Beihefte z u r O k u m e n i s c h e n Rundschau

Nr. 91

Beihefte z u r O k u m e n i s c h e n Rundschau N r . 9 1

s Mission und Einheit -

o Gemeinsames Zeugnis getrennter Kirchen?
CE^UMEKICA
t Tagungsbericht der 16. Wissenschaftlichen
E K o n s u l t a t i o n der Societas O e c u m e n i c a
T
Mission and Unity:
Common Witness of Separated Churches?

Proceedings o f the 16th A c a d e m i c C o n s u l t a t i o n

o f the Societas O e c u m e n i c a

Peter D e M e y / A n d r e w Pierce / O l i v e r Schuegraf

EVANGELISCHE VERLAGSANSTALT
Leipzig
 ADDRESSING T H E OTHER:
MISSION, UNITY
AND T H E Q U E S T I O N O F P L A C E

T i m Noble

Two images spring to m i n d which may be helpful as a backdrop to

what follows. The first is the closing scene o f Tengis Abuladze's mar-
vellous f d m 'Repentance'. A n old lady stops at an open w i n d o w and
1

asks a younger woman inside: 'Excuse me, does this street lead to a
church? 1 want to know whether this street leads to a church.' The
younger woman, one o f the main protagonists o f the film, replies ' N o ,
111 is. is Varlam Street, and it doesn't lead to a church.' The old lady
ithakes her head and says 'Then what do you need it for? W h y have a
road that doesn't lead to a church?' The second image is a photograph
I was sent from a friend in the U S A a few years back o f a church
which is rather splendidly called Vatican Baptist Church. To frame 2

the insights o f these images more prosaically, how can the mission o f
the church and the churches lead to the building up o f the body o f
('luist in such a way as to include the other i n a radically constructive
wny?
This question w i l l underlie my reflection on what is often claimed
IIN n radical change in our understanding o f the other over the past
hundred years. In what follows, I want to consider this claim at
3

I he original Georgian title of this 1984 film is Monanieba. It tells the story o f a
ilulator and his secret police and is based fairly closely on the story o f Stalin and
llnia.
When I was trying to locate this church, which is in Carencro, Louisiana, I was de-
•hted to find that it is actually listed as Vatican Baptist Mission, a mission
•lurch. See <http://www.lbc.org/directories/congregations.aspx>, accessed 13
Mptember 2010.
A* noted by the listening group at Edinburgh 2010. See the Report of the Listening
I lump: published online <http://www. edinburgh2010.org/en/resources/papersdo-
i inneiits.html?no_cache=l&cid=33087&did=21602&sechash=873664d>, page 5,
M n e s s e d 20 June 2010. This is also the claim of Stephen Bevans in 'From Edin-
to Edinburgh: Toward a Missiology for a World Church' in Ogbu U. Kalu et
MI l e i l s . ) , Mission After Christendom: Emergent Themes in Contemporary Mission
11 iville, ICY: Westminster John Knox, 2010), 1-11.

