Winter Chapter 11

The Evangelical Awakening

Since the Evangelical Awakening is the engine Evangelical Awakening. Now, of course, they of the great renaissance of the Fifth Epoch, our weren’t invented. They’re right in the Bible. topic today is really, of all the topics we could They were not non-existent before—they possibly take up, in some ways the most impor- became public in the Evangelical Awakening. tant. That being the case, I hardly need to com- Now what were some of these traits? The ment on it, because all of you people plunging most obvious one for this class is the fact that into the reading will find immediate rapport missions as theory and practice really didn’t with the material. exist in Protestantism to any extent until the The “Evangelical Awakening” as a phrase Awakening, with the exception of the Moravians, has got to be the most significant pair of words who were ahead of the times but who weren’t, since the days of the apostles for most of us strictly speaking, Protestants. It was the Mora- gathered in this room. I don’t how many of vians whom John Wesley went to visit and whom you come from a Lutheran background, or a he first met on his trip to America when, in a Catholic background. But even in that case the big, terrible, horrifying storm the main mast reason you ‘re in this particular room is more was split, and everybody on the ship was just likely because of the Evangelical Awakening trembling in horror—except the Moravians, the than any other single movement in history. depth of whose Christian faith was apparently Protestantism was a very different animal such that they simply quietly prayed and sang prior to the Evangelical Awakening. We talked hymns in the midst of that ghastly storm. And the other day about the fact that in the time of John Wesley took note! the Reformation you had the Roman Catholic Later, back in London, after fumbling and armies and the Protestant armies. Then you bungling in Georgia, John and Charles Wesley also had the Anabaptists, the various non- fellowshipped with a small group of Moravians. conforming groups, the “Radical Reformation” One of the leaders, as Latourette puts it, spoke so-called. Roland Bainton, himself a Quaker in to them of “self-surrender, instantaneous con- background, reminds us of the significance of version, and joy in conscious salvation.” This is that Radical Reformation. But that third force quintessential evangelicalism. After that kind did not come to the surface really until Pietism of an experience John Wesley actually made a extended it. There was a connection, and in trip to Germany. He got terrible Germanic cul- Pietism the essence of the Radical Reformation, ture shock, and went away with mixed feelings the third force, finally burst into full view. It about the Germans and no longer eager simply appears more clearly than in any other place, to be Moravian. But that was culture shock; he in England in the eighteenth century in the wasn’t prepared for it in an anthropology class! person of John Wesley, in what is called the But he did translate some of their hymns into Evangelical Awakening. People who are evangel- English. The Moravians very definitely influ- icals today may carry their several theological enced him, even before he went to Germany. In traditions. But also, even more importantly, Wesley’s Aldersgate experience, Peter Boehlar, they trace their whole lifestyle and attitudes the Moravian, had worked with him, and he back to the Evangelical Awakening more likely found that there was something richer and fuller than they do all the way back to the Protestant in the Bible than the determined, almost ascetic Reformation. obedience which was the pattern of his life It’s just simply a fact. I’m sorry to have to before that point. disturb other subtle opinions on this subject, The theologians don’t know what to do with but most of the distinctive traits of evangelical this so-called conversion of John Wesley. You Christianity were virtually invented in the can make out a case for him not being a true

© 1996 R. Winter. No copy may be made without the author’s permission. 11 – 1 11 – 2 The Evangelical Awakening Christian before. If you do, you consign almost an absolutely autocratic dictator! I shouldn’t use all Christians in history to the outer darkness. the word dictator, for there was nothing harsh As one Christian leader said, “If John Wesley or insensitive about him. But, boy! He was a was not converted before Aldersgate, God help small man, and his wife on occasion dragged Christendom!” That is one approach. The other him by the hair. They say that if he had had a approach chooses to explain what happened as a happy home life, there wouldn’t have been a second work of grace. It was thus an evangelical Methodist movement. But to those who would experience of the type which became famous in listen to him he was very, very firm. And he the Holiness movement (directly derived from was out on the road much of the time, as you Wesley’s impact on history) which emphasizes might imagine. a second work of grace. In modern terminology, It was Kenneth Scott Latourette, whom I’m you can say that it was the baptism of the Holy sure by now you all respect, that pointed out Spirit. You can go round and round. that the Methodist preachers were in all func- Nevertheless, Aldersgate was an important tional respects similar to the friars. Poverty, event. For here was this giant of discipline and chastity, obedience—they lived up to all those obedience, a man who years and years before ideals. That really shook me when I first read was studying his Greek New Testament along it years ago. I said, “How could this be? Why with George Whitefield and Charles Wesley and would anyone even try to make comparisons.” others in that little student group at Oxford—a But Latourette made the comparison. Latourette godly person, visiting the poor and the homeless himself never married, and we might not have and the prisoners and witnessing for Christ and all these books from his hand if he had. reading the Bible every day—but there was some- In any case, the fact is that this tremendous thing more. Somehow, whatever the experience determination of Wesley put steel and toughness was, it opened John Wesley’s heart to the world into the fiber of that movement, derisively called on a scale and a level of intensity that had never the Methodists, who were so rigorous in their before existed in his life. management structure and accountability. To This was the opening shot! There is no other this day, in no place on the face of the earth do way to describe the course of events in eight- you find a church structure of any size, or length eenth-century England than to say that this was of existence, with a tougher internal discipline the opening event. It caught on to Charles Wesley than in the Methodist tradition. An Anglican and to George’ Whitefield (other members of the bishop or a Roman cardinal has no power Oxford student group). What would we have whatsoever compared to a Methodist bishop! done in America without George Whitefield? This is John Wesley’s legacy in that tradition. Four or five times Whitefield made trips to Of course, there were many other things that America—a very hazardous voyage! You only came out of the Methodist movement. A tre- had about four chances out of five to get to mendous holy glow was spawned in England. America in those days. The hallmarks of the movement were not, as is [It is an interesting thing that, in that whole often stressed, a return to the Bible, although period, about as many people lost their lives on that was part of it. But John Wesley wouldn’t board ship coming over from England as among allow his preachers to make sermons up from those coming over in slave ships from Africa. It the Bible. He gave them twenty basic sermons was about the same degree of risk, and the ships and that was all they were supposed to preach! were virtually identical, except for the chains. So let’s not be too hard on Campus Crusade, The structure of the ships, the way they packed when they prescribe for all their new workers the people in and everything was virtually the exactly what it is that they are supposed to teach. same in the slave ships as it was in the free ships. John Wesley didn’t expect these people to That, of course, was one reason why the people develop their own sermons. These men whom often did not survive coming across.] he scrounged up here and there—their sole Yet, Whitefield made that trip a number of common denominator was their responsiveness times, against John Wesley’s stern urgings to to an absolute obedience—not to Christ, but to stay with the work in England. But, as to the John Wesley; Wesley was the one who obeyed kind of person Wesley was, the disciplined Christ. He said as Paul did, “Be ye imitators of founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola was a me, even as l am of Christ.” I think that some- namby-pamby by comparison—or at least the times, in our extreme individualism in America two should be compared—because Wesley was today we have moved a long way away from Ralph D. Winter 11 – 3 the idea that people must follow us. If we are world. For example, the Armenians who live not followable people, God help us! in Pasadena (don’t confused Arminian with So it was that in this movement there was Armenian) are divided into two groups: the a fire, there was an assurance of salvation, a apostolic and the evangelical. The evangelical peace of heart and life that Calvinism despite Armenians are the result of people stirred by its rich varieties never routinely gave people. the Evangelical Awakening who went to eastern Both the Roman Catholic tradition and Protes- Turkey to evangelize the apostolic Armenians, tantism, and even evangelicalism—any form of some of whom became evangelical Armenians, Christianity—tends to move in the direction of and there is a very distinct difference to this day. holding people in suspense. Guilt trips is the Evangelicals, as is true when a new movement business we often are in, in our weak moments, gets started, rethought through many things. trying to make our product more necessary to They began to wonder about the dietary assump- our people. But Wesley was very free and easy tions of secular society. John Wesley himself about this whole thing. Much too free and easy published a little book on remedies; it has some in terms of theology! This allowed all kinds of pretty horrifying medical answers to problems, liberalism in Methodist traditions. He said, “If but scholars say that on the whole it was an your heart is warmed as mine is, shake hands!” eminently common-sense book. It went through Something like that. 39 editions. Wesley experimented with electric- Wesley didn’t have that much concern about ity as a means of calming people who were getting down to the fine points. But he did use mentally disturbed. Another Christian, Michael the Westminster Confession of faith, he did use Faraday (one of the most eminent scientists of the Westminster catechism slightly modified, English history), came into the picture and had which is, of course, usually considered Calvin- developed little hand generators. Wesley saw istic. Wesley really was a Calvinist, for the most to it that every one of the Methodist connections part. The Arminians so-called, who fought and throughout England had one of these little gen- debated with the Calvinists on the American erators, so that people could put their hands on frontier, were mainly Calvinists. Jacobus Armin- them and get a shock through their bodies. He ius himself was a follower of Calvin, even though felt that would perhaps provide some kind of he disagreed with some of the Calvin-ists in tonic to the body. I read in Time magazine yes- Holland. In some respects, Arminius was closer terday that broken bones heal much better if to Calvin than the Calvinists were. Technically, you put an electrode on both sides of the break it is nonsense to contrast Arminians with Calvin- and run electricity through there. The fact that ists. We may speak of the Arminian Calvinists Wesley experimented with scientifically devel- versus the other Calvinists who claimed the name. oped fact cannot be held against him. The new thing in all this was not Arminian Wesley was, in fact, the one whose interest theology, but the assurance of salvation. As late in science and wide-ranging reading lead him as the nineteenth century, when Charles Finney into contact with a certain writer in America, went to Princeton Seminary to find out how to whom he then introduced to the Royal Society be saved, the president of the seminary said, of England. That American writer was Benjamin “Young man, there is no way for you to be Franklin. saved. There is nothing that you can do. All On his 71st birthday, Wesley was riding that you can do is go home and pray. And if along on his horse. He had a desk on his horse. God wants to save you, then He will.” Finney’s Most of his literary work he did while riding. great revival and evangelistic efforts would As a result, in an age preceding photography have been hopeless with that kind of theology! and television, he was better known throughout When I was at Princeton (some years later, of all the little villages of England than any other course), one of the sage members of the faculty human being who ever lived before Wesley, there said to the class one day, “Believe like a and perhaps prior to the age of television! Calvinist, but preach like an Arminian!” And this A man came out to the gate as he saw Wesley kind of paradoxical thinking goes on to this day. coming down the road on his horse, and he Within this evangelical movement, this assu- asked him how he was getting along, and greeted rance of salvation, this sense of holiness, this him on his birthday. He asked him what he was emphasis upon the life, not just the belief, was reading. The account I read says that Wesley a very blessed thing, and it eventually seeped replied that he was reading the latest edition into all forms of Christianity all around the of Priestly’s Elements of Electricity. That kind of 11 – 4 The Evangelical Awakening confuses us, doesn’t it? Because he was an about Protestant theology, jumping over the evangelist. What would he be doing, reading Evangelical Awakening as if it never happened. books on electricity? Why would he have written I really felt as though his book was not on the a bunch of books on science? Why would he right subject: it was a good book, but it just have edited 276 books, ranging over all kinds didn’t have the right title. of subjects? Due to the many elements in the Evangelical Think it through! The Evangelical Awakening cultural complex, I wound up saying, “You can was not just a new theological tradition. It really no more describe the evangelical tradition in didn’t build a whole new theological system— theological terms than you can eat soup with and for that reason it is down-played in semi- a fork! You’re not using the right criteria. You naries today. Evangelical theology: what’s that? can put the fork into the soup and pull it out, Evangelical theology is sometimes equated but you just don’t pull out most of what is with a fundamentalist emphasis. Certainly the there. There is more to evangelicalism than a Fundamentalists, so-called (that’s a specific his- particular theological tradition. There is an torical movement), were evangelical. But most impetus, a perspective of mission …” of evangelical history portrays an evangelical However, you can read all five of these books who was radical, not conservative! about the evangelicals and you won’t find any The evangelicals were the ones who intro- serious references to the subject of missions. duced into the churches—can you believe the Bernard Ramm’s book, especially, has only one apostasy of this?—Isaac Watts’ poems, and paragraph on missions in the whole book! And they actually got people singing human poetry it has very little reference to Pietism. Donald instead of the psalms! The Protestant movement, Bloesch’s book, The Evangelical Renaissance, has of course, had taken over the psalms from the a huge, big, excellent chapter on Pietism, which monastic movement. As I pointed out, the Prot- I commend to you; his treatment is much more estant churches were themselves a substitute fair to the evangelical movement. But neither for the monastic houses. In the monastic houses book really talks about the mission movement, they sang their way through the psalms every which had its origins in the impetus and the week, and so the Protestants also dutifully sang spiritual fire of the Evangelical Awakening. the psalms. But somewhere along the line, due To conclude, in its early stages the Evangelical to the buoyancy of spirit and the new assurance Awakening itself was primarily a spiritual rebirth of salvation and of God’s willingness for all men of Protestantism. Only later did it get into the to be saved, the evangelicals began writing, and subject of missions. It was not until the very end then ultimately—in that most radical horror of of Wesley’s century that William Carey, clearly all horrors—they introduced human hymns the product of the Evangelical Awakening, into church worship! actually took that additional intellectual leap It took about a 100 years to do this. Evangel- into the place where he felt that a missionary icals also introduced what became known as expression of this zeal was the only proper thing. the Sunday School. They even allowed women I think that today the charismatic movement to have meetings by themselves! They opposed is finally getting to the place where it is inter- the use of alcohol. They proposed the use of ested in missions. If I’m not wrong, within ten missionaries. They did all kinds of radical things! or fifteen years most missionaries from America, The evangelical movement today is a whole maybe more than half, may be sent out by char- complex of culture traits. It cannot be defined ismatic groups. For the charismatic impetus, in purely theological terms. after so many years of being a purely spiritual I was asked to write a review for Christianity emphasis, is now, very gradually, getting into Today two or three years ago, covering five books the subject of missions. Jimmy Bakker’s PTL now on evangelicalism. Three books had just come has a missionary on its staff, who is supposed out: Bernard Ramm’s The Evangelical Heritage, to be concerned about missions. The Full Gospel Donald Bloesch’s The Evangelical Renaissance, Businessmen’s Fellowship International now David Well’s The Evangelicals. (Books on the has a full-time staff member who is concerned evangelicals are increasing in number). I worked with world outreach. That phrase is in his title. very hard on the concluding statement of my What I’m saying is that the Evangelical review in order to express the last point. I felt Awakening was a powerful spiritual movement, Ramm’s book talked exclusively about theology; which has extensively defined most of the it simply went back to the Reformers and talked Christianity of most of us in this room, and it got Ralph D. Winter 11 – 5 it from Pietism. Pietism got it from the Anabap- In fact, Quietism was one of the results of evan- tists, and the Anabaptists got it from the Bible. gelicalism that had no practical use at all. But there was not necessarily any connection The Evangelical Awakening is one of the most between this amazing spiritual rebirth and a fascinating subjects we could possibly deal with! clear-cut missionary organizational strategy. So It overflowed into America in the Great Awaken- watch your step! Spiritual rebirth in itself does ing. It has followed us down through history not necessarily lead us to missionary strategies. and it is certainly worth studying.

