.⁴¹ Newbigin argues that ‘there were strong voices bringing a Christian critique to bear on elements of the so-called Christian civilization’ yet concedes that there was still a confidence in missions born primarily of a confidence in western civilisation.⁴² Mott, in his work based on the Commission I materials, acknowledges that ‘The evangelisation of the non-Christian world is not alone a European and an American enterprise; it is to an even greater degree an Asiatic and an African enterprise’,⁴³ yet this seems representative of his own view rather than that of the Conference at large. This by itself is sufficient to put the Edinburgh Conference at odds with modern missionary (let alone ecumenical) movements.

Further dissonance between the World Missionary Conference and today’s ecumenical movements is discovered in the triumphalistic message proclaimed by the Conference. This is most evident in the report of Commission VIII, wherein the rhetoric occasionally devolves into militaristic metaphors: ‘The work is a campaign of allies'; ‘the Christian forces are confronting their gigantic task without… sufficient generalship’ and so on.⁴⁴ In this Mott shows himself typical, as evidenced by his closing address: ‘The end of the Conference is the beginning of the conquest’.⁴⁵

Thus the relationship between Edinburgh and later movements is primarily one of common personnel and methodology, rather than being organic. This conclusion encompasses also the Conference’s connection to the World Council of Churches (W.C.C.), which came about as an amalgamation of the Life and Work and Faith and Order movements in 1948, and only incorporated the International Missionary Council at the New Dehli Assembly of the W.C.C. in 1961.⁴⁶ Significantly, the first secretary general of the W.C.C., Willem Visser t’ Hooft, in tracing the ‘genesis of the World Council of Churches’, takes as his starting point the Encyclical of the Ecumenical Patriarchate (1920);⁴⁷ he mentions the Edinburgh Conference only in connection with the its leading figures, Mott and Oldham.

In the same essay in which he proclaims Edinburgh 1910 to be ‘the birthplace of the modern ecumenical movement’, Latourette concludes by offering four characteristics of this same movement: (a) it was a movement ‘almost world-wide in its scope’, which ‘embraced both older and younger churches'; (b) ‘co-operation was largely by national and regional units… drawn into a global structure'; (c) it respected ‘historical confessional and denominational confessions'; and (d) ‘Unity was sought not as an end in itself but as a means to evangelism’.⁴⁸ As shown above, the first two were patently untrue of the World Missionary Conference, limited as it was in geographical and ecclesiastical scope; and, whilst the latter two may be true, there is little evidence to suggest innovation in these areas at Edinburgh. On Latourette’s own analysis, then, the Edinburgh Conference is not congruent with the modern ecumenical movement.

Thus Latourette’s argument founders on the grounds that the Conference was not comprehensively ‘ecumenical’, especially when considered in the ‘modern’ sense. Neither the Conference itself, nor the development of the World Council of Churches offer sufficient justification for Latourette’s claim that Edinburgh 1910 was ‘the birthplace of the modern ecumenical movement’.

Bibliography

Bliss, Kathleen. “J. H. Oldham (1874-1969): From “Edinburgh 1910″ to the World Council of Churches.” In Mission Legacies: Biographical Studies of Leaders of the Modern Missionary Movement, edited by Gerald H. Anderson, Robert T. Coote, Norman A. Horner and James M. Phillips, xviii, 654 p. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1994.

Clements, K. W. Faith on the Frontier: A Life of J.H. Oldham. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999.

Dowsett, Rose. “Cooperation and the Promotion of Unity: An Evangelical Perspective.” http://www.towards2010.org.uk/downloads/t2010paper08dowsett.pdf.

Graham, Carol. “V. S. Azariah (1875-1945).” In Mission Legacies: Biographical Studies of Leaders of the Modern Missionary Movement, edited by Gerald H. Anderson, Robert T. Coote, Norman A. Horner and James M. Phillips, xviii, 654 p. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1994.

The History and Records of the Conference, Together with Addresses Delivered at the Evening Meetings., World Missionary Conference (1910). Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson, & Ferrier, 1910.