131
slightly greater length. Is it true, and i f so in what way, and what are
the implications for our call to mission and to unity? In order to do
this, I want to turn first to Edinburgh 1910.
1. Edinburgh 1910 and the Nature of the Other
The W o r l d Missionary Conference, 4 held i n the Scottish capital in
June 1910, was originally to be entitled 'The T h i r d Ecumenical Mis
sionary Conference'. The w o r d 'ecumenical' was, however, felt to b l
5
misleading, since it was recognised from the start that there would b l
no Roman Catholic or Orthodox participation. 6 Nevertheless, front
very early on, the main planners o f the conference, J.H. O l d h a m ' in
Scotland and John M o t t i n the U S A , were keen to ensure the widest
8
possible representation from mission bodies o f all other denomina
tions. They were particularly eager to make sure the Anglican Churoi
was represented, w h i c h meant coming up w i t h a formula that was ac
ceptable to the Anglo-Catholic w i n g o f the Anglican Communion.''
4 The major history of the conference is Brian Stanley, The World Missionary ('on
ference: Edinburgh 1910 (Grand Rapids, M I : Eerdmans, 2009).
5 This was because it followed on from two previous conferences held in London in
1888 and New York in 1900. See Stanley, The World Missionary Conference, I S I
and on the decision to change the title, 36.
6 Greetings were read out to the conference from Bishop Bonomelli of Cremonn,
acting on his own behalf and at the invitation of an American Episcopalian, Siliw
McBee. See Stanley, The World Missionary Conference, l l f . and 300. The texl 0]
the greeting is to be found in William H.T. Gairdner, 'Edinburgh 1910': An U
count and Interpretation of the World Missionary Conference (Edinburgh ;it H I
London: Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, 1910), 210-213. On Bishop Bonomolll
see Joan Delaney, 'From Cremona to Edinburgh: Bishop Bonomelli and the W i n I.I
Missionary Conference o f 1910', Ecumenical Review 52/3 (2000): 418-431, wlm !i
also contains the text of the message (424f.).
7 J.H. (Joe) Oldham (1874-1969) was a lay member of the United Free Presbyte
Church, and later an Anglican. On Oldham, see Keith Clements, Faith on Ik
Frontier: A Life of J.H. Oldham, (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, and Geneva: WCC Publl
cations, 1999). On Oldham's role in the preparation and conduct of the Edinburgh
1910 conference, see ibid. 73-99.
8 John Mott was a Methodist. On Mott, see C. Howard Hopkins, John R. Mott 186 1
1955: A Biography (Grand Rapids, M I : Eerdmans, 1979).
9 For this reason, it is perhaps too simplistic to say that the conference represent! i]
the Protestant churches, since the Anglo-Catholics would not have accepted tin
132
I lie main bone o f contention concerned the definition o f mission
territories. The question that was asked o f the organizing committee
WIIS 'whether missions o f Protestant Bodies among Roman and Greek
('hurchmen were to be considered as coming w i t h i n the province o f
the ( (inference, as Foreign M i s s i o n s ' . 10 To the credit o f the organizing
Committee o f Edinburgh 1910, they were able to accept that 'Roman
mid (ireek Churchmen' were, at least to some degree, Christian. 11 To
what extent that generosity o f spirit was mutual is hard to say. At
Miike here, though, is where the borders o f 'otherness' lie, and what
degree o f otherness is acceptable. 12 Underlying the decision to exclude
description as reflecting who they were. See on this Stanley, The World Missionary
('(inference, 9f. Elsewhere, Stanley says that the Conference's delegates 'spanned
I lie theological spectrum of the non-Roman Catholic Western missionary enter-
prise', which is perhaps the best way to put it. Brian Stanley, 'Defining the
lloundaries of Christendom: The Two Worlds of the World Missionary Conferen-
ce, 1910', International Bulletin of Missionary Research 30/4 (2006): 171-176,
notation on 171.
The question was put by Bishop Montgomery, the Secretary o f the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel and is cited in Stanley, The World Missionary Confe-
rence, 52.
There were several problems faced in dividing the world up into Christian and
non-Christian. On some o f the problems involved in formulating the statistics for
the Conference, see Stanley, The World Missionary Conference, 60-64. See also
knsleen Kim, 'Edinburgh 1910 and Edinburgh 2010: Different Theological
Worldviews?', a lecture given at the Henry Martyn Centre in Cambridge in Janua-
ry 2010, and available through the Henry Martyn Centre website, <www.martyn-
inission.cam.ac.uk/pages/hmc-seminar-papers.php>, accessed 15 June 2010. The
lelerence is to 5 of the downloaded text. Nearly all o f Europe and Latin America
were excluded from the Conference's remit, a fact described by Andrew Walls as
n major lacuna' in the conference. See Andrew Walls, 'Commission One and the
( lunch's Transforming Century', in David Kerr and Kenneth Ross (eds.), Edin-
burgh 2010: Mission Then and Now (Oxford: Regnum, 2009), 27^10, here 29f.
(the actual quotation is from 29). There were still some missions being carried out
In indigenous groups in Latin America, but these were not as such represented in
I ilinburgh. On nineteenth-century Protestant views of Latin America, see Monica
Oio/.co, 'Not to Be Called Christian: Protestant Perceptions of Catholicism in
Nineteenth-Century Latin America', in Lee Penyak and Walter Petry (eds.), Reli-