Winter Chapter 12

The Emergence of Protestant Orders, 1795-1865

Notice that for four times we are going to Rather, we are concerned about the future in talk about the phenomenon of Protestant mis- studying this material. We are concerned with sions. The reason is that this is not a class in a what is being done today, when we study this Roman Catholic seminary. We’re giving pro- material. portionately more emphasis to the Protestant We are concerned about why it is today that phenomenon, trying as painstakingly as we people are not thinking about missions, but are can to figure out exactly what this phenome- content merely to send people (whom they call non is and understand how it was born. We missionaries) to foreign churches, to help those want to figure out the factors that led to its suc- churches. They close their eyes—not resisting cess or failure, to its strength or weakness, to the Holy Spirit, but unconsciously—without its directions of development, its key leaders, realizing that we are no longer doing what the but more than anything else, to its structural rise of the American mission movement got dimensions. The reason we want to do that, people to do: to think about the people across brothers and sisters, is because we need to the world, wherever they are, who have never revamp and to rebuild this movement again in heard the gospel! our day. I’ll just give one final apology at this time, Protestant missions have all but disap- and that is that in William Carey’s day there peared. We still have the structures, but those were certain obvious parts of the world that mission societies that have been out there had never heard the good news. One addi- across the world, pioneering into new areas, tional excuse that we might have today for not have given up this task for the most part. Very having missionary vision is the fact that we few mission societies are performing mission here, better than anybody else, know how activities any more. They are into inter-church many places in the world have heard the aid, which is all to the good. But it’s a massive gospel. And we’re proud about it. We’re keep- transition and transformation of the missionary ing the pressure on. We’re pressing on movement into a global inter-church aid move- through. We’re training the national leaders. ment. We’re trying to develop further what we’ve We have very little discussion today—even begun. And so we know better than anybody as it was in the early days of the Protestant else how much is going on around the world. mission movement itself—about going some Just travel mentally across India and think place where there is no work yet at all. That of all the tremendous accomplishments of mis- idea hardly ever comes up. It explains my sions and the strong national churches. Take absence as a full-time professor in this school, McGavran’s book, Ethnic Realties and the which is, for the most part, focused upon the Church—this is the most important book he present mission cause, which, in my interpreta- ever wrote in his life, and clearly the most tion, is no longer a mission cause in the classi- authoritative book he has ever written, because cal sense of the term. it reflects his own personal experience and No hard feelings, you understand. But I three generations of missionary background in want to give you what is for me at least the India. He boils it all down in the current issue pungent importance of really studying the rise of the Church Growth Bulletin. How many of of the Protestant mission movement. It isn’t you subscribe to the Church Growth Bulletin? just for fun or to know where we came from: How many of you have read the 17 points in evangelical roots, etc. That’s all very nice, but the January issue? You weren’t going to get that’s for the millennium, when we can be con- any credit in class for reading it, so you didn’t cerned about whose grandfather did what. read it! Listen! There is hardly anything more