Hopkins, Charles Howard. John R. Mott, 1865-1955: A Biography. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979.

Kinnamon, Michael, and Brian E. Cope, eds. The Ecumenical Movement: An Anthology of Key Texts and Voices. Geneva; Grand Rapids, Mich.: WCC Publications; W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 1997.

Kobia, Samuel. “Reflections on Commission Viii and Wcc.” http://www.towards2010.org.uk/downloads/t2010paper08kobia.pdf.

Latourette, Kenneth Scott. “Ecumenical Bearings of the Missionary Movement and the International Missionary Council.” In A History of the Ecumenical Movement 1517-1948, edited by Ruth Rouse and Stephen Charles Neill, 353-73, 401-02. Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1954.

Latourette, Kenneth Scott. A History of Christianity. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1954.

Mott, John R. The Decisive Hour of Christian Missions. London: Young People’s Missionary Movement, 1910.

Newbigin, Lesslie. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans, 1989.

Oldham, Joseph Houldsworth. “Reflections on Edinburgh, 1910.” Religion in Life 29, no. 3 (1960): 329-38.

Report of Commission Viii: Co-Operation and the Promotion of Unity. World Missionary Conference (1910). Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier, 1910.

Robeck, Cecil M. Jr. “Cooperation and the Promotion of Unity: A Pentecostal Perspective.” http://www.towards2010.org.uk/downloads/t2010paper08robeck.pdf.

Ross, Kenneth R. “Edinburgh 1910 – Its Place in History.” http://www.towards2010.org.uk/downloads_int/1910-PlaceHistory.pdf.

Söderblom, Nathan. “Nobel Lecture.” http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1930/soderblom-lecture.html?print=1.

Stanley, Brian. “Edinburgh 1910 and the Oikoumene.” In Ecumenism and History: Studies in Honour of John H.Y. Briggs, edited by Anthony R. Cross, xxii, 362 p. Carlisle ; Waynesboro, Ga.: Paternoster Press, 2002.

Stanley, Brian. The World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910, Studies in the History of Christian Missions. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2009.

VanElderen, Marlin, and Martin Conway. Introducing the World Council of Churches. Rev. and enl. ed, Risk Book Series No. 96. Geneva, Switzerland: WCC Publications, 2001.

Visser ‘t Hooft, W. A. “The General Ecumenical Development since 1948.” In A History of the Ecumenical Movement (Vol. 2), edited by Harold Edward Fey, 3-26. Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1986.

Visser ‘t Hooft, W. A. The Genesis and Formation of the World Council of Churches. Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982.

Yates, T. E. Christian Mission in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Endnotes