gion and Society in Latin America: Interpretative Essays from Conquest to Present
(Miiryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2009), 175-189.
I lie decision to ignore these territories as mission territories led ultimately to what
nne commentator has called 'the fatal flaw of Edinburgh 1910'. See Rose Dowsett,
Cooperation and the Promotion o f Unity: An Evangelical Perspective', in Kerr
133
these territories from consideration as missionary regions was, how-
ever, something more problematic. Who determines 'otherness', who
has the power to locate the other i n a particular place? Or, we might
say, who can decide what counts as a church, or whether someone has
or has not heard the gospel? These, obviously, are not merely histori-
cal questions.
In 1910, the world was still being carved up, predominantly
amongst the European superpowers, and the British Empire was ap
preaching its peak. 13 The implication was that the w o r l d could be d i -
vided into categories 14 according to the w h i m o f the leading nations,'"'
not so much salvation history as salvation geography, where western
civilisation as much as Jesus Christ was the saviour. 16 Apart from the
and Ross (eds.), Edinburgh 2010, 250-262. It is debatable whether it was fatal,
though it was certainly debilitating. Another Evangelical writer, the veteran mis
siologist David Hesselgrave, has placed the fatal flaw o f Edinburgh 1910 and all
subsequent ecumenical endeavours in its decision not to require any prior doctriiKil
consensus. See David Hesselgrave, ' W i l l We Correct the Edinburgh Error? Future
Mission in Historical Perspective', Southwestern Journal of Theology 49/2 (2007):
121-149.
13 It was popularly claimed that the sun never went down on the British Empire. The
more cynical, or perhaps the more realistic, replied that this was because God
would not trust the British in the dark!
14 The 'heathen parts' were Africa and Asia, whilst the rest was considered part of
Christendom.
15 On this, see Robin Butlin, Geographies of Empire: European Empires and Colo
nies c. 1880-1960 (Cambridge: CUP, 2009). Butlin's work, which I have found
very useful in my thinking for this paper, begins with a wonderfully apt quotation
from a work published in 1893 by J. Scott Keltie, Assistant Secretary to the Royal
Geographical Society. The book, The Partition of Africa, is described by Butlin
(1), as 'a helpful and generally even-handed chronicle of the history and geography
of the "scramble" for Africa'. The quotation from Keltie's book reads: 'We have
been witnesses to one of the most remarkable episodes in the history of the world
During the past eight years we have seen the bulk of the one barbarous continent
[Africa] parcelled out among the most civilised Powers o f Europe.' (J. Scott Kcl
tie, The Partition of Africa [London: Edward Stanford, 1893], 1, quoted in Butlin,
Geographies of Empire, 1).
16 The idea o f salvation geography has been discussed in relation especially to the
Holy Land. See for example, Martin Jeschke, Rethinking Holy Land: A Study in
Salvation Geography (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 2005), and Monika Slajerova, Pales
tinskd cirkev dnes: Politicka a teologickd problematika (Cerveny Kostelec: Pavel
Mervart, 2009), especially 201-237. However, more relevant to what I mean by
134
ethical difficulties w i t h such an approach, there were - indeed are -
two other major difficulties w i t h this division, one practical, the other
theological. Practically, it reinforced the often unexamined relation-
ship between Church and State, which saw Christianity as a part o f the
imperial enterprise. 17 The gospel belonged to the package o f 'civilisa-
tion' which the West brought to, or wanted to impose on, the East (a
more significant division in many ways at that time than N o r t h -
South). 18 This may have served the various mission boards w e l l , and
no doubt helped in their fundraising efforts, but there was remarkably
little reflection on how it impacted on the addressees o f mission,
which, because it relates to the nature o f the church that was being
planted, is ultimately a more theological question.
1.2. Master-Servant or Friend? Relating to the Other
In this regard, one o f the most frequently cited speeches' from 9 the
conference is that delivered by one o f only 18 Asian delegates out o f a
the term here is the essay by Werner Ustorf, 'Global Topographies: The Spiritual,
the Social and the Geographical in the Missionary Movement from the West', So-
cial Policy and Administration 32/5 (1998): 591-604, a stimulating account of the
three different attitudes to encounter held by late 19 century missionaries.
th
One of the Commissions (Commission 7) in Edinburgh 1910 was devoted to the
relationship with the governments in mission territories. Although missionaries
were often critical, it was more because o f restrictions they felt were placed on
their work, rather than because of any deep-seated rejection o f Empire itself. See
on this, Tinyiko Sam Maluleke, 'Christian Mission and Political Power: Commis-
sion Seven Revisited', in Kerr and Ross (eds.), Edinburgh 2010, 204-216. See also
Kim, 'Edinburgh 1910', 7-8. Butlin, Geographies of Empire, 356f, points out that
the story is more complex than at first sight might seem to be the case, and that
missionaries were certainly not uncritical supporters o f colonial and imperial poli-
cies.
'* On the idea of the 'mission civilizatrice\e Butlin, Geographies of Empire, 350-