© 1996 R. Winter. No copy may be made without the author’s permission. 12 – 1 12 – 2 The Emergence of Prostestant Orders, 1795-1865 important that was written in the last half cen- existence of earlier mission societies, Carey’s tury than those 17 points [see Appendix], book still is an impressively significant because McGavran is summing up the experi- achievement, not only because it is a literary ence of 600 million people! Whatever could be achievement. It is not true at all that, because true for those 600 million people is bound to be we are in a classroom here, we have to bow true for a lot of other people aroundthe world. and scrape before a written document as some- And his keen insight and analysis of the situa- thing highly important. But the impact of the tion bears prayerful and tearful scrutiny, line printed page certainly has had fantastic influ- by line, paragraph by paragraph. Our entire ence! staff up at the U.S. Center for World Mission I am, as you may know, a person who for will be going over this article, a paragraph a the last 15 years has been involved intimately day, so that we fully digest the radical impact in the church growth movement, which to a of that brief statement in the Church Growth great extent has been a printed movement. Bulletin. Books and documents have been pouring out of this movement. I am very much aware of the Winter’s Comments significance of that, or I wouldn’t have become You have lots of books to read. You have involved in the development of the William classes to go to. You have important things to Carey Library. It still needs further develop- do. You can’t be bothered about 600 million ment, especially in terms of smaller documents people and comparisons of that situation to and smaller audiences. We still haven’t tooled China and to the Muslim world. No, you’ve up properly to publish even more specialized got to attend to important things. papers, as we hope to do. But it is a fact that OK, with that little overall glimpse of why this document of William Carey’s has probably we are going to spend four classes evaluating had greater influence on the history of Protes- and reexamining the rise of Protestant mis- tant missions than any other single document, sions, we can plunge into this subject. We have outside of the Bible itself, which is, read aright, already sort of toyed with it in our last topic, a missionary textbook. when we talked about the Evangelical Awak- The interesting thing is that a lot of mission ening. We asked pointed questions: How come work had preceded Carey: a century and a this Awakening didn’t get us into missions half, if you wish, because you go from 1800 more rapidly, more obviously, or more defi- (which is virtually the date of Carey and his nitely? document) back to 1650, to find a whole Bible So today we come to the topic: The Emer- being translated into an Indian language! So gence of Protestant Orders, 1795-1865. Here I that you can realize just how much really went want to confess that this title goes back at least on earlier, let’s just stop for a second and four or five years in my teaching, and it really review what was actually happening back in ought to have a change of date, due to Beaver’s those days. The Pilgrims had Indians that were impact on my thinking and the work of allies, or they wouldn’t have even survived Charles Chaney (The Birth of Missions in when they first landed. It is series of remarka- America). Protestant orders obviously did not ble providences. Very briefly: an Indian named really begin in 1795. As a matter of fact, the Squanto happened to be wandering around on only justification for those dates is the promi- the beach where the Pilgrims landed. They nence of William Carey. landed hundreds of miles from where they I have said something about William Carey expected to land in Virginia—either that or before. Let me just tantalize you a little by a somebody decided to go to a different place; few more comments on this man, Carey. The we’re not sure why they landed that far north. William Carey Library is soon to republish his They got out of the ship. A lot of the people famous document, the Enquiry. I’m sure you had died already, and half of them were about all know the name of that book, An Enquiry to die in that first winter. The only reason they into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means could possibly survive was that there was an for the Conversion of the Heathens. The word English-speaking Indian walking around on Means is the most important word in the title. the beach like a lost soul! Every other member That’s the short title; there’s a longer title on of his tribe had expired in a small pox plague the title page. After R. Pierce Beaver has said that came from Europe. If he hadn’t already everything that he’s going to say about the been taken captive and shipped off to Europe, Ralph D. Winter 12 – 3 and eventually landed in England and learned for help over a series of many months, all English and finally pleaded with somebody to down the seaboard of coastal areas of the dump him off on their next trip, he wouldn’t Atlantic, clear down to Virginia. The other set- have been there on the beach either. tlers further down said, “That’s their problem!” It was an amazing set of providences that No help came. It is an absolute fact that, had it brought this man and his knowledge of the not been for the Christian Indians who were specific territory where the Pilgrims landed allies of the whites in this case, they would into the picture. If they had landed any other never ever have won that war! The Christian place, they not only would not have run into Indians who worked with the English were the this Indian, but they would have run into a lot ones who turned the tide. There is not the of hostile Indians, not an uninhabited piece of slightest possibility that they could have won land. There were no people living there. They that war without the Christian Indians on their had all been killed off by this plague. If they side. had landed any place else, they would have But by this time, the settlers were so upset had to fight the Indians. This one place was a and angry at the Indians that they burned no-man’s land temporarily, and the Pilgrims down the Christian Indian villages as well and just barely landed there in time. killed a lot of the Christians. It was just a very They had the Indians on their side in the bloody, nasty, horrible situation! beginning, because Squanto could speak the In all of this it is hard to imagine how any languages of the Indian tribes surrounding settled, clear-eyed thinking about mission them. As this interdependent relationship work could have been developed. But this was developed, it was soon likely that somebody the context within which there were various might have thought that these people needed mission societies. the gospel. John Eliot is the man who, along King Philip’s War was clear back at the with his sons and family, became the mission- latter part of the seventeenth century. In ary in this situation. Their methodology was to another 50 or 75 years, you get to Jonathan form Christian Indian villages. They couldn’t Edwards and his soon to become son-in-law, conceive of any human being living in any David Brainerd (who never actually married, other way than in villages, approximating Eng- because he died before that could happen). lish villages rather than Indian villages. Out of You have all that ferment and concern. The maybe 10,000 Indians, perhaps 2,500 became Great Awakening, and especially the person of Christians by 1650. Jonathan Edwards, are really a tremendous But their landing, plus the constant flow of things to read about! additional white men into the situation, meant As a student at Yale, Jonathan Edwards that the foreigners eventually outgrew the area came across these words (in the King James, of where the Indians had been wiped out by the course), “Our Lord Jesus Christ … who is the plague. They pushed the other Indians back blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, away from their traditional land, and it became and Lord of lords; who only hath immortality, a more and more explosive situation. Eventu- dwelling in the light which no man can ally, one of the Indians, third generation in a approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor Christian family, a young man whose father can see: to whom be honor and power everlast- was a Christian tribal chieftain, began to real- ing …” (1 Tim 6: 14-16). Yale was just a little ize that these white men were up to no good. junior high school type of affair in those days. All this talk about missions! He felt that Chris- Edwards might have been about 14. As this tianity didn’t help them. Most of the Indians young man read this passage, somehow the were still non-Christians in any case. You beauty, the holiness, the power, and the didn’t have to be very bright to see that there majesty of the living God came through to his was no future for the Indians in this area: the heart and soul, and he was never the same white men were going to keep coming. again! Throughout his ministry, he was a And so there ensued what was known as highly spiritual and, of course, one of the most King Philip’s War. It is a minor blip on the brilliant men in the course of American history. radar screen of American history, but only He wrote many things, and so forth. But it was because it only barely failed. The white settlers not until a revival broke out in his ministry, almost lost that war! It is rather tragic, but typi- that he had such a major impact. cal of humanity, that they pleaded and cried Then George Whitefield came along. One of 12 – 4 The Emergence of Prostestant Orders, 1795-1865 the unfortunate influences of George White- runs all the way down through all the various field was that after he left, Jonathan Edwards, centuries prior to himself, and stops the story who always had written out his two-hour ser- right about 1740, at the time of his premature mons word for word, never wrote another death (trying out a smallpox vaccination). In all sermon. He shifted over to an extemporaneous that account, which runs about 200 pages, you type of preaching. So we really don’t know find references to Babylon, the Papacy, the precisely what the impact of that revival and Pope, and to all that sort of thing. But you’ll George Whitefield was upon Edwards, because find not a single reference, if I am correct (I we don’t have any copies of his sermons from have not read every line, but I really looked that point on—which is really tragic for histori- through it carefully), to the monastic dimen- cal data. sion of the Roman Catholic tradition: no refer- However, the growth of tremendous spiri- ence to the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the tual insight and concern, and even a mission- Jesuits, or anybody like that. ary concern, didn’t guarantee that any really Go way back to Matteo Ricci, standing on successful missionary work was going to the steps of the Peking palace. You would have result. It is sort of like Korea today. You have thought that, for a man like Jonathan Edwards, tremendous spiritual commitment and fire and that simple fact would have meant something. holiness in Of course, it would have; but he didn’t know a church that is unquestionably devoted to the it. You people who sit here with Latourette’s Lord. And there are about 25-30 Korean mis- two volumes in your hands know incredibly sion societies of some sort or another—all more about the story of the gospel than Jona- kinds of different societies, just like there were than Edwards knew! It is a stark, raving mad in this earlier period in America—fumbling tragedy for evangelicals today to have these around, doing things whatever way came into two volumes sitting on the shelf unread, while their minds. Edwards read everything that could possibly Thomas Mayhew is a name to be followed be put into his hands from all across the world in this period. Chaney tells much more of the and still didn’t know nine-tenths of what is in story. Beaver’s own notes go into details as those books. well. But it’s confusion, it’s frustration, it’s fail- William Carey groped his way forward into ure! There’s no really clear understanding of print and produced the mold from which more what has to be done—until William Carey. mission societies would spring. In the first William Carey’s little book, which is about third of his book he talks about previous 100 pages, is divided into four sections, with efforts, and in the second third of his book he three major themes. His first theme has to do brings up the data of the unfinished task. This with previous efforts, and he makes very scant was the result of bumping into the Indians. references to the American scene. He even That was what brought missions into existence makes some veiled references to the Roman for Protestants: their literal, physical bumping Catholic effort. The amazing thing is how little into people without the gospel. Then Carey Carey knew, or even Jonathan Edwards expands those facts by simply going around knew—that omnivorous Renaissance scholar, if the whole world with his little map on the there ever was one—it is amazing how little wall. these people knew of Roman Catholic activi- He comes to what we call Kalimantan ties. One of our men here was telling me about (Borneo) today, and he doesn’t know how Beaver’s class on Roman Catholic missions and many people live there. Who would know that the tremendous amount of missionary work in 1792? that had gone on prior to these dates toward So he said, “It looks like an island about so big, the end of the eighteenth century. It is truly and there must be so many people per square amazing that these people did not know about mile …” He guesses at how many people live them. in that huge island, and his guess work is as Jonathan Edwards, toward the end of his good as it could have been. It was terribly inac- life, wrote a book called The History of curate, but it was far superior to nothing at all. Redemption. He didn’t say church history. This, by the way, is what I tell people who Like Latourette, he wasn’t interested in church quibble with me as to the number of millions history; he was interested in the work of God of people who live in the Muslim sphere or the on earth. Edwards goes clear back to Adam, number of Christians in Europe. They say, Ralph D. Winter 12 – 5 “How can you know?” My answer is, “I don’t authority of a travelling church. From that know. I’m just guessing.” The obvious ques- point on he didn’t take orders from Antioch; tion that they don’t go on to ask is, “What right his team, his tiny mission society went on its to you have to guess?” My right is the same own. And the kind of mission society that Wil- right that William Carey had. We all have got liam Carey describes would have an autonomy to at least get guesstimates before us, or our all its own. And, it would be the means of prayer life can’t focus on anything. Those world evangelization. charts I have produced are, I assure you, So it is very, very significant that William highly inaccurate. They are just more accurate Carey “wrote the vision.” Edwin Orr has a than anything else in that same form, just as book, a biography of him written by a Chris- William Carey’s stuff was more accurate than tian in India, called Write the Vision. Edwin anything else at that time. Orr certainly put his thoughts into writing. Let me give you an example. This occurs all William Carey did this, and though he is not the time in church growth studies. Suppose like John Wesley, the author of 276 books, nev- William Carey had said, as certain historians ertheless he was equally as hard working as would have said, “We don’t know how many John Wesley, in a radically different sphere. people are in Kalimantan, so let’s put down 0.” His work legitimately allows him to be called He would have been much further from reality the founder of modern Protestant missions. He than to have come up with some kind of was the catalyst, if you wish, if you don’t like rational guesstimate. the word founder. He was the person whose So that’s the middle part of Carey’s book. prayerful, systematic, literary thinking pro- The third section is the most important and vided the basis of action of most of the early highlights the preeminent significance of the Protestant mission societies. word Means in the title of the book. By Means Immediately after this, for example, the he is talking about a sodality. On this there is London Mission Society (LMS) came into exis- absolutely no doubt. He refers to the East India tence, an interdenominational society. Then the Company, which was a secular sodality. He Anglicans drew back in horror at being asks why Christians can’t get going if, for com- involved with other Christians in the mission mercial gain, people risk their lives and make society. They formed the Church Mission Soci- necessary preparations and go to all kinds of ety (CMS), a bit prematurely, because it was sacrificial troubles. Talk about trouble: getting about twenty years before they could coax any from London to India was one peck of trouble! Englishmen to go out under that Society. But It took a lot of people working together, knock- their money worked when Englishmen ing themselves out, to get those ships built and couldn’t be recruited (at least within their to figure out how to get there and to endanger sphere), and they bought German mercenaries their lives getting there. Carey asked, if people to send out under their flag, as I mentioned will do that for commercial gain, why can’t earlier. The Methodists also got into the act. A they go out across the world to fulfill the Great whole list of mission societies was formed. Commission? The Haystack Prayer Meeting in Western Art Kinsler told me that the idea of putting Massachusetts, at Williams College, was very together an ad hoc society, a “joint stock com- clearly a reflection of what was going on in pany,” was to some extent the secular analog England, because those young men, following of the mission society. Carey could have drawn upon, again, a spiritual revolution that brought on some of the experience of the Moravians them into prayer in the first place, followed on and their societies in America, or the Catholic the tracks of the LMS (London Mission Soci- orders, but he didn’t know enough about the ety), and even threatened to go to England to Catholic orders. All he knew was that people join the LMS if their own church leaders were were getting there! unwilling to form a society and send them out! They were not getting there because of a They were coached in some of their diplomatic church praying and voting, any more than dealings with church leaders by seminary pro- Paul got where he went because the people in fessors, who wished to be unmentioned. That Antioch prayed and sent him out as their mis- is a curious thing, which I think is also mean- sionary. They did that, but also Paul formed a ingful. Today, in many a seminary across the joint stock company, if you wish, of men who country, there are professors who are former travelled with an authority of their own, the missionaries, often former School of Mission 12 – 6 The Emergence of Prostestant Orders, 1795-1865 people, who are right now coaching younger without any Baptist beliefs. He had enough people as they go out to meddle with the politi- extra time aboard ship to read the Bible a little cal affairs of their churches and their mission further, and by the time he arrived he was a societies. The pattern is still there. Baptist and felt that it wasn’t reasonable for In any case, the American Board of Commis- him to be under a congregational type of soci- sioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) was the ety, which is what the ABCFM drew from. So, result, which some people have said was the after a few conversions of that sort, some first American mission society. Beaver’s people wanted to form a Baptist mission soci- research, of course, blows that theory sky high, ety. I suppose it was Luther Rice who went because 20 or 30 mission societies were formed right straight back to New England and, with in the United States before this, many of them William Carey’s blessing, began to beat the clearly devoted to cross-cultural mission work bushes and get the Baptist churches together. among the Indians. There were even some soci- That was the beginning of what today is eties that contemplated foreign missions prior known as the American Baptist Convention. to the ABCFM. Nevertheless, as history will Here’s an interesting thing: here you have a have it, the ABCFM is even more so the first denomination resulting from a mission society! American foreign mission society than William By going around from Baptist church to Baptist Carey was the first Protestant missionary. Nei- church and getting people to pray for and sup- ther statement is entirely true, but there is a port these newly converted Baptist missionar- good element of truth in them. ies off in Burma, these churches themselves The ABCFM, which was, like the LMS, an were drawn together in a convention. interdenominational society, brought into So arose the first Baptist denomination, being—notice—a missionary force that stood which you could even call a denomination— outside of the churches. This is very important. you may realize, of course, that Baptists don’t It was not until William Carey’s re-invention of like the word denomination to this day—but the wheel—the means which he spoke of—not anything that even corresponds to a denomina- until there was an organization outside of the tion didn’t exist prior to the mission interest. It churches, that Protestant missions really was very clearly the mission interest that emerged in any general pattern. brought a linkage and a unity between those Of course, I would consider this type of congregations and formed what today literally mission society very much inside the Church is the extension down through history—the of Jesus Christ, as much a part of the Church as American Baptist Convention. the so-called churches, in my understanding of In the same way, interestingly, it was con- ecclesiology. Even so, it was not until you had cern for missions on the part of some of the an organized body of believers who could get churches in the former Northern Baptist Con- together and talk and make decisions and act vention, as the American Baptist Convention with a certain amount of authority, that stood used to be called, that brought into being the outside of the normal discussions of church life General Association