Wednesday, June 14, 2023

It is the 14th of June 2023. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org, I’m Dan van Voorhis.

In my time as a historian, professor, and speaker- often in Christian contexts- I have found one word that baffles me more than any other. A word that is praised and reviled. A word used with contempt and also with great respect. It is: ecumenical.

It comes from a Latin word with Greek roots- appropriately then used in the Roman Empire and meaning: “of the entire world.” But the word has been primarily used over the past 200 years in the context of Christianity. And while there is an ‘ecumenical patriarch” in Eastern Orthodoxy (that’s the patriarch in Constantinople- the one “over all the world) but it is primarily in the world of Protestants in the West that the term has come to mean a kind of united church- downplaying denominational schisms and divisions. You might see how this could be a good thing and how if downplaying certain differences could be a bad thing. I’ll let you hash that out on the church patio over coffee- as for me, let me take you to its genesis- or at least its coming out party. It was on this, the 14th of June in 1910, that over 1200 people gathered in Edinburgh, Scotland for the 3rd annual World Missionary Conference. While the conference had been held in New York and London, this was the first to embrace the breadth of English Anglicans- both evangelical and Anglo-Catholic. It had almost lost out on the opportunity to host the Anglo-Catholics as the conference had initially been interested in missions to Latin America (where there is and was a robust Catholic presence) and to places occupied by Orthodox and Orthodox Oriental Christians.

It has been noted that it was ecumenical- for its day- we should note that no orthodox or Catholic Christians were present, and the majority of 1200 came from the UK and the United States.

It was the brainchild of the American John Mott and the Scot Joseph Oldham. Mott had been instrumental in the YMCA and his book “The Evangelization of The World in This Generation,”- which was originally the theme of the conference before the concerns with the Anglo-Catholics and the need to stress the evangelization of non-Christians. Joseph Oldham had once been a missionary in India and would become famous for his meetings known as “the Moot,” a Christian gathering to discuss the world in light of the First and second world wars- its members included the likes of T.S. Eliot and Reinhold Niebuhr.

The conference suffered from a kind of parochialism and triumphalism present in the Pre World War 1 West, it still marked something not yet seen amongst the major Protestant churches. It promoted the idea of a truly worldwide church (although the “world” would see two major wars before the groups reconfigured in 1948 as the World Council of Churches.  The conference saw the idea of “missions” and what would later become “missiology” as a legitimate topic of academic study. The conference was billed as studying the “science” of missions- a watchword for legitimacy in its day. It would lead to endowed chairs and professorships at various colleges in America and the UK. It should be noted that historian Brian Stanley suggested that even the most forward-thinking groups or movements today could certainly be criticized by standards in 100 years, so we don’t need to bury the conference simply because their “whole world” looked smaller than it might today.

A major theme was the importance of education and missions. It was noted that, especially in the far east, people were looking to the West for education, and if it could be paired with mission work, you could have not only an educated East but a Christian one, too.

The role of Africa was also central- missions had surely been taken to Africa; after all, the conference was in Edinburgh in part on account of the fame of its own missionary to Africa: David Livingstone.

Planning world missions in 1910 may have been something like planning a world tour starting in March of 2020- the world got in the way. But, it was a high point for what the ecumenical movement could be. It introduced a new field of study in Christian thought, and many of its members (like Mott and Oldham) would come back together after the Second World War to work on new issues in light of the world turned upside down.

Today we remember that monumental conference- it began on the 14th of June in 1910.

The last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and Matthew 12

12 At that time Jesus went through the cornfields on the sabbath; his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. 2 When the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, ‘Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the sabbath.’ 3 He said to them, ‘Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4 He entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests. 5 Or have you not read in the law that on the sabbath the priests in the temple break the sabbath and yet are guiltless? 6 I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. 7 But if you had known what this means, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice”, you would not have condemned the guiltless. 8 For the Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.’

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 14th of June 2023, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by the ecumenical patriarch- of your heart- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who thinks it's funny to take any fancy title and then add “of your heart”- try it yourself, I’m Dan van Voorhis (1517 Scholar in Residence, of your heart).

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.