395, which includes his most specific treatment o f foreign missions. See also Us-
dorf, 'Global Topographies', 595-597, and Stanley, The World Missionary Confe-
rence, 254-260.
v Two examples will suffice: Peter de Mey in this volume, and Dana Robert, Chris-
tian Mission: How Christianity Became a World Religion (Chichester: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2009), 54-56.
135
total o f over 1200, the Indian Anglican, V.S. (Vedanayagam
20
Samuel) Azariah (1874-1945). In his address he considered the
21 22
relationship between foreign missionaries and their indigenous fellow-
workers. We can safely presume that the attitude o f the missionaries to
those who had not yet become Christian was certainly no better, and
probably worse than to their co-workers. Azariah noted how indi-
genous Christians were essentially treated as staff, as servants o f the
white paymaster. In his history o f the conference Brian Stanley quotes
a steward from the meeting, who recalled Azariah saying 'Too often
you promise us thrones in heaven, but w i l l not offer us chairs in your
drawing rooms.' 23
His plea, therefore, was for a radical re-ordering o f the relationship
from master-servant to that o f friendship. He argued that it was only
24
when all worked together that the fullness o f Christ would be known,
and that '[fjhis w i l l be possible only from spiritual friendship between
the two races. We ought to be w i l l i n g to learn from one another and to
help one another'. He concluded by thanking the missionaries for all
that they had done, and suggesting what further was needed: ' Y o u
have given your goods to feed the poor. Y o u have given your bodies
One of these was a former Muslim from Turkey, eight were Indian, four Japanese,
three Chinese and one Korean and one Burmese. There was also one African dele-
gate. See for the figures, Stanley, The World Missionary Conference, 12f. Part of
the reason for this was the decision to limit participation to mission bodies with a
certain annual expenditure on mission - see on this the Introduction to Kerr and
Ross (eds.), Edinburgh 2010, 5f. (the starting figure was expenditure of at least
£2000 a year). This meant that the non-Western delegates were there mostly as part
of American or British missionary bodies, though three were directly invited by the
organising committees.
See Stanley, The World Missionary Conference, 121-130. See also Gairdner,
'Edinburgh 1910', 109-111, for an eyewitness report on the speech and its effect
on its audience. Azariah was to be the first Indian Anglican bishop.
The address was part of the programme o f evening events. The main conference
debates happened during the day, and in the evening there was a programme of
talks also open to the general public.
Stanley, The World Missionary Conference, 124. Stanley notes that this remark did
not make it into the official proceedings of the conference.
Or perhaps not altogether inappropriately one might use the Hegelian terminology
of Master-Bondsman, since the missionaries were also dependent in all sorts of
ways on the indigenous Christians.
136
to be burned. We also ask for love. Give us F R I E N D S ! ' This i m - 25
passioned request for a deep rethinking o f the way i n which the mis-
sionary task was carried out had something o f a mixed reception at the
Conference itself, which is one indication that it had struck a powerful
chord. 26
Already i n 1910 it was clear to some at least that a purely centri-
fugal vision o f mission, or missions, needed to be challenged. Was 27
there really a Christian centre which was charged w i t h taking the gos-
pel out to the heathen periphery? This raises i n a particular way the
question o f boundaries, and how they are viewed. There are various
28
forms in which this question can be phrased, but here I want to use the
categories o f contact, conflict, or cooperation. The most fundamental
29
of these, o f course, must be contact, and that at least took place, but
the latter two - conflict or cooperation - define the nature o f the con-
tact.
Azariah's comment on not being offered a chair to sit on may serve
as a starting point. The image that comes to mind is o f the colonial
missionary sat behind his (and it was predominantly though not exclu-
sively his) large desk, covered w i t h bibles, commentaries, papers,
gazing to the doorway where the indigenous Christian stands, waiting
for instructions. The crucial space is that between the two. Does the
5 Cited in Stanley, The World Missionary Conference, 125.
26 See Gairdner, 'Edinburgh 1910', 110.
That this was the predominant view, however, is not in question. See on this Kim,
'Edinburgh 1910', 8f. However, the ambiguity in the Conference's language is also
noted in Teresa Okure SHCJ, 'The Church in the Mission Field: A Nigerian / Afri-
can Response', in Kerr and Ross (eds.), Edinburgh 2010, 59-73. There is a fasci-
nating tension in Edinburgh 1910 between two very different understandings o f
mission. The dominant one certainly has the view that mission is about going out
from Europe to the 'world', but partly through the inclusion of reports and feed-
back from missionaries on the ground, this is tempered by a view of the missionary
potential of the local churches themselves as agents in mission. See also Butlin,
Geographies of Empire, 383f.
Stanley, The World Missionary Conference, 50. On the mapping o f the empire,
especially Africa, see Butlin, Geographies of Empire, 323-349.
" 1 take these from the sub-title o f a fascinating book by Mario Apostolov, The