of Regular Baptists (where missions is always slipping off the (GARB), another denomination, if you will, agenda), that you had any effective instigation formed as a result of a mission interest. for missions. Still later, it was mission interest on the part For example, not to beat any drums, but this of the Conservative Baptists within the North- is why I am in a separate organization up there ern Baptist Convention that formed the Con- on the hill. The U.S. Center for World Mission servative Baptist Foreign Mission Society stands outside of the churches; it even stands (CBFMS), very clearly going strong to this day, outside of the usual mission organizations, it which eventually produced another denomina- stands outside of the seminaries. Why? So that tion—the Conservative Baptist Association, it can agitate and instigate and stimulate mis- which has 1200 or so churches in it today. sion vision, without any compromises or con- I could go on and on. The Southern Baptist ditions laid upon it by any organization trying Convention came about in a similar way. In all to bear up with larger, more comprehensive these cases, in terms of mechanisms and struc- purposes having to do with the whole range of tures within Christianity, it was actually the what we call Christendom. sodality—the means that William Carey talked Theology, of course, also began to come into about—the concern and the passion for mis- the picture. Adoniram Judson set out for Asia sions, that brought together organizing efforts Ralph D. Winter 12 – 7 and agreement between Christians from con- years grown from a few hundred to more gregation to congregation, not only to produce than ten thousand. It now has more than the mission societies, but to produce the one hundred congregations, most of them denominations which were left behind. housed in church buildings. It expects to Let me give you one more example: the grow to twenty thousand by 1983. Assemblies of God. Is that a denomination? A generalized interest in evangelism Sure it is! Well, it came into being because marks the Indian Churches. More than about 200 missionaries in standard mission three hundred ministers attended our societies around the world were being edged Church Growth Seminars in August of out due to Pentecostal tendencies. They needed 1978. Billy Graham’s evangelistic cam- somebody back home to thrash around and paigns and World Vision’s pastors’ con- develop support for them. The linkage that ferences are well attended. Many came about for the purpose became what is churches sell Gospels and tracts on the today called The Assemblies of God. OK, one streets and at fairs. Some denominations have evangelistic departments and final example: the Christian and Missionary employ a few evangelists. Alliance—that was a mission society, which then became the Christian and Missionary Alli- 3. In the hill states of North East India some ance denomination. remarkable expansion of denominations is going on. The Baptist and Presbyterian I hope I am not rubbing it in too much, but I Churches of Mizoram now include practi- am stressing the fact that in terms of the two cally all the Mizos in the entire State, i.e., structures of Christian history, here you have a about ninety percent of the total popula- number of examples of the mission societies, tions. All fourteen of the Naga Tribes many of them due to William Carey’s model have had startling church growth. The and impetus—his little book—actually coming Chakhesang Nagas have grown from into existence prior to the formation of a seven hundred Christians in 1953 to denomination. thirty-five thousand in 1977. Only twenty thousand remain animists and these are Appendix expected to become Christians. Rev. lmo- temjen Aier, the General Secretary of the Council of Baptist Churches of North McGavran’s 17 Points East India, told me that in 1977 fifteen thousand Konyak Naga’s confessed The Good News Christ and were baptized. With their 1. India was never as open to the Gospel. Scores minor children, a new Christian commu- of millions are listening to Christian radio nity of over thirty thousand was added to beamed to them in Hindi, Telegu, Tamil, the Christian Church in that one year. Marathi and other languages. Other mil- Large numbers of Kuki Mizos are being lions are reading tracts and gospel por- baptized. tions put into every home by World Liter- 4. In Andhra Stale respectable castes are open- ature Crusade and other distribution ing to the Gospel. Andhra is the northern- agencies. India likes Christian radio. most of the Dravidian States of South Hindus, Muslims, and others approve the India, with a population of nearly fifty sound teaching and high moral quality of million in 1977. It is about as big as what is said. Of course, very few, if any, France and has a language, script and lit- become Christian by this route. Incorpo- erature or its own. Its respectable castes ration into congregations is something pop with receptivity to the Christian radio and literature have not to date faith. These accept Jesus Christ and are done. baptized. A couple of Lambadi families 2. Here and there a small harvest occurs. baptized in a mission station in Maha- Some wide-awake evangelical denomina- rashtra returned to their ancestral village tions, sensing the new openness, have in Andhra and led twenty related fami- put on sinner-converting, church- lies to Christ and baptism. A worker of multiplying programs, and have pros- Every Home Crusade, getting a large pered. For example, the Evangelical number of responses to literature he had Church of India in Tamilnadu led by Rev. distributed in a certain hill village, north- Ezra Sargunam has in the last dozen west of Hyderabad, went there to orga- 12 – 8 The Emergence of Prostestant Orders, 1795-1865 nize a Christ Group. He now has more churches in the last five years and is train- than a hundred baptized believers from ing the best of the new converts to the respectable castes. A Komati farmer, a become deacons, elders, and pastors. well-to-do college graduate, was baptized Both cases are part of the amazing recep- with his family three years ago and has tivity along some neglected fringes. led 125 more to baptism. He said confi- 6. Christ Groups are being formed. Every dently to me that more than two hundred Home Crusade, with an employed staff others are believers, but not yet baptized. of close to a thousand Indian workers, Fifteen thousand Roman Catholic Chris- intends to place a Gospel or tract in every tians of respectable castes live in vil- home in India—a vast, impossible goal, lages—the descendants of some who but one which has been very largely became “caste Christians” a hundred and achieved. Every piece of literature carries more years ago. Were these to be touched an addressed card saying, “If you want with celestial fire, they would become further information, write us.” Nearly propagators. four million responses have been 5. Amazing receptivity exists among the received. Those who respond are encour- neglected fringes of existing Christian popula- aged to read the Bible further and to form tions. In many places the retreat of mis- themselves into Christ Groups. More sions has meant that the fringes of the than seven hundred Christ Groups have Christian community have been badly already been formed. Many responses neglected or actually abandoned. These find their way into existing congrega- people consider themselves Christian, but tions, but most live where there are no never receive the communion. No trained congregations. These form Christ Groups. leaders conduct worship, or teach young However, the final step of becoming and old the Bible. The baptized usually churches is difficult. Very few Christ become nominal Christians. Yet they are Groups have become functioning counted as “our people” by the denomi- churches. nation concerned. 7. Hundreds of Indian missionaries, sent out by When into such neglected Christian pop- Indian missionary societies, are now appear- ulations new denominations (whether ing on the scene. The Friends Missionary these are Roman Catholic, Pentecostal, Prayer Bands now send out more than Churches of Christ or some other) arrive one hundred and aim at sending out four with a vigorous program of pastoral care, hundred. The Indian Evangelical Mission church building, regular worship and sends out more than eighty. Some of the some subsidy for pastors of small missionary societies operate entirely on churches, congregations of that new Indian funds. Most of them accept Euro- denomination multiply amazingly. Some pean and American money and engage of the growth is from the existing Chris- Indian missionaries. In either case, a dedi- tians. They move from the denomination cated band of workers results. I spoke to which neglected them to where they are more than three hundred laypersons at fed. Much of the growth, however, is Bethel near Salem in Tamilnadu who from receptive Depressed Classes— were gathered in a Convention devoted relatives of the existing Christian commu- to sending out missionaries on Indian nity, but unevangelized for many years. funds. All this is encouraging—even Vigorous evangelism brings these lost though to date most of the work of such souls to Christ. One missionary reports missionaries is gathering up the scat- that of his sixty-seven thousand baptized tered, battered Christians left by the believers, seventeen thousand came from retreat of western missions. neglected Christians and fifty thousand 8. At the centers—the large towns, former from non-Christian Harijans. This is inter- mission stations, and other places where esting in view of the common belief that numerous Christians are found and Harijans today are not winnable. Dr. strong churches existed before the retreat Philip Abraham in Kerala is finding that of missions—Christian life is vigorous. Well when he evangelizes the “worldly” Para- trained pastors lead ample congregations yas who live near Syrian Christian com- in worship and feed them on the Word. munities, these become Christians. He Christian schools flourish. Theological has established more than twenty-five seminaries train hundreds of high school Ralph D. Winter 12 – 9 and college graduates. As one passes nities are largely unreached. Macedonias from city to city, and takes in some lively beckon and Paul stays on in Troas. It is rural centers also, he rejoices in on-going high time for the Missions and Christians Christian life and witness which contin- in India to come to terms with ethnic real- ues without much monetary aid from ities. outside India. In many places no aid is 2. Radical denial of civil rights is going on in received for the churches, and a decreas- Arunachal—the most northeasterly state ing amount for the schools. Some institu- (or territory) in India. The Tribals there tions still receive heavy mission subsidy. want to become Christians. They would Were all aid from outside to be removed, rush to become Christians but the Hindu the Church at the centers would continue government is pushing through a bill to on. declare that anyone offering “divine 9. Considerable amounts of Christian literature inducements” to citizens of Arunachal to are being produced. Bibles and New Testa- become Christian will be jailed for two ments are readily available in all major years or will pay a fine of ten thousand languages. The Christian Literature Soci- rupees. This means that anyone reading ety, with headquarters at Madras, is John 3:15, 16 to an Arunachal citizen doing a big business all over India. could be jailed and fined. That is bad Gospel Literature Service, Evangelical Lit- news. If it becomes law in Arunachal, it erature Society, and other small corpora- could become law in any other state. This tions print and distribute books. Chris- serious infringement of civil liberties and tian book stores are readily found in most human rights is part of the picture. great centers. Every Home Crusade and It is buttressed by the continued unrea- small organizations distribute much sonable restrictions on entrance of mis- Christian literature. Christian magazines sionaries. At the very time that Hindu are published by all major denominations and Muslum missionaries from India are and some interdenominational ones have cheerfully granted visas to propagate wide circulation. That very much more their faith in America, and to send back ought to be produced must not be from America very large sums of money allowed to blot out the fact that much is given them here, American missionaries being done. Most of these receive sub- are often denied visas to work in India, to stantial subsidy from overseas Christians. which they take large sums of money for the relief of suffering there. A strange injus- The Bad News tice to be perpetrated by a nation which To get the full picture, the good news must prides itself on its fairness! be balanced by the bad news. My aim is not to 3. The fringes have been neglected—As Chris- give a glowing promotional account. I want to tian missions have retreated the strong present a true picture of the whole. To do that, congregations at the centers have carried widespread serious weaknesses must be set on vigorously. The story of the weak con- forth. gregations on the extreme fringes, how- 1. To become Christian in India tends to mean ever, is entirely otherwise. The fringes have “becoming low caste.” As a result very few often been terribly neglected. Christian of the numerous openings among the groups of five to fifty families, out many respectable castes in Andhra State are miles away from the center, are seldom being entered by either Churches or Mis- (sometimes never) visited by the Indian sions. Each Western Mission stands by minister in charge of the area and of the helplessly saying, “Till our Indian large church at the center. Abandoned Church mounts a campaign of effective fringes are found all over India. “When evangelism among the receptive castes, the mission closed this school twelve we can do nothing.” Churches are doing years ago, our pastor-teacher moved and maybe can do very little. The away. Since then we have never had com- Churches of Andhra, made up over- munion. And only twice has an evangel- whelmingly of Christians of Depressed ist or pastor visited us.” Classes background, are understandably A few vigorous Christians, sometimes cool toward the idea of encouraging con- missionaries, sometimes nationals, have gregations of dominantly caste Christians entered this wide open field and multi- to arise. Consequently the great opportu- plied churches there. Such multiplication 12 – 10 The Emergence of Prostestant Orders, 1795-1865 is greeted by the old line companies with do intelligent, effective, passionate evan- screams of sheep stealing; but the gelism. Remembering the vast readiness screams sound hollow. These sheep are to hear the Gospel, one must reluctantly running wild on the range, hungry and affirm that often (usually?) Christian helpless and ready to die. Looking after laborers are turning away from ripe har- them is not sheep stealing. It is doing the vest fields. Lord’s work. 5. Massive dismantling of mission has gone on More, it is a call to the older denomina- all across India. The main boards, conclud- tions and boards to recognize that young ing, perhaps, that since the British Empire Churches are going to require intelligent has ended missionary work was impossi- aid at points of great opportunity for ble, have closed hospitals and nurses’ some time to come. It is mismanagement training schools, turned schools over to to throw an entire denomination onto its government, and sold some missionary own and stand by while large parts of it residences to any convenient buyer. In wither away and become nominals, Bud- some cases, the missions have turned dhists, Hindus or shift over into some them over to the Church to become other denomination. pastor’s residences or ecclesiastical head- In addition to adding neglected Chris- quarters. Some schools are thriving; but tians to the new folds, the vigorous Chris- many are dilapidated. Some are plagued tians have found that large numbers of by teacher strikes and disorders of vari- non-Christians of the oppressed castes ous sorts. In general, where there have wanted to become Christian. They have been strong people movements among baptized them and added them to the economically favored populations, Church. The numbers of neglected Chris- schools are thriving. Where the Church is tians and neglected receptive lower castes made up of a few strong and a few weak is very large. In cities, sometimes not a congregations, there the schools are in third of those who in the census identi- disarray. At the centers, where the top fied themselves as Christians have clergy live, all is well. At the fringes, the become members of existing congrega- retreat of missions on the institutional tions. The fringes are terribly neglected. front as well as in the church held has 4. Widespread abandonment of the evangeliza- often become a rout, a debacle. tion of non-Christian marks the Churches of There is little conscience concerning the 600 India. Despite the second piece of good million who have yet to believe. Most of news, the evangelization of non- these have yet to hear in any way which Christians occupies an increasingly small enables them to become baptized mem- place in the thought of Churches and bers of The Body. Mutual coexistence Missions in India. At Lausanne, George with non-Christians seems to be the chief Samuel, now head of the Devlali Commit- aim of most churches. Leaders are con- tee, said that ninety-eight percent of all sumed by care of Christians at the centers evangelism in India was of existing Chris- in the big churches and by the politics of tians. No one at that time or since has electing their people to positions of influ- challenged his statement. The highly edu- ence. Let the 600 million perish. It is not cated pastor of the largest, richest congre- our business. gation in one of the great cities in India 6. What growth of churches occurs is achieved was asked, “Why are the educated con- by means of biological increase of Christians gregations so ineffective evangelisti- and by transfer of Christians from rural areas cally?” He replied, “We are not interested to cities. Some city congregations are in the numbers game. Evangelism is not thriving and multiplying, but at the in style today.” That answer was given expense of dying rural congregations. without a trace of embarrassment. Evan- The cities are full of Christians whose gelism of non-Christians is not what the membership is in some small town or powerful denominations in India are rural congregation hundreds of miles doing-Syrian, Church of North India, away. The multiplication of churches in Church of South India, Lutheran or Bap- cities, the placing of a small congregation tist. Oh, an occasional bit of street preach- in every major new development, is not ing or tract distribution may take place, being done by the missions and sleeping but the denominations neither intend nor Indian Churches. The cost of new city Ralph D. Winter 12 – 11 property is high, and the pastors are busy not seem likely to be reversed in the near getting all the Christians they can to future. And to be fair, there is a great deal attend existing churches. But for the Pen- to do in and for the existing congrega- tecostals, some Evangelical missionary tions and denominations. As the Roman societies and a few wide-awake congrega- Catholic missiologist E. Hillman tions, existing congregations are not observes, “A choke law can be observed buying up the urban opportunities. in lands where churches are newly estab- 7. Existing congregations and denominations lished. Once a denomination of several (composed very largely of Christians of thousand has been established, it will eat Harijan and Tribal background) find it dif- up all the time of a missionary force no ficult to multiply churches among the middle matter how big. Conversion expansion and upper castes. This is in part due to the will be choked off by the demands of the intense conviction of those castes that to young Church.” become Christian means to become low caste. It is in part due to the disinclination Conclusion of congregations and denominations of My recent travels in Africa, Taiwan and Harijan background to encourage the for- other countries make me believe impres- sions of India are true in other lands also, mation of churches among the middle Some apply in the United States. Applica- and upper castes—churches which intend tions take indigenous localized forms. Mis- to remain themselves. Twenty Kamma siologists ought, I am inclined to think, families in Andhra said to an eminent study the good news and the bad news from minister/evangelist six years ago, “We all countries. They ought to work out ways want to become Christians; but we will in which the good may be enhanced and the not become Harijan Christians.” After had curtailed. some inconclusive conversations, he left We stand in the middle of an on-going them, and in August, 1978 did not know missionary process—as did William Carey what they finally did. He had never vis- and David Livingstone. Last flight I was ited them since then. reading annual reports written by my Were this roadblock removed, considera- grandfather. A hundred years ago he was ble growth of the Body among the working in Bakkergunj Bengal, helping con- respectable castes would occur. But the gregations of eighty to four hundred bap- tized believers become self-supporting will to remove the roadblock does not churches. He achieved only spotty success. exist. Indeed, many biblical reasons are How modern!! All missionaries, I repeat, set forward why it would be a mistake to stand in the midst of an on-going process permit churches to form within the and ought to work continually rectifying respectable castes. the evils and reinforcing the goods. Our 8. Missionaries, both Indians and westerners, task is to see the picture whole and to work are usually very short on conversions from out those methods and those emphases the world. They spend their time serving which, blessed by God, will actually deliver the existing congregations and denomina- more Christians and more congregations— tions, translating scriptures, preaching in sound Christians and sound congregations, existing churches and conferences, and of course. Thus will the Body of Christ attending committee meetings concerned throughout the world increase and thus with the administration of service. This make more and more possible a somewhat proportioning of time and energy does more humane and just social order.

