Evangelicals, Ecumenism and Unity: a Case Study of the Evangelical Alliancel Ian Randall
Evangelicals, Ecumenism and Unity: A Case Study of the Evangelical Alliancel Ian Randall leaders, the Edinburgh meeting built on previous world mis· KEYWORDS: Anglican, Free Church, ecumenical move sionary conferences and was also deeply influenced by the ment, fellowship, Keswick Convention, Christian Union, Student Volunteer Movement and the increasingly powerful British Alliance, WCC, missions, FIE(, evangelism, doctrine, Student Christian Movement. Expressing the mounting aspi· unity, liberalism, ecclesiology rations of these bodies for more substantial union between the churches, the Edinburgh Conference's Commission on Christian Unity and the Development of the Co-operation and Unity ventured to suggest the goal 'that we should be one in a visible fellowship'. The World Mis· Alliance sionary Conference Continuation Committee pursued this When it was formed in 1846 the World's Evangelical Alliance vision vigorously in the years which followed. 7 As a result, adopted as its motto 'Unum Corpus Sumus in Christo': 'We the Alliance was driven to reconsider the nature of unity, are One Body in Christ'. Defined as it was by a shared Basis and its implications for the work of mission. of Faith, the Alliance's unity was undoubtedly conceived in Four months after the Edinburgh conference, in October doctrinal and spiritual rather than ecclesiastical terms. Even 1910, the Alliance held its annual meetings in Dublin. The so, the choice of bodily metaphor was hardly accidental: theme of the meetings was 'The Problem of Unity', and notwithstanding the various overseas mission agencies Prebendary H.W. Webb-Peploe, vicar of St Paul's, Onslow which had emerged over the preceding 50 years or so, the Square, a noted Anglican evangelical and (from 1883) an British Organization of the Alliance effectively became the Alliance honorary secretary, delivered one of the addresses.
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