Christian-Muslim Frontier: A Zone of Contact, Conflict or Cooperation (London:
Routledge, 2004), which examines those places, especially in Europe, where
Christians and Muslims have lived alongside each other and how they have related
to one another.
137
missionary rise and come round the desk to welcome the other into the
space, or does the space remain, an unspoken and unbridgeable gap?
This is what has to be negotiated.
The basic point can be stated baldly and simply as follows: do ' w e '
have a message to give ' t h e m ' , which it is incumbent on ' t h e m ' to
listen and respond to, or do all have a journey to undertake to discover
together what the message is which together we must hear and re-
spond to? Or, to put it another way, is the w o r d o f God ours or God's?
The assumption underlying much o f the missionary w o r k represented
at Edinburgh 1910 was that God has, so to speak, lent or given us his
word, and it is our task to bring it to those considered as 'poor be-
nighted heathen'. 30 It w o u l d be both too simplistic and unjust to say
that the chief aim o f late nineteenth and early twentieth century mis-
sionaries was to produce good Europeans. Indeed, there is much i n the
responses and reports from Edinburgh that indicates the unease many
missionaries felt. 31 Nevertheless, i n most cases they represented a so-
ciety and system w h i c h was fully implicated i n the exercise o f i m -
perial power and which was confident o f its o w n superiority in almost
every aspect o f l i f e . 32
What is lacking, and it is this that Azariah drew attention to, is the
absence o f any sense o f mutuality, necessary for any form o f dis-
course, and certainly for theological discourse. The non-Christian
other was there simply as a potential Christian, perhaps i n a similar
way that the African or Asian was there at best as a potential Euro-
pean. A n encounter w h i c h seeks to reduce all to sameness is violent
and ultimately murderous, because, to use further Levinasian termi-
nology, it refuses to be confronted by the face o f the other i n her or his
The phrase seems to have been fairly common in 19 century England, but is prob-
th
ably even older. The publication of Joseph Conrad's riveting reflection on the na-
ture of Empire, The Heart of Darkness, had occurred only 8 years previously. Con-
rad's powerful portrayal of the intensely problematic and destructive relationships
between coloniser and colonised can be helpfully read in conjunction with
Azariah's speech to give a sense of the problem.
See Stanley, The World Missionary Conference, 260-264, Stanley notes that the
Commission Report tended to downplay the critical voices, especially from India,
which questioned to some extent the exercise of colonial power, or at least the
ways in which that power was exercised.
See Butlin, Geographies of Empire, 367-380.
138
otherness. Azariah's challenge can be rephrased as demanding o f the
Europeans that they look h i m in the face and say ' Y o u are my
brother', not as a potential i f always inferior version o f the I but pre-
cisely because you are other.
2. Some Implications
for the Development of Ecumenism
Whether w h o l l y justified or not, Edinburgh 1910 has gained some sort
o f iconic status in the popular history o f ecumenism, 34 probably more
so than i n mission or at least i n missiology. 35 But given the way in
I am here thinking of, among other works, Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infin-
ity, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh,PA: Duquesne University Press, 1987). I
have dealt at greater length with Levinas in Tim Noble, Keeping the Window
Open: The Theological Method of Clodovis Boff and the Problem of the Alterity of
the Poor (Prague: IBTS, 2009), especially 166-180, where there is more biblio-
graphy. The way in which Levinas in his own life embraced this crossing of boun-
daries is almost certainly not immaterial here either. One of the best commentaries
1 have come across on Levinas, by a Brazilian Jesuit, Nilo Ribeiro Junior, is en-
titled 'The Wisdom o f Peace', Sabedoria da Paz: Etica e teo-ldgica em Emmanuel
Levinas (Sao Paulo: Loyola, 2008) which is an excellent metaphor for describing
what I understand of the nature of this encounter with the other, leading to the
restoration of God's shalom.
3 4 Both Stanley, The World Missionary Conference, 5-11, and Clements, Faith on
the Frontier, 73, point out that this iconic status may not be entirely deserved,
since the history o f ecumenism stretches much further back, and Edinburgh 1910,
as already noted, was not really ecumenical, neither in the sense we would under-
stand the term now, nor even in the terms it was already understood then. Hence,
as again already noted, the change of title for the Conference.
•{• Indirectly, of course, it has had a considerable influence, through the subsequent
establishment of the International Missionary Council, established in 1921, and
even earlier the journal, the International Review of Missions (established in 1912,
and since 1969, the International Review of Mission). But the actual missiology of
Edinburgh 1910 has been less influential, i f indeed it is possible to claim one
single missiological perspective for the conference as a whole, as Kirsteen Kim
seeks to do in her essay, 'Edinburgh 1910 and Edinburgh 2010: Two Different
Theological Worldviews?' though even she divides it into five sub-categories. It is