Winter Chapter 13

The Rise of the American Protestant Mission Movement

Today’s topic continues to deal with the rise Great Awakening development. of the Protestant mission movement. This is the That was a very powerful spiritual movement. second topic of four which have to do with this Bainton writes about it in his little book, Church subject. Now we’re looking at America more of Our Fathers (a very terrific book, by the way). specifically: the rise of the American Protestant This is a book that Roland Bainton wrote for mission movement. It is pretty hard to discuss his own grandchildren to read. It is unlike the this without at least some glimpse of the histor- average history, which is filled with generaliza- ical context in which all of this occurred. tions such as: “by and large in the nineteenth Fortunately, the U.S. is a very recent country century there was a tendency among many and there isn’t much history to it. Officially it Europeans to do this or that.” That is the worst began in 1789, yet the people who set its pattern of all kinds of history in terms of excitement! arrived a little after the year 1600. We often don’t Bainton actually quotes Luther: Luther said; realize that when the country was officially begun, Melanchthon said; John Eck said; Tetzel said. half of its cultural history was already past! He’s not making it up; he’s a good enough his- Come down to the present time, just a bit after torian to go back and get that precise data! our so-called bicentennial. The reality that is Bainton quotes a letter written by a thirteen- America is a four-century phenomenon which year-old girl describing one of George White- goes clear back even into the 16th century, for field’s meetings. She describes “the thunder of here in California you have the Spanish dimen- horse hoofs pounding down the lane, the jam sion. But we have no reason to go clear back to and the crowds of people, the dust flying in the those early days for today’s topic. air” and everything else, as somehow “the elec- Remember that the eighteenth century is the trifying word went out.” It reminds you of the century of the Great Awakening: the Evangelical book of Mark, with the crowds and the fame Awakening in England and the Great Awaken- and the faith and the authority that swirl through ing in America. I would just like to give you those pages, as Jesus, in one expositor’s phrase- my personal preference about names. Edwin ology, took Galilee by storm! The Awakening Orr, who does more work in this area than any was to a great extent a psychological phenome- other person, and is the world’s leading expert non. The work of God in the human heart is on Awakenings, doesn’t go along with me at physical and psychological, as well as spiritual. this point, I am sorry to say. But I would prefer But it was not merely that. It was obviously the you to just use the words Great Awakening to work of God. refer to that one movement, and not speak of a You might say that Christianity took root in “Second Great Awakening” and so on. It would America in a more definite and enduring sense be equally possible to say that there are lots of because of the Great Awakening than for any Evangelical Awakenings. You could start counting other reason. All of the faith of our fathers prior them off and numbering them and so forth. But to this, and the Bible studying that went on, since we are always discovering new ones, it and the preachers and the saintly teachers of throws all the numbering systems out of whack. the Bible, people like John Cotton and Mather A third element that was somewhat tied in and all these greats—these people were in the with Frelinghuysen in the 1721 Awakening in very minute minority of the population! The the Raritan Valley in New Jersey, was the Ten- swirl of non-Christian settlers always outnum- nent family, William Tennent and his sons. bered the Christians of any category 20:1 prior to They, too, participated actively in this whole the Great Awakening. In terms of church growth