1. Kenneth Scott Latourette, “Ecumenical Bearings of the Missionary Movement and the International Missionary Council,” in A History of the Ecumenical Movement 1517-1948, ed. Ruth Rouse and Stephen Charles Neill (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1954), 362.
2. Ibid., 357.
3. Ibid., 355-62. cf. Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christianity (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1954), 1343-44. In this latter work, published the same year, Latourette also argued that the restriction of discussion to missions to non-Christians, thus excluding missions amongst traditionally Roman Catholic areas, such as South America, led to the Foreign Missions Conference of North America and consequently the Committee on Cooperation in Latin America. This connection, however, is too tenuous to be considered causal.
4. Latourette, “Ecumenical Bearings,” 353.
5. ‘Christ emphasised that the mightiest apologetic with which to convince the non-Christian world of His Divine character and claims would be the oneness of His disciples. Experience has already shown that by far the most hopeful way of hastening the realisation of true and triumphant Christian unity is through the enterprise of carrying the Gospel to the non-Christian world’ John R. Mott, The Decisive Hour of Christian Missions (London: Young People’s Missionary Movement, 1910), 277.
6. Kathleen Bliss, “J. H. Oldham (1874-1969): From “Edinburgh 1910″ to the World Council of Churches,” in Mission Legacies: Biographical Studies of Leaders of the Modern Missionary Movement, ed. Gerald H. Anderson, et al., American Society of Missiology Series (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1994), 572.
7. Brian Stanley, The World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910, Studies in the History of Christian Missions (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2009), 10. The original intention in including the word in the official title of the New York 1900 conference was, according to New England Episcopalian William Huntington, to indicate that ‘the plan of campaign which it proposes covers the whole area of the inhabited globe’ (cited in Ibid., 18.). The Edinburgh planners felt it more likely to be understood as implying that all portions of the church would be represented by delegates. cf. Brian Stanley, “Edinburgh 1910 and the Oikoumene,” in Ecumenism and History: Studies in Honour of John H.Y. Briggs, ed. Anthony R. Cross (Carlisle ; Waynesboro, Ga.: Paternoster Press, 2002), 96.
8. Latourette, “Ecumenical Bearings,” 360.
9. Cited in Stanley, World Missionary Conference, 277-8. cf. Charles Howard Hopkins, John R. Mott, 1865-1955: A Biography (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 346.
10. Cecil M. Jr. Robeck, “Cooperation and the Promotion of Unity: A Pentecostal Perspective,” http://www.towards2010.org.uk/downloads/t2010paper08robeck.pdf, 6. Latin America was considered Roman Catholic, and Russia Orthodox.
11. Oldham to Mott, 17th March, 1909. Cited in K. W. Clements, Faith on the Frontier: A Life of J.H. Oldham (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999), 83. cf. T. E. Yates, Christian Mission in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 29.
12. Stanley, World Missionary Conference, 9.
13. Indeed, many wistfully spoke from the floor of a desire for Roman and Orthodox involvement, notably Bishop Brent of the Philippine Islands, and the Bishop of Southwark. Report of Commission Viii: Co-Operation and the Promotion of Unity, World Missionary Conference (1910) (Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier, 1910), 198, 201-2.
14. Latourette, A History of Christianity, 1344.
15. i.e. those churches born out of missionary activity. cf. Latourette, “Ecumenical Bearings,” 359.
16. Carol Graham, “V. S. Azariah (1875-1945),” in Mission Legacies: Biographical Studies of Leaders of the Modern Missionary Movement, ed. Gerald H. Anderson, et al., American Society of Missiology Series (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1994), 327.
17. ‘[O]f the 1,216 official delegates… only 17 were from the non-western world.’ Stanley, “Oikoumene,” 90-91.
18. Latourette, “Ecumenical Bearings,” 359. Indeed, V. S. Azariah’s ‘plea for friendship from the missionary churches of the West was to prove the longest-remembered address of the entire conference.’ Clements, Faith on the Frontier, 89-90. The text of Azariah’s address may be found in The History and Records of the Conference, Together with Addresses Delivered at the Evening Meetings., World Missionary Conference (1910) (Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson, & Ferrier, 1910), 306-15.
19. Stanley, “Oikoumene,” 91.
20. Ibid., 93.