interesting that in Stanley's final chapter in The World Missionary Conference,
303-324, on the legacy o f Edinburgh 1910, there is really nothing about theology
as such.
139
which it operated and the premises it worked from, we can legiti-
mately ask what implications this has had for ecumenical relations.
Firstly, Edinburgh 1910 suffered, however involuntarily, by i g -
noring the elephant in the room, the absence o f the larger part o f the
Christian family (Roman Catholics and Orthodox). It is, o f course,
very unlikely that the Roman Catholic Church o f that time (at least in
its leadership under Pius X ) would have deigned to participate i n the
conference, so the problem is i n no sense one-sided. Yet the fact thai
36
we still tend to focus on particular perspectives (Roman Catholic, Re-
formed, Lutheran, Orthodox, etc) suggests that the question o f other-
ness remains central to the ecumenical debate. Where do we place this
other, how do we encounter this other? As countless theological
commissions and meetings have shown, a lot o f the time the problems
are not ultimately about theological interpretation. Far more complex
are questions o f attitude, o f the space we are prepared to give the other
in our territory, to allow the other to make us feel uncomfortable, per-
haps, or challenge us, or help us grow.
The ecumenical impulse o f Edinburgh 1910 was predominantly
pragmatic. Missionaries in the field saw that the work o f Christian
mission was being hindered by the obvious disunity among Christians,
and it was felt that it w o u l d be more effective i f the churches were
seen to live out more visibly the unity they preached. Positively we
37
should note that a deep motivation for unity emerges precisely from
the bitter experience o f the negative impact o f disunity.
A t the time o f Edinburgh 1910, most inter-church agreements were
expressed i n terms o f comity, where it was determined which mission
board would have responsibility for which particular territory, in or- 38
der to avoid wasting human and financial resources on competing in
the same area. However, these agreements obviously also led to the
carving up o f territories and drawing o f boundaries, not to mention an
extension o f the principle o f cuius regio, eius religio to other conli
This was the Roman Catholic Church that reacted so strongly against modernism.
See on this the summary o f Commission 8 of Edinburgh 1910 in Kerr and Rosa
(eds.), Edinburgh 2010, 233-235, and Samuel Kobia's essay in the same volume,
'Cooperation and the Promotion of Unity: A World Council of Churches Perspci
tive', 237-249, here 241, and Stanley, The World Missionary Conference, 279.
See Stanley, The World Missionary Conference, 281-284 and Kerr and Rosi
(eds.), Edinburgh 2010, 233.
140
nents. This i n turn led to exclusion and the suppression o f dissident or
unwanted voices, both other Christians and non-Christians.
39
Most o f the ways i n which we define ourselves are precisely that -
definitions, the setting o f boundaries. To belong to a church is to
40
dwell w i t h i n a particular territory. O f course, some o f us live in the
capital and some o f us live i n border towns. I f we live in the capital,
those on the borders are semi-barbarians, and i f we live on the border
those i n the capital are conceited and self-satisfied. Mostly, though,
even i f we emigrate, we never lose or r i d ourselves o f our original
belonging.
In this sense, one might characterise the history o f the ecumenical
movement in the last 100 years as a series o f negotiations over boun-
dary lines. Sometimes, these negotiations have been better, and we
have managed to find places where we can build bridges, improving
the communications between us. Sometimes, walls or iron curtains
41
have been raised i n defence. On occasions, we have refused to recog-
nise that the other territory is really a country at a l l . On other occa-
42
sions, we have managed a more federal existence. A l l o f this has 43
''' One o f the most enjoyably off-beat books linked to mission which 1 know is Tim
Couzens, Murder at Morija: Faith, Mystery, and Tragedy on an African Mission
(Charlottesville, VA: University o f Virginia Press, 2003). Part o f this fascinatingly
tragic murder mystery relates to the problems between both different Protestant
missions and the rivalry with Catholic missions in Lesotho.
4(1 It is interesting to note that Viorel lonita, 'Cooperation and the Promotion o f Un-
ity: An Orthodox Perspective' in Kerr and Ross (eds.), Edinburgh 2010, 263-275,
refers at the beginning o f his contribution to the comments on 'delimitation o f ter-
ritory' in Commission Eight's report. He does so, not surprisingly, with reference
to the idea of canonical territory. See also Stanley, 'Defining the Boundaries',
which deals with the way in which Edinburgh 1910 sought to establish the limits
of Christianity, but which serves as a reminder of how these boundaries included
other churches - for example, the Archbishop o f Canterbury's mission to Assyrian
Christians was considered as a 'Mission to non-Christians'.
I am thinking, for example, of organisations like the WCC, or CEC.
1
I am thinking here, for example, of the way in which the Roman Catholic Church
4 )
has refused to call various Christian groups churches, and has insisted instead on
calling them 'ecclesial communities'. The theology behind this may indeed be in-
telligible, but of course a theology that is intelligible but destructive may still prove
