Edinburgh Missionary Conference

Background

In the nineteenth century, Protestant missions were carried out by separate societies organized along denominational and national lines, and their work frequently overlapped in the mission field. International missionary conferences seeking to coordinate these efforts were held in London in 1888 and in New York in 1900. In January 1907, representatives of Scottish missionary societies meeting in Glasgow resolved to hold the next conference in Edinburgh in June 1910. Preparations were led by two men: John R. Mott, an American Methodist layman who led the Student Volunteer Movement (SVM), and J. H. Oldham, a Scot who served as full-time secretary. Mott's watchword, "the evangelization of the world in this generation," captures the spirit of the conference. Mott had also visited Korea in 1907 and witnessed the Great Pyongyang Revival firsthand.

Proceedings

The conference was held from June 14 to 23, 1910, in the Assembly Hall of the United Free Church of Scotland. Some 1,200 delegates (1,215 according to some records) from more than 160 missionary societies attended, with delegates allotted according to factors such as each society's missionary expenditure. Only Protestant and Anglican societies took part; Roman Catholic and Orthodox missionary bodies were not invited. Fewer than twenty delegates came from outside the Western world.

The sessions were devoted to discussing the reports of eight commissions, which had been prepared over roughly two years. Commission I addressed carrying the gospel to the non-Christian world, and Commission VIII dealt with cooperation and unity. The conference was not a body empowered to make decisions binding on the participating societies; rather, it was a consultative gathering intended to arrive at a common mind. On June 21, Commission VIII proposed establishing a Continuation Committee to carry on the work after the conference, and the conference adopted the proposal unanimously.

Korean Participation

About fifteen people represented the Korean mission field, chiefly missionaries such as Avison and Gillett; Yun Chi-ho was the only Korean among them. Yun is reported to have spoken in praise of the missionaries' labors while warning that conversions occurring too rapidly, before the foundations of the local church had been firmly laid, could prove dangerous. He was later imprisoned in connection with the 105-Man Incident.

Results and Influence

The Continuation Committee, working under the leadership of Mott and Oldham, launched the missiological journal International Review of Missions and in 1921 developed into the International Missionary Council (IMC). The IMC merged with the World Council of Churches (WCC) at New Delhi in 1961. Because of this lineage, the Edinburgh conference is commonly cited as the starting point of the modern ecumenical movement (the movement for church union and unity).

In 2010, the centenary year, a commemorative conference was held in Edinburgh from June 2 to 6. The Third Lausanne Congress, held in October of that year in Cape Town, South Africa, was also intended in part as an evangelical commemoration of the Edinburgh centenary.

Assessment

The ecumenical camp regards the conference as the starting point of cooperation across denominational lines and as the root of the WCC. The evangelical camp sees itself as heir to the missionary zeal for world evangelization that the conference displayed, and some understand the Lausanne Movement as standing within that stream. In Korea, the two camps' differing interpretations of this legacy are bound up with the WCC controversy.

The conference has also drawn criticism. Critics note that it was dominated by the English-speaking world amid the confidence and optimism of the Western churches, and that despite its billing as a "world" conference, it was in practice led unilaterally by the West. Remarks by the South Indian church leader V. S. Azariah are frequently cited in support of this criticism. Some also contend that the Korean church did not receive the treatment due to it as a "younger church." At the same time, because the churches of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, then on the periphery, have since become the center of world Christianity, the conference is cited as a benchmark for reflecting on that shift.