21. ‘As Chairman, Mott recognized the few Orientals for whose presence he had labored, perhaps disproportionately.’ Hopkins, Mott, 357. cf. Clements, who relates the account of Oldham’s last minute ‘flurry of activity’ which resulted in securing the attendance of V. S. Azariah. Clements, Faith on the Frontier, 89.
22. Latourette, “Ecumenical Bearings,” 353, 61.
23. Ibid., 362.
24. Ibid., 355. cf. Report of Commission Viii, 129.
25. Latourette, “Ecumenical Bearings,” 356-62. cf. Latourette, A History of Christianity, 1343-5.
26. Latourette, “Ecumenical Bearings,” 358.
27. Stanley, World Missionary Conference, 4.
28. Hopkins, Mott, 349.
29. cf. ‘The frequently expressed conviction that effectiveness in mission calls for unity marked the inception of the modern ecumenical movement.’ Kenneth R. Ross, “Edinburgh 1910 – Its Place in History,” http://www.towards2010.org.uk/downloads_int/1910-PlaceHistory.pdf, 7.
30. Hopkins, Mott, 336.
31. Oldham to Mott, 13th October, 1909. Cited in Ibid., 341.
32. Mott to Oldham, 21st October, 1909. Cited in Clements, Faith on the Frontier, 97.
33. Joseph Houldsworth Oldham, “Reflections on Edinburgh, 1910,” Religion in Life 29, no. 3 (1960): 335-6. cf. Hopkins, Mott, 359.
34. Others directly impacted by the Conference include William Temple (later Archbishop of Canterbury), John Baillie, Kenneth Kirk (later Bishop of Oxford and Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford), William Manson, Neville Talbot and V. S. Azariah (to whom reference has already been made). cf. Yates, Christian Mission, 33.
35. At the time of the Edinburgh Conference, Mott was serving as General Secretary of the World Student Christian Federation; National Secretary of the Intercollegiate Young Men’s Christian Association (Y.M.C.A) of the U.S.A. and Canada; and Chairman of the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, a body described at Edinburgh as having ‘done much to further the cause of unity’. Report of Commission Viii, 128.; cf. Hopkins, Mott, passim. Similarly, Oldham had previously been a secretary of the Student Christian Movement of Great Britain and Ireland and of the Y.M.C.A. in India. Latourette, “Ecumenical Bearings,” 54.; cf. Clements, Faith on the Frontier, passim.
36. Samuel Kobia, “Reflections on Commission Viii and Wcc,” http://www.towards2010.org.uk/downloads/t2010paper08kobia.pdf, 3. cf. Latourette, “Ecumenical Bearings,” 372.
37. Latourette, A History of Christianity, 1344.
38. Latourette, “Ecumenical Bearings,” 360. cf. Marlin VanElderen and Martin Conway, Introducing the World Council of Churches, Rev. and enl. ed., Risk Book Series No. 96 (Geneva, Switzerland: WCC Publications, 2001), 24.; contra. Stanley, World Missionary Conference, 297. Stanley cites evidence from Brent’s diary, indicating the inspiration for the Faith and Order movement did not come until October, 1910, and attributes the mistaken association to faulty recollection on Oldham’s behalf.
39. cf. The list of official delegates in History and Records, 39-71. In his lecture delivered upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, Söderblom notes in passing a letter addressed from the Conference of Churches in Neutral Countries to the Edinburgh Continuation Committee, but attributes the formation of the World Conference on Life and Work to the former body rather than the latter. Nathan Söderblom, “Nobel Lecture,” http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1930/soderblom-lecture.html?print=1.
40. Rose Dowsett, “Cooperation and the Promotion of Unity: An Evangelical Perspective,” http://www.towards2010.org.uk/downloads/t2010paper08dowsett.pdf, 7. Dowsett continues: ‘this almost certainly delayed the development of the mission movement from the global south by decades, and also for a long time hindered the churches from the global south from taking responsibility for the ongoing evangelisation of their own people groups.’
41. Report of Commission Viii, 135.
42. Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans, 1989), 190.
43. Mott, The Decisive Hour of Christian Missions, 191.
44. Report of Commission Viii, 7. cf. Stanley, World Missionary Conference, 278.
45. History and Records, 347.
46. W. A. Visser ‘t Hooft, “The General Ecumenical Development since 1948,” in A History of the Ecumenical Movement (Vol. 2), ed. Harold Edward Fey (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1986), 11. On the relationship of the Edinburgh Conference to these three organisations (Life and Work, Faith and Order, and the I.M.C) see above.
47. W. A. Visser ‘t Hooft, The Genesis and Formation of the World Council of Churches (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982), 94-97. The text of the encyclical may be found in Michael Kinnamon and Brian E. Cope, eds., The Ecumenical Movement: An Anthology of Key Texts and Voices (Geneva; Grand Rapids, Mich.: WCC Publications; W.B. Eerdmans Pub.,1997), 11-14.
48. Latourette, “Ecumenical Bearings,” 401-2.