not to be the best possible theology available.
" I work in an institution which is owned by the European Baptist Federation (EBF),
which brings together representatives o f most European Baptists. At the same time,
141
been important; much o f it has been good. But the question remains i1'
it has entirely managed to escape the way in which Edinburgh divided
the world.
3. Edinburgh 2010 and the Nature of the Other
So, one hundred years after Edinburgh 1910, in the light o f the work
that has gone on in preparing Edinburgh 2010, where do we stand
now? H o w do we view the addressing o f the other today? It is not dif-
ficult to construct a narrative that points to an almost complete differ-
ence between the world o f Edinburgh 1910 and that o f today, at least
in terms o f mission. As several commentators have noted, perhaps
44
the one thing that remains the same is the fraction o f the world's pop-
ulation that is Christian, roughly a t h i r d . John Mott, arguably the
45
most influential figure at Edinburgh 1910, is renowned, among other
things, for his battle cry for the Student Volunteer Movement, 'the
evangelization o f the w o r l d i n this g e n e r a t i o n ' Whether the fact that
46
this did not happen should be regarded as a success or failure is a
the historic Baptist insistence on the autonomy of the local church remains un-
dimmed. On the history of the EBF, see Keith Jones, The European Baptist Feder-
ation: A Case Study in European Baptist interdependency 1950-2006 (Milton
Keynes: Paternoster, 2009).
See, however, for example, K i m , 'Edinburgh 1910', 3-6, looking at some of the
similarities of the world we inhabit.
For example, 'Theme Eight: Mission and Unity - Ecclesiology and Mission' in
Daryl Balia and Kirsteen Kim (eds.), Edinburgh 2010: Witnessing to Christ Today,
vol. 2, Edinburgh 2010 Series (Oxford: Regnum, 2010), 199-221, here 208. Avail-
able online <http://www.edinburgh2010.org/tlleadmin/files/edinburgh-2010/files/
Study_Process/reports/E2010%201I-whole-final.pdf>, accessed 15 June 2010.
This is also the title of a book by John Mott, The Evangelization of the World In
This Generation (New York, N Y : Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Mis
sion, 1900). It is true that Mott did not call for the conversion of the world, though
he does say 'On the other hand, however, we have a right to expect that the faithful
preaching of the Gospel will be attended with conversions'. The title o f his reflee
tions on Edinburgh 1910 - The Decisive Hour of Christian Mission (New York,
NY: Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Mission, 1910) - suggests that he
firmly believed in the urgency of evangelization, and in the possibility of its suc-
cess. On the watchword itself, my colleague Dr Ian Randall alerted me to the fact
that a similar phrase was used in the 1870s by the British Baptist Joseph Angus
who spoke of winning the world for Christ in this generation.
142
question that is seldom asked. It is generally seen as a call for even
harder evangelising work on the part o f Christians around the world.
For some, on the other hand, even the idea that everyone should have
the gospel proclaimed to them is no longer so self-apparently correct,
and certainly not that all should be converted. Apart from being i n -
herently unlikely, such an idea does not seem to them necessarily to
be entirely biblical - bread that is only yeast would not be bread, nor
does one need a candle in broad daylight, and we all know how bad
too much salt can be.
However, apart from the static percentage o f Christians, nearly
everything else about mission and its context has changed. The recov-
ery o f the concept o f ( i f not the actual phrase) missio Dei began in
earnest at the International Missionary Council meeting in Willingen
in Germany i n 1952 Since then it has become the defining concept
4 7
in mission studies and has had a fundamental impact on the nature o f
the missionary enterprise itself. Previously missions were what the
church did, either at home or mostly abroad. It was a God-given task,
but in some sense external to God, or even really to theology. 48
The introduction (or perhaps better re-claiming) o f the idea o f mis-
sio Dei has led to the restoration o f the link between mission and the
self-revelation o f the Triune God. Mission is no longer one o f the
things the church has to do, but something that is integral to our exis-
tence as human beings created in the image and likeness o f the God
who sends. Mission, as the increasing fashionability o f the adjective
'missional' indicates, is perceived as a fundamental dimension o f all
49
aspects o f Christian l i f e . To sum this up, mission is much more theo-
50
The theological inspiration came primarily from Karl Barth. For a good brief intro-
duction to this, see David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in The-
ology of Mission (Maryknoll, N Y : Orbis, 1991), 389-393. See also Bali and Kim
(eds.), Witnessing to Christ Today, 20If.
Schleiermacher, for example, placed mission in practical theology.
Introduced especially by the Gospel and Our Culture Network. See, for example,
Darrell Guder (ed.), Missional church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in
North America (Grand Rapids. M I : Eerdmans, 1998) and Thomas John Hastings,
Practical Theology and the One Body of Christ: Toward a Missional-Ecumenical
Model (Grand Rapids. M I : Eerdmans, 2007).
As Bishop Stephen Neill famously remarked, ' I f everything is mission, nothing is