© 1996 R. Winter. No copy may be made without the author’s permission. 13 – 1 13 – 2 The Rise of the American Protestant Mission Movement statistics alone, you never had more than 5% kinds of interesting things—is just absolutely Christians in any place in the United States until spectacular! the Great Awakening. The Great Awakening Some of the things that are dredged up by changed all that. It planted Christianity into the these doctoral dissertations are fascinating! very roots and the soil of this country. Most of the latest research is still in dissertation It was in the Great Awakening that the Ten- form. You have my paper called “Protestant nents actually founded—imagine the audacity Mission Societies: the American Experience.” of it!—a seminary to train ministers in America. In the bibliography of that booklet there are They no longer decided to send them back to references to several unpublished Yale or Scotland to be trained. It’s like putting up a Princeton University dissertations in the field of seminary in Asia, rather than sending people American church history. American Christianity, back to Fuller to be trained. It’s unthinkable! rather than American church history, is a superior (Tongue in cheek.) But they did it. phrase, following Latourette’s use of the word And so Christianity becomes American in Christianity rather than church history, in the title the Great Awakening. Now that is a strange and of his book, because we are talking about the funny statement. Years ago, in 1947, I remember phenomenon of Christianity, which is a broader running into the academic field called American reality than the role of the church organizations Christianity. I had always thought of Christianity therein, especially when you include the volun- in America as just being Christianity in America. tary societies. Why should there be something different about The fact is that this research is going on con- American Christianity? One of the most fantastic stantly, and most of it is not in books. The two writings on this subject is a chapter in a book, volume compendium of readings called American now out of print, called The Ministry in Historical Christianity, Volume I, Volume II, has a chapter Perspective, by Niebuhr and Williams. (I am called “Church Boards versus Voluntary Socie- hoping, if possible, to get that reprinted, along ties.” I must confess that it was only some years with a trilogy of other historical books: The ago that I began to realize that there was really Layman and Christian History, The Minister and any antagonism or tension there. It was then Christian History, and so forth.) In that book is a that I began to discover that, as a matter of fact, big chapter, 43 pages long, by Sidney Mead, one there were really two structures involved, and of the great historians of American Christianity. that is when my little article “The Two Structures There are not a whole lot of them. Latourette of God’s Redemptive Mission” came into being. began to get into this, but it was William Warren There is another writing which I would like Sweet’s book The Story of Religion in America to call to your attention: “The New Missions that was the opening shot of a new move of and the Mission of the Church.” That title is scholarship to study the phenomenon of Chris- probably misleading. This is a study of the tianity in America—without assuming that it emergence of new mission agencies, which calls was merely an extension of the European faith. into question what the mission of the church is When William Warren Sweet did his work prior —if there are all these mission agencies whose to the Second World War, I think that someone mission seems to be running off with the mis- pointed out that there were only three doctoral sion of the church! I wrote this for the World dissertations prior to World War II on the sub- Council of Churches publication called the ject of American Christianity. Three! That is pretty International Review of Mission, and I was writ- late in history to begin studying the phenomenon ing it to some extent from their perspective, but of American Christianity! trying to sneak in a few non-WCC perspectives After the Second World War, the movement at the same time. Notably, in this article there is a gained speed, primarily at the University of section called “The Rise and Fall of an American Chicago, where William Warren Sweet taught. Pattern.” Here is the key item that I want to Within ten years there were 3,000 doctoral dis- focus on today: the uniquely American structural sertations in the field of American Christianity! development on how to go about missions. Yale University Divinity School began to loom Last time we talked about the early flourishing large in this picture. Harvard. Princeton Semi- of mission societies uniquely in America—a fact nary, as well as Princeton University. And other and a phenomenon which Beaver pulls out of schools. Today, American Christianity is a strong oblivion and points out to us—and the resulting field of study. The floodlight we have on what fact that William Carey in 1792 cannot be credited happened in America—a vast laboratory of all with all that he usually is is given credit for. To Ralph D. Winter 13 – 3 get perspective, we need to recognize that the contrast! Benjamin Franklin was certainly a Great Awakening: was so powerful a movement reprobate, an immoral old man who had no use that it largely accounts for the American Revo- for religion, and was very much a charlatan. lution—just as the ferment of the Bible at the There were all kinds of mixed elements in the grassroots in England a century earlier accounted picture. You didn’t just have a bunch of choir for the Puritan revolt there. It is probable that boys resulting from a spiritual awakening. there would not have been enough gumption, Just reflect on the turmoil of the American not enough sheer moral commitment, not enough Revolution. It was one of the most hair-brained communication between the colonies, and not escapades in all of history. It so very nearly enough sense of community in this country— failed so many times that it was unbelievable without this movement that washed up and and was not really confirmed as a military vic- down the Atlantic seaboard—for the American tory until 1812. During the whole time after the Revolution to have taken place! so-called completion of the Revolutionary War, In other words, the American Revolution the American settlers assumed that the English probably built on essentially the phenomenon army would be back and take control again. It of the Great Awakening. The impact of that was not until they did come back again in 1812, spiritual movement on even the politics of but were severely weakened by French prob- America must be taken into account. It is no lems on the other end of the ocean, and were accident that the U.S. Constitution was written actually (barely) beaten, that American citizens just one block away from the Constitutional got the idea that “Wow! maybe we really did Convention of the Presbyterians, the Preambles pull it off! Maybe we really are going to keep of both documents sound almost the same, many control of this country!” of the same people were in both groups, and the Accordingly, it really was not until after 1812 U.S. Government is very much structured like that the huge migration westward took place. the Presbyterian Church, for better or for worse. Then by 1820 the conestoga wagons moving The close connection with the Great Awaken- westward were so numerous that you could ing brought into real strength and power what walk for twenty miles on one side and the other was an inter-colonial democratic church govern- side of Pittsburgh without ever putting your ment in the case of the Presbyterians. I’m sorry feet down in the mud, because you could walk it wasn’t so true of the Baptists; it wasn’t yet true from wagon to wagon to wagon! Talk about of the Methodists; it certainly wasn’t a demo- bumper to bumper freeway traffic! cratic structure in the case of the Episcopalians. The migration westward became a phenom- In fact, the Presbyterians brought that inter- enon after 1812, when the American people began colonial democratic representative structure, so to think of this country, at least potentially, as the Constitutional Convention was simply an their country. The Pacific was almost nowhere analog to the inter-colonial church conventions in sight yet, but at least they were moving 100, that ruled the Presbyterian Church, which in 200, 300, 400 miles west of the Atlantic coast, turn was the result of the Great Awakening. If with the idea that this was going to remain it had not been for the Great Awakening, there their country. They intended, therefore, to push would not have been a string of Presbyterian the French back on the frontier, to push them Churches from Charleston to Boston which up into Canada on the north, and to make it had a self-conscious identity with each other their own country. and which sent delegates to a convention, and All this together produced such consterna- who thus brought into the consciousness of tion and confusion that religion really declined. people far and wide the very possibility of a Edwin Orr is the expert on all this. By 1795, constitutional convention and therefore of an there was not a single student in Yale Univer- American nation as such. sity who would admit that he was a Christian! But at the very same time, “there were corro- But then there was a new revival that took place, sive acids”—to use Latourette’s phrase—flowing which set the stage for the Haystack Prayer in the opposite direction. There was a great deal Meeting and the events that followed, that led of deism and paganism resurgent, both on the to the formation of the American Board of continent and in America. Thomas Paine with Commissioners for Foreign Missions at exactly his Common Sense was certainly anti-religious the time of the War of 1812; and you had a new in many ways, until he ran into the French Rev- lease on life. olutionists, and then he became religious by Rarely in history have there been so many 13 – 4 The Rise of the American Protestant Mission Movement people so consciously aware of their potential had its birth in the revivals of the last century. destiny, infused with such high-minded ideals, The idea got going of the pews being free, so as was true at this early point of the growth of that you could just go into a church and sit down, the American Republic. For cynics today, beaten without having paid a subscription for your down by the reversals, the evil and the crime, seat. No one was willing to go along with it, the breakdown of contemporary society, it is so they created a new denomination called the difficult to imagine the high-minded ideals of Free Methodists—which meant the pews were those days. That really only lasted a century. free. You can go from 1812 to 1912, and that is just All kinds of new things! I mentioned to you about it. At the turn of the century in 1900 there before that they gave up, to some extent, the were still these high-minded ideals. I am not singing of the psalms and replaced the psalms going to say that that is America. That was with human-written hymns. This was unbe- America, however. lievably radical, but it gained ground. They Those ideals were reflected in many different invented the Sunday School—l don’t mean in ways. That was the century in which anti-slavery America, but it gained a foothold in America. came into being and eventually triumphed. New things swirling through society: every- That was the century when the public school thing, from the questioning of dietary habits, systems, schooling for everybody, became an to political structures to types of education. ideal. Americans, in Alexis de Tocqueville’s They threw out all the Greek and Roman classics visit to America, had a very different society. and replaced them with Hebrew, and for over He said that “characteristically, when Americans a hundred years the American colleges were face a problem, they get together; they walk characterized by the fact that the president was across the street to get a few neighbors together. expected to give an oration in Hebrew at the They form a society to fight that problem or to graduation exercises. Why? because Hebrew get that new idea across,” whether it was Johnny would be the language spoken in heaven! Why Appleseed with his seeds, or Alexander Graham, not? They really believed it. So they said we who felt God wanted people to eat the whole mustn’t study the pagan Greek philosophers. grain and not white flour, and who bequeathed They threw out Greek and Latin and everything to us in the English language the idea of “graham else, and studied Hebrew. flour,” which merely means whole wheat flour, All of this new thinking and rethinking pro- and graham crackers, which are no longer whole duced the new flavor of Christianity in America. wheat, but used to be. They dabbled in every Tea was rejected, coffee was rejected, eventually area of life! even alcohol of all kinds was rejected. Many There was a reversion against the old country different cultural traits which came into being and the old culture, which was assumed to have in those days became lost in the shuffle, as fur- been interlaced with paganism. There was a ther immigration trampled them down. But distrust of European aristocracy, of European there are two denominations in America which political systems, and of European religion. were born in the middle of the last century, This partly resulted in atheism and harsh, strident and which therefore incorporate—-almost like anti-religious sentiment. On the other hand, a freezing of history—in their present character though, it also issued into a renewal of religion many of the cultural traits of the middle of the and revivals and new high ideals that really last century. I speak of the Mormons and the had little comparison with anything in Europe, Seventh Day Adventists. There is no connection outside of the Pietism that came to the fore between those two movements, except that from time to time. they were born at the same time. They drank It is difficult for us at this stage to realize how from the same soil of cultural reinterpretation, inquisitive, how curious, how radical, how rev- so that in both of those churches you have a olutionary, how ingenious these people became, theological basis for dietary revision. In both of under these circumstances and conditions. those churches you have a strong emphasis on The revivals produced a new lease on life for the family. In both of those churches you have many people individually. But in those days— a strong emphasis on social relationships and not in this century, but in that century—social even business and technology, which is not reform was always tied in: social reform of wages, characteristic of the earlier Protestant traditions. of all kinds of relationships, of women’s rights Thus, it is an amazing historical museum even. The whole women’s rights movement that you walk into when you run into either Ralph D. Winter 13 – 5 of those two churches, which are relatively talking about Awakenings and prayer and the unchanged in terms of their attitudes toward history of American Christianity, you’ve got to diet, clothing and society. Each of them has see that film! It just breaks all the rules of cinema- been preserved by isolation. The Mormons were tography, by abandoning the multiple shots isolated geographically. The Adventists were and the background and the fade-aways. It’s isolated by the calendar, and were put out of just a picture of a man standing there talking. normal circulation by the very fact of their But it is a tremendously moving film. bizarre use of the days of the week. They them- He points out that the Fulton Street Prayer selves fled into the wildernesses and established Meeting not only engulfed, literally, the financial their schools and their sub-cities in the out of districts of New York, but reverberated clear the way places. For example, right here in across to Portland, Oregon, so that for three Southern California you’ve got Loma Linda, months all the major department stores in Port- which was an intentionally developed Adventist land were closed down at noon time because community, now being engulfed by the growing people were going to prayer meetings! This metropolis of Los Angeles. It was, however, changed the country! It changed attitudes. It originally “way out there,” where their people produced the morality that we have imputed would not be sullied by the manners and customs to the founding fathers, just as the Evangelical of Americans in general. Awakening produced the characteristics of America was still an exceedingly boorish Christianity which we impute to the Protestant and brawling society. It was not dominated by reformers. cultured people. It was taken over by people This was the so-called Second Awakening. who were fleeing from worse conditions in I don’t like that phrase because there is not a Europe, fleeing from worse conditions in the solid consensus about what it means. There East. In the middle of the last century, it was was another Awakening before it, from 1828 very common in brawls for people to get an to 1840. However, what some scholars call the eye popped out. That was just one of those Second Awakening was about 20 years later, characteristics of a good fight, that somebody in 1857. There is a subsiding in between. But it would get an eye popped out—and the eyeball did not by any means blink out. There was no would get thrown around in a bar for fun. That vast pagan reversion in between. It just simply sort of victory in a wrestling match would leave died down. a permanent mark on whoever lost the contest. Now, to come to my point about mission As a result, there was a vast industry to produce structure. In a boiling cauldron of fervent faith glass eyes. and stimulating conditions such as these, the It was the later Awakening that eventually development of voluntary mission societies got destroyed those industries, in the 1840s and way ahead of the denominations. The first one, then again in the 1857 period, two very power- in 1812, the ABCFM, started out working with ful periods of spiritual awakening. In the first, Congregational churches, but was not inherently you have Finney, and in the latter you have a denominational society, later working for Moody and, of course, many others. The eyeball congregations within three or four denomina- industry went out of business simply because tions. But by 1837, there was an ecclesiastical too many people were converted. backlash, and the denominations in America Edwin Orr tells how the American telegraph which had thrived from the results of the Awak- system found so many people sending messages enings began to notice how much money was about their conversion in the 1857 Awakening, going outside their ecclesiastical channels, and that they finally standardized for a lower price they began to say that they themselves were a statement: “Dear Mom, you will be glad to mission societies. What did they need additional know that I have accepted Christ.” You could societies for? just go and pick that message and send it for So there came into being the antagonism the price of two words, because it was being between the denominational board and the sent so frequently. voluntary society working outside of an eccle- The reverberation of these Awakenings siastical tradition. Beginning in 1837, for about across America is a fabulous account, which was a hundred years, you see the gradually rising never really dug up, until Edwin Orr. If you preeminence of the pattern of denominational ever have a chance to see the film, produced by boards being more and more emphasized as Campus Crusade, of Edwin Orr, standing there the basic way to send missionaries. By the latter 13 – 6 The Rise of the American Protestant Mission Movement part of the nineteenth century most missionaries them 20 to 1 in the seventeenth century, maybe were under denominational boards. Then in 10 to 1 in the eighteenth century, and maybe 1865, Hudson Taylor came into the picture, and 6 or 7 to 1 in the nineteenth century—that they the new courage to “go inland” generated 40 new were perfectly capable of launching mission faith mission boards not related to denomina- endeavors on the basis of a denomination. But tions, by 1900, mostly still small operations. that didn’t last long, because those denomina- The mainline church traditions in America tions—the Methodists and everybody else— were so elite and so dedicated, and so different began to take over and take on the characteristics from the state church phenomenon of Europe, of an establishment, of a state church type of that it was indeed possible for a denominational phenomenon. consensus about foreign missions to take place, I would hesitate to use the word evangelical and for a denomination, as such, to launch a to apply to denominations. Even the 7% of mission enterprise. And they did! It became the missionaries sent out by denominations in the standard pattern, virtually, in America. That is National Council of Churches are mostly evan- why I have called this phenomenon the rise of gelical, and certainly backed by evangelicals. an American pattern of missions. And there are other denominations that send But as denominations have gotten interested out missionaries, like the Church of God and in everything else, the “mission consensus” has those that belong to the EFMA. So it would not waned, and we’re rapidly going the other way, true at all that only 7% of missionaries are sent so that while 75% of all American missionaries by denominations; it is more like 40%. The 7% were under denominational board in 1925, right refers to missionaries under boards connected now in the United States, in 1979, less than 7% to the National Council of Churches (NCC)— of missionaries from America are sent out by the same groups that once accounted for 75% boards under denominational members of the of all missionaries from America. At that same National Council of Churches. time, if you added in missionaries under In response to questions: At any given point denominations not today connected with the after 1837 this “American Pattern” was rising, NCC, you would probably have 80% instead of rising, rising. The Presbyterians went in one just 75%. Even with the growth of evangelical direction, and eventually the Congregationalists church boards, the total number of missionaries went in another direction. The Methodists from under denominational board compared to the very beginning were very cloistered in their interdenominational boards has been coming denominational sensitivity. But the point is that down steeply in the last fifteen years. Even the the denominations in America were so elite, so evangelical denominations are broadening high quality—they themselves were voluntary their concept of what a denomination should societies to a great extent, in view of the sea of support, and cross-cultural mission is declining unbelief that swirled about them, outnumbering as a percentage of total giving. Winter Chapter 14

Student Movements in Missions

We’re going to go back to the Evangelical languages, and he did do missionary work as Awakening in England to begin today. You well. He was one of the kind of men who were remember we spoke about the Clapham Sect, involved. He was a student when he got caught which was a group of wealthy evangelicals, a up in this ideal, this goal, this vision. number of whom were in Parliament, who got Martyn probably preceded the group of involved in all sorts of things. Lord Wilberforce young men who met together periodically, I was one of them, and his chief accomplishment guess on a weekly basis, at Williams College in was outlawing slavery in England. Another the United States. You have to remember that one was Hannah Moore, who produced what at this time there were all sorts of communica- are called “penny tracts,” little bits of paper tions back and forth across the Atlantic. Here’s which taught the poor people of the country a book that our second daughter wrote as her how to read and which had moral lessons to senior thesis in history at Caltech: The Night raise their idea of how to live in a godly way. Cometh: Two Evangelicals Face the Nation. The You probably remember about the young man interesting thing about the beginning chapter who helped Wilberforce prepare for all the of this book is that it tells you what it was like battles he faced in Parliament—and there was in those years. These were the years just after battle after battle after battle, year after year the Revolutionary War. We’re usually looking after year! Sometimes he met with defeat, some- back from our point in history; we think of that times with a little measure of success, until time as a very godly time, when actually it was finally he broke through. One of the young men just the opposite. At that point we were a nation who was connected with the Clapham Sect which was just torn asunder by all sorts of evils. was a lawyer, and they sent him as a common Let me read you just a little bit of this, so you seaman on a slave ship to be able to finally get can get the background: the data they needed to present to Parliament It was 1836. Two brothers, both millionaires that nobody could refute. There was another and both devout Christians, were under one who became a great writer. They were just siege. Lewis had only three weeks earlier an amazing group of people! completed his new home on Rose Street in a One of the things which they got involved in quiet, middle-class section of New York City. was missions. They decided that it wasn’t right Now, late at night in his family’s absence, for England to be sending colonial administra- a mob had converged, hacked his doors, furniture and pictures to pieces and burned tors to rule over India and not to be interested them in a huge bonfire. Arthur’s name, in India’s spiritual welfare. So they put out a meanwhile, was being broadcast far and wide request for somebody to volunteer to go to India as a wanted man. Almost a million dollars, as a chaplain to the Britishers who were there. in today’s currency, was offered for his The young man who volunteered was Henry deliverance, dead or alive, to a New Orleans Martyn, the man who said, “Let me burn out address. And the owner of the store across for God!” And he did so, in just about five or the street from his importing company had ten years. A tremendous missionary saint! also offered $150,000 to anyone who would Stories have been written about him. He was kill him. Newspapers reviled them both in issue after issue. Even the police turned their a tremendous young man: brilliant, learned backs and ignored their danger. Arthur and a number of languages in that short period Lewis must have felt utterly alone in their of time. He was never actually a missionary, troubles. in the sense of going mainly to work with the Why would two men, so wealthy and so indigenous peoples there, for he was sent as a devout, absolutely infuriate so many people? chaplain. But he did a lot of work on the native That question begins a long story almost