mission'. Stephen Neill, Creative Tension (London: Edinburgh House, 1959), 81.
143
logical than it was in 1910, when missiology was still a very young
discipline. 51
Mission has also changed, even i f we consider it in terms o f the
1910 concept o f missions. There is no longer Christendom and
heathendom, two broad blocks o f opposing values. Mission is, to
quote the sub-title o f a book by Samuel Escobar, 'from everywhere to
everyone'. There is no Christian centre exporting itself to the non-
52
Christian periphery. Apart from this, the nature o f Christianity itself
53
has changed massively w i t h the spread o f the Pentecostal movement
in its various forms. This has redrawn the boundaries o f Christianity
54
and added complexity to the negotiations over the nature o f the Chris-
tian other. 55
5 1 Gustav Warneck, generally posited as the founding father of missiology, was un-
able to attend the Conference because of ill-health (he died in December 1910, at
the age of 76). However, he did contribute to the preparation of the meeting. War-
neck was named as professor of mission studies in Halle in 1896, the first such
chair to be established.
5 2 Samuel Escobar, The New Global Mission: The Gospel from Everywhere to Every-
one (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2003).
5 3 This is part of the thrust o f Philip Jenkin's work. For example, Philip Jenkins, The
New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South (Oxford: OUP,
2006) and id., The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, revised
and expanded edition (Oxford: OUP, 2007). See also Jehu H . Janciles, 'Migration
and Mission: The Religious Significance o f the North-South Divide' in Andrew
Walls and Cathy Ross (eds.), Mission in the 21 ' Century: Exploring the Five
s
Marks of Global Mission (London: DLT, 2008), 118-129.
5 4 See on this Vinson Synan, The Century of the Holy Spirit: 100 years of Pentecostal
and Charismatic Renewal, 1901-2001 (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers,
2001) and Cecil M . Robeck, The Azusa Street Mission and Revival: The Birth of
the Global Pentecostal Movement (Nashville, T N : Thomas Nelson Publishers,
2006). For a good summary of contemporary Pentecostal theology, see Keith War-
rington, Pentecostal Theology: A Theology of Encounter (London: T & T Clark,
2008).
5 5 This has nowhere been clearer, perhaps, than in Latin America, where Pentecostal-
ism has made great progress. The first Pentecostal missionaries - two Swedes who
arrived via America - came to Brazil just months after the end of Edinburgh 1910.
See on relationships between liberation theology and Pentecostalism, Noble,
Keeping the Window Open, 58-71, and the bibliography contained there.
144
In 1910 the other was mostly seen in terms o f exoticism, and the
general attitude was at best rather patronising. Today there is, on the
whole, more willingness to recognise the other as the one w i t h and
from w h o m I can learn, the one who, i n Levinasian terms, challenges
me and commands me. The problem for Christian mission is how to
proclaim the good news o f Jesus Christ without ultimately seeking to
reduce the other to sameness, to define the frifrnf, circumscribing
57
the unknowability o f the other w i t h i n the limits o f what I understand
to be Christian life and faith.
This is not to suggest, as sometimes threatened to be the case in the
1960s and 1970s, that we should now abandon Christian missionary
activity because it is inevitably destructive. It may, however, be useful
to remember that the major imperative o f the default missionary text,
M t 28:18-20, the Great Commission, is to make disciples. The 58
disciple is the one who follows the teacher, and the path to be
followed is decided on by the teacher. In other words, Christian
mission is about a liberation that allows people to follow wherever
they are led. There is no one unique place where Jesus is to be found,
not even the church as we usually understand it. The Son o f M a n has
nowhere to lay his head, has no address, but is always on the move,
always indefinable. 59
I f we follow through w i t h Levinas for a while longer, we might
also consider that, for us Christians, those o f other faiths or none are
also not an obstacle but a blessing and a gift. It is only through the
challenge o f the other, Christian or not, that we can have any hope o f
learning who we are and what it really means to be a follower o f
Christ in our world. O f course, we never undergo this encounter with
some kind o f tabula rasa, as i f we suddenly forget all we know and
have lived o f our faith hitherto. But each encounter requires us to un-
derstand anew the faith that we proclaim and seek to live, to ask what
it really means in the specific context o f each time that we are con-
fronted with and by the other. It is in the diversity o f the encounters
See Stanley, The World Missionary Conference, 95-97 and for confirmation from
a participant, Gairdner, 'Edinburgh 1910', 56-58.
The French title of Levinas' Totality and Infinity is Totalite et Inflni.
Bosch, Transforming Mission, 73f. In fact, Bosch entitles his entire section on the
Matthean vision of mission 'Making Disciples'.
Luke 9:57-62.
145
that we are enabled to find the wholeness and unity o f our faith, a faith
that demands that we live w i t h others, welcoming and attending to
their difference and diversity.60

Cf. Matt 25:36^5.

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