© 1996 R. Winter. No copy may be made without the author’s permission. 14 – 1 14 – 2 Student Movements in Missions totally forgotten in our day, and believable This was a very difficult situation. There only if we go back briefly to 1792 to an was so much rowdiness and drunkenness on America we may not recognize, a nation with the frontier that it was dangerous to even go a new dream and with seemingly impossible out into Kentucky and places like that, and the problems. Washington, usually imperturbable, custom of eye-gouging in fights was so common was alarmed. So was John Adams. It had been that it was said that hardly anybody in Penn- only a few short years since the Revolutionary War had been won, yet liberty had not brought sylvania had more than one eye. Access to the long-sought peace. Like teenagers sud- alcohol added to the problem of a population denly aware of their prowess, the newly of 5 million: the United States suffered 300,000 independent Americans, now having no drunkards and buried 15,000 of them annually, British authority to resist, resisted the newly drunkenness being indulged in to a frightening established American one. They felt self- degree of excess. They used to use it as part of sufficient for any crisis, and did not want, the pay for working men, even workmen who nor feel the need for, any centralized leader- were building churches. ship. Bad habits, useful in winning the war, In that society the clergymen were under a proved irksome and even dangerous in establishing a nation. great deal of ridicule. Jefferson, our famous president, vied with Thomas Paine, a known Then she goes on to speak of the privateers atheist, in being critical of the church and any- who had hassled the British shipping, how they thing Christian—for the role of being the most still kept on their pirating. And the soldiers hated man among conservative Christians. On had not laid down their guns; they now used at least one occasion, a Virginia senator com- them against their personal enemies. The whole plained that at Jefferson’s dinner table (during business of taxation without representation, a discussion of religion) only a Jew would join which had been their battle cry with England, him in the defense of the character of Jesus. they carried over into the American scene, This is the state of affairs under which we refusing to give any support to any central begin our study today. Williams College was government. not unlike all the rest. It was a situation where Part of the problem was economic, but it no one was a Christian, nobody except for about wasn’t just economic. During the war years five young men who decided to meet for prayer they had become quite well acquainted with every week. They would go out into the fields, France. France right after the American Revo- where they would not be attacked by the unbe- lutionary War was the time of Lavoisier, of lieving students, and they would meet there d’Alembert, of Voltaire. The students in the for prayer. One day while they were meeting American colleges called themselves by these there for prayer, a huge rainstorm came up, names and delighted in being as anti-God as and they found a haystack close by which had they could possibly be. It was said that in all an area where the cows had eaten down around of the colleges that had been established under the base, and they took advantage of a sort of Christian principles, as Christian institutes for little cave where they could crawl in under the training ministers, now it was hard to find even hay and finish their prayer meeting. Out of one person who would admit to being a Chris- this Haystack Prayer Meeting, as it came to be tian. In one school there were three students known, was born the first Protestant missionary who were Christians, who finally had to ask the society in America. president for permission to use his personal These students were not themselves the office in order to pray. They would lock them- ones who set up the missionary society—the selves in, because if the other students knew American Board of Commissioners for Foreign that they were praying, they would mob them! Missions—but they went back to their college Timothy Dwight, Jonathan Edwards’ grand- professors and insisted that something had to son, and perhaps one of the greatest of Yale be done. There was at least one professor who College presidents, feared that “the great object was a Christian, who took them to church leaders of democracy was to destroy every trace of and helped them to press their way through. civilization in the world, and force man back Some of these men’s names you will recognize. into a savage state.” And Hamilton, when con- Adoniram Judson was one who became the fronted with the idea of a government “by the famous missionary to Burma. Samuel Mills people” as in France, exploded, “Your people, was another, and there were several others, sir, your people is a great beast!” such as Luther Rice, who went with Judson. Ralph D. Winter 14 – 3 When Judson was on the way to Burma, he and While there, they started to organize the the other fellows who were with him met some mission. Out of what they organized came Baptists on the boat. Some of them became con- what is known as the The Student Volunteer vinced of the rightness of adult baptism and Movement for Foreign Missions. It is to Moody’s were baptized. That’s very interesting reading, credit that he didn’t force this or even encourage but we must move on. it. He himself was not a missionary. His sermons Dwight L. Moody followed on the heels of were evangelistic, reaching out to what we call Finney about the time of the Civil War and E-0 and E-1 people, but he encouraged these after the War. Moody was a shoe salesman in young people in their missionary vision. Boston who had an unusual gift. Later he went The SVMFM (Student Volunteer Movement to Chicago and started a Sunday School class for Foreign Missions) became probably the related to a local church. The class got so big most potent, enormous force for missions that that finally he went to the streets and started we have ever known. In about 10 years time, teaching the young people in an empty ware- there were 80,000 young people who were house. That was where he learned his evangel- meeting together on a regular basis, praying istic technique. Moody was quite unlettered in that the Lord would send forth missionaries comparison to Finney, but the Lord used him. into the harvest. Of those 80,000, some 20,000 He went over to England at one point, and volunteered to go overseas and actually went. people thought, “He is really going to bomb out!” The other 60,000 stayed home and formed He was invited to Cambridge to preach, and themselves into a group called the Laymen’s they thought, “How can this unlettered guy Missionary Movement. It was composed of men preach at Cambridge?” The state of Christianity who were college graduates, who became the there was about as bad as it was in the United businessmen, lawyers, bankers, and doctors States. But there was something about his spirit, of that day. They met regularly for prayer for about his soul, that turned that university upside their colleagues who had gone overseas, and down! eventually they encouraged the giving of huge A group of young men at Cambridge banded sums of money to support them. In fact, between together and started to pray. At the same time, 1907 and 1914, the Laymen’s Missionary Move- or shortly thereafter, in the U.S. young people ment quadrupled the amount of money given in colleges began to band together and pray. to missions. Quadrupled in seven years, because One such group consisted of three young men of their emphasis, their effort! at Princeton. The father of one was a professor One of the young men who was caught up in there, Dr. Wilder, who had been a missionary this movement was a young man by the name in India. His son and his son’s friends met in of Kenneth Scott Latourette, the one whose book the home quite often for prayer, asking that the you carry. He was a student out in Oregon, Lord would somehow open up people’s hearts and then went back East to Yale. The first night to the need to go as missionaries. Wilder’s sister he was in Yale, he was arrested because he was was just as much on fire for missions as he was, sleeping on the grass in the public square, an but she was not allowed to meet with them for activity which was not allowed. He was caught prayer because she was a woman. So she would up in this missions movement at Yale. At that meet on one side of the wall while they would time, there was a student movement at Yale meet on the other side, and they would all pray. that was vitally interested in missions, praying Then they decided that they had to do more that the Lord would send forth laborers. They than pray; they had to organize. Moody had had so many at Yale that they set up what they been pressured to call a convention of college called Yale in China, a university in China students to meet in Mt. Hermon up in Massa- where they would send Yale graduates to staff chusetts, and they had invited students from the university. all over the United States. We have a book that A name which you may recognize from that lists all the students that came to that Mt. Hermon time is Borden of Yale. How many of you have Conference. There were two young women heard of the book Borden of Yale? He was the from California even at that period of time. son of the founder of the famous Borden milk They were studying in Maine. Students came company, one of the wealthy companies in the to that conference from all over the States. States today. Adlai Stevenson, who ran for the Wilder and his friends and Ruth Wilder went, U.S. presidency, comes from that Borden family. too. Borden of Yale volunteered as a missionary 14 – 4 Student Movements in Missions and got as far as Egypt, where he took sick and part has worked almost exclusively on Christian died. The story of the devotion of these young college campuses. That is called the SFMF, the men just stirred up everybody. Student Foreign Mission Fellowship. This fellowship Another interesting thing about the Student was consciously begun as a means of recouping Volunteer Movement was the amount of litera- the momentum of the Student Volunteer Move- ture they produced: huge numbers of books, ment, and it got along fairly well for five or six pamphlets, and charts! They scattered them all years. Then along came InterVarsity, from Eng- over the place. At the same time, the Christian land to Canada to the United States. A very Endeavor Movement began on the lower level, godly, wonderful man, a good friend of mine, high school and grade school. It picked up the now professor of missions at Gordon-Conwell same emphasis on missions. Then you had mis- Theological Seminary, J. Christy Wilson, Jr., sions in the Sunday Schools, with their penny became the head of the SFMF (it was called banks and so forth. It was a day when missions FMF at that time). He was able to work with was a hot topic! InterVarsity to perform a marriage ceremony One of the things which we are trying to do between the two organizations. is to start another student volunteer movement. Now, you cannot possibly accuse Christy Here’s a booklet written by John R. Mott, The Wilson, whose father was a missionary to Iran Responsibility of the Young People for the Evangeli- and who himself grew up in that country, of zation of the World. John R. Mott was one of trying to wreck the missions movement; but those youth leaders who got his training in the in all honesty, I believe that is what actually Student Volunteer Movement and became a happened. InterVarsity did not have solely the very important man. You would think that this mission field in its sights; it had other purposes booklet was written for today, so thrilling the and it added missions in at the time that the things that they say. In a published address, FMF came in. It added it in as something extra. Robert Wilder, one of the young men mentioned The third purpose of InterVarsity became: to earlier, gives the reasons against all the argu- promote foreign missions. It meant that there ments that people put up as to why they can’t were other competing things in the structure become a missionary. He just cuts them all down, of InterVarsity, from the very beginning and one by one. There are about 20 arguments, and all along. he hits them one by one, just cutting them to Today, InterVarsity and Campus Crusade ribbons. The address is still just as apropos today are both about equal in size in terms of the as it was then. Fascinating! numbers of the campuses and students they Look at the book by David Howard called are dealing with, working very differently in Student Power in World Evangelism. He speaks of many ways, but both of them provide the func- some of the students that have been involved tions of a denomination. It is sort of a church in missions. Most adults feel that you have to away from home, on campus. Both of them be an adult to do anything. But the Student would just be mortified and humiliated if they Volunteer Movement showed that you don’t were to hear me say this. In fact, Bill Bright of have to be an adult to start a really major move- Campus Crusade, in one of the rare times that ment. One of the things that they showed is that I heard him say something in a joking manner, you have to organize. You have to pray and you said, “Thanks a lot!” to me when I mentioned have to organize. And that is what they did. this in my paper “Penetrating the Last Frontiers.” One of problems of succession to the Student I referred to these two groups as being surrogate Volunteer Movement is the fact that there has denominations for college students. not been another movement that concentrated They try very hard to avoid any implication on missions as the SVM did. The full name of that they are competing with the churches. My the SVM is the SVMFM, the Student Volunteer own feeling is that they are not competing with Movement for Foreign Missions. It wasn’t just the churches; they are going where the churches a student Christian movement; it wasn’t just a cannot readily go. Not every church lives next campus Christian movement. It was specifically to a campus where 20–30,000 young people are. focused on what in those days they called foreign Their churches can’t come with them. They are missions. The problem with succession is that just lucky that some organizations—Navigators there has not been another organization that as well as the other two—are working on those has focused exclusively on foreign missions, campuses and helping the students with a except for an organization which for the most broad spectrum of spiritual needs. Ralph D. Winter 14 – 5 But, as my daughter found out when she doing it for money, but the fact is that it does was at UCLA, you cannot stress missions very perform other functions, and missions, though much without overdoing it, in their eyes. She it does come up at that meeting, is not always wanted to start a missions prayer group, and the main focus. My two daughters were disap- they said, “Oh, no, no! That would be divisive.” pointed the first time they attended Urbana. I realize that on some campuses they have not They said, “Daddy, this was just a ‘deeper life’ said this, so I am not trying to tell you that this conference. It wasn’t a mission conference at all”. has been universal policy; but that is what hap- That is probably an unfair criticism, but the fact pened. So they said, “Why don’t you edit the is that out of probably 12 or 14 major speakers, InterVarsity Newspaper, and you can put stuff they have rarely had a missionary speaking. in there about missions if you want. No problem! It is a perplexing problem to people, even in We need someone to edit the paper. Wouldn’t InterVarsity, to figure out how they can rescue you be willing to do that?” So she started to edit a real cogent emphasis on missions in their the paper called The Fishwrapper. The symbol of organization. My own opinion is that it is just as the fish was important to students in those days difficult to do that within InterVarsity as it is to as well as now. do it within a denomination or a congregation. Soon they said, “Look, you’re putting too We are up against a very serious problem: much in about missions.” Toward the end of How do you get a specialized concern, within her final year, she broke down and disobeyed the people of God, within the community of the the policies, and got together a little group of faithful, when you have a generalized commu- students—about five—and began to study some nity structure? The answer is: You can’t do it! missions books. Then those five, plus four My opinion, spelled out in everything that I other students, went off to the Wheaton Summer write on the subject of modalities and sodalities, Institute of International Studies (now called is that you have to have special organizations Perspectives) the following summer, in 1974. that work with, in, through, by, alongside of, She had come back from the first summer’s IIS and in harmony with the churches, the more program and was enthusiastic on the subject generalized fellowships. These two types of of missions. You can’t imagine what 500 hours organizations simply must not conflict and of mission studies does to a college student! compete. If they will cooperate, they will be So she was really on fire, and that was why she very much better off. was a problem to InterVarsity. At the end of By now we have had a number of summers that next year, then, there were nine students of this IIS program, and it has been successful. who went off to this program called IIS (summer But simply educating young people, essential Institute of International Studies), carefully and good as this is—in fact, spectacular as it is! disguised as an International Studies Program —is not the whole answer. The Center for to facilitate the transfer of credit back to UCLA World Mission, where I work, is run by alumni and other schools. of this IIS program. We couldn’t function with- The FMF still works on Christian campuses. out a lot of younger people who really have an InterVarsity, working on secular campuses, has in-depth knowledge of the entire world mission little missions emphasis, except once every movement. three years when the Urbana missions conven- On our staff, it is the younger people, who tion comes along. They really promote Urbana. have gone through this program, who really You have to really hand it to InterVarsity that are more reliable in their intuition about our they have kept hold of that. But Urbana no goals and purposes than some of our older longer has, as far as its function is concerned, people who come in and haven’t gone through uniquely a mission purpose. One of their very that orientation process. top people said to me, “We would promote I don’t intend to imply that the Fuller School Urbana whether or not we talked about missions. of World Mission is falling down on the job. We cannot let go of it. That is the time when The School of World Mission does not have the we raise all of our money for our international job of orienting college students, while they are work for the next three years. There is no way still in college, to the broad spectrum of the we could stop promoting the Urbana Conven- purposes of missions. But this summer intensive tion. It is our financial lifeline and it provides program is an outstanding, wide-ranging pro- our psychological unity.” gram. In a single semester they may have as I don’t mean to say that InterVarsity is just speakers thirty professors, from all the leading 14 – 6 Student Movements in Missions schools in the country, different kinds of mission due to his health. The fact is that being swept executives and so forth. up in a movement was a very normal thing. But, let me add this very important point: The Church, the people of God, is a movement. this is not good enough! It is very good; it is very We are studying people movements. I was up important; we’re pushing it. We’ve gone out on in Portland last week, talking to a man there, a limb to buy a whole campus in order to make Boyd Morris, who is writing an inter-seminary this possible, to become a prototype for similar Frontier Fellowship Newsletter to about 200 people experiments elsewhere. But there is something in seminaries across the country. I really believe else that is necessary, and that is a movement. that on the seminary level is an excellent place Kenneth Scott Latourette is the chief example. to begin. I think that Fuller is less likely to see a Read his autobiography. He was a reluctant student movement for world missions, because missionary. He was not a person who, against of the School of World Mission being here and the crowd, decided to be a missionary and went young people being reluctant to get really excited overseas. He went with the crowd. Now you’ll and do things for themselves, when you have say, “Well, we don’t want missionaries like that.” the looming, monstrous hulk of 100 gray-haired Listen! Most missionaries are ordinary human missionaries around. I really think that the beings. You certainly have to have some ordi- Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of Theol- nary human beings in missions. You can’t have ogy students are underprivileged in this sense. all eccentric people: you know, unreconstructa- At Gordon-Conwell they have 50 students ble, hardy individuals. We have too many of praying every day for missions. There you have those kinds of people in missions, precisely no big mission school sitting by to take all the because the selection process, due to the attitude special fascination out of it for them. of society, is so adverse. How will we get the I really think we have to realize that we are middle spectrum of fine, solid, and balanced sitting on a limb that is being sawed off, we people, who aren’t always trying to do things professionals in missions. We have got to re- differently from other people? You all know create and do as they did in the earlier days: missionaries who are characterized by the fact seek and pray and work somehow toward the that they are always thinking things differently, goal of a movement. and it is very hard to get missionaries to agree. How does a movement start? It probably isn’t The movement that the SVM produced possible to predict what to do and how to do it. allowed many normal people following the But if we have any real mandate to organize, leadership of other people, to say, “Yes, this why do we not have a mandate to organize a is a good idea,” to seriously consider it, and to movement of some sort, a sodality? Let us not go and do a fabulous job as a missionary. You shrink back, thinking that there has to be some can’t say that Kenneth Scott Latourette was a special holy revelation from heaven to do what failure, even though he didn’t stay in China, is obviously to be done. Winter Chapter 15

The Retreat of the West

Our topic for today is The Retreat of the West. sub-atomic particles; and all this unbelievable That happens to be the name of the first chapter complexity that is beyond our comprehension of the little book I wrote some eight years ago in its ultimate reality—God created all this! called The Twenty-Five Unbelievable Years. The He even took that entire molecular inorganic very first chapter is entitled “The Retreat of the chemical reality and he played a tune upon it, West.” There is certainly no value in my just which produced a whole new series of chemical repeating what is in that chapter. It would be of combinations called the organic chemical uni- greater advantage to you if I would build up a verse. Then, from those chemicals, life forms of larger context for this phenomenon of the retreat all kinds, unimaginable tiny little creatures, of the West. like the Plague germs that killed off 33 million The West, of course, is a rather silly word, people in Europe at a time when the population for what is west of what on the globe? Every- was only three times that large. All of this is thing is west of something. We are talking about God’s creation, and it is the Christian who under- a cultural West. It doesn’t matter where you are stands and is awed. He does not worship it, in the world, there is what is called Western but respects and sees the glory of God in the culture. Western culture is predominantly a handiwork which he has displayed for us: Christianized phenomenon. It doesn’t mean “The heavens declare the glory of God,” as that Westerners are Christians, except in culture. well as the firmament showing his handiwork. It does mean that a Westerner is a person whose That much we have in common with com- ethical judgments and philosophical, cosmo- munism. Many other things we have in common logical, worldview thinking, and so forth have with communism. The ravages of communism been predominantly the result, whether he across the world, as an atheistic, anti-religious knows it or not, of the Hellenistic (that’s non- system, are to a great extent just bizarre perver- Christian), the Judeo-Christian, and the Western sions of a Christian inheritance. Christianity European Christian experience. itself is anti-religious. Read chapter 1 of Isaiah. Eastern Christians are also Western in the Read chapter 23 of Matthew. Christianity is not larger sense of Western culture. In other words, even really a religion, according to some theo- Russians are part of the Western cultural tradi- logians, and when it becomes a religion, it is no tion. When the Russians cross over into China, longer a faith. they are Westerners, even if they are living in Now, that is a slight overstatement. I do Siberia or going into China. China is non-Western, believe there are some profoundly religious because China in thinking and culture, at least people who are also Christians. But it is Chris- prior to Mao Tse-tung, was for the most part tianity alone—evangelicalism in particular— unaffected by the West. Communism itself is a which allows for the possibility of people who Western phenomenon. Westernization has taken are not religious being Christians. Let’s just say place not only through missionary penetration people who do not go through any kind of fancy of the provinces of China, but every single rituals, who are not beholden to any observable card-carrying communist is a Westernizer. His patterns: it is an evangelical who could allow materialism derives from Christianity. for that possibility. Even evangelicals eventually Christianity is the most materialistic of all fall into patterns, so that if you walk into the known world religions. In fact, it has to be, most highly unstructured evangelical service, because as some great theologian (I can’t remem- you can tell exactly what is coming next. So ber who) said, “God was the first materialist.” don’t let anybody in a non-liturgical tradition He created the atoms, those shining, brilliant, claim that he is non-liturgical in the ultimate unfathomable beauties that go together with the sense.

© 1996 R. Winter. No copy may be made without the author’s permission. 15 – 1 15 – 2 The Retreat of the West But despite habits structures being what they any sensitivity would go along with the bizarre are, the fact of the matter is that Christianity in and rather crude character of those scriptures. a certain sense is not a religion. It is not a relig- So they have a problem at that point, which is ious system. It is a faith, it is a life. It is, in this somewhat similar to Islam’s problem: they cannot sense, the only candidate for world faith. All translate their scripture. other religions are religions. Even Christianity The point is that some how there are many becomes a religion all too easily. children of this Westernization process: commu- Christianity is the only world religion, in a nism is one of the children. It reflects faithfully certain sense. There is no other world religion. many of the ethical concerns of Christianity. When people speak of world religions, they The ethical system which the communist society only mean long-lasting religious systems, and espouses, but which it does not have the power there are not many of these. Any long-lasting to live up to, is for the most part Christian. religious system with lots of followers in any Their emphasis on the equality of all people place is called a world religion. That’s nonsense! was borrowed directly from Christianity. Their To be a world religion you have to have, in cell structure, their emphasis on confession, all some sense, an affinity with all the world. this was borrowed directly from Christianity. There is no other candidate for that description Their sense of history comes directly from except Christianity. Christianity is the only Christianity. Communism is a bizarre, heretical, religion (if you wish to call it that) which is and virulent evil, but to a great extent it is a willing to take upon itself the cultural clothes mechanism of Western civilization. of every tradition. This process of Westernization produced an Islam is the only competitor that could be immense fertility of mind and industry, of remotely compared, and Islam itself is a heretical political and demographic power. There is no variety of Christianity. Islam, however, is much example in human history, in the human annals more of a religion, in that it requires the Arabic of mankind of any part of the world, of a language in its holy book; it requires facing movement gaining momentum so rapidly, towards Mecca. It is what the communists in building up population and wealth and power Indonesia called an imperialistic religion. The so rapidly, as you have in Western Europe— communists, before they fell from power some precisely where the Bible was unleashed, at years ago, said that the Indonesians were dupes least to some extent. to accept a foreign religion. That power spilled over in many ugly ways, But they were unable pin this criticism on the tragic ways, and also beneficial ways, all across Christians. The Christians had churches that the world. What earlier parallel is there, of a vast were built in Indonesian architectural styles; muscular spill-over of population into another their Bible was in Indonesian languages; their part of the world, in the name of Christianity, hymns and music partook, at least to some prior to the modern colonial movement? I’m extent, of the Indonesian cultural tradition. In thinking of the Crusades. The colonial movement that sense, Christianity was not as foreign an was like the Crusades. In some ways it was far invasion as Islam. And, by the way, Christianity less holy, far less Christian. But for most of its got to Indonesia before Islam did! That is a very early history, under the Portuguese, Spanish, and interesting thing. Islam is a very recent thing in French—before the Bible-pounding Protestants Indonesia. got into the act—colonization was definitely a The Bahai religion is an attempt—which I Christian Crusade. All ships carried priests: think is much too small a movement to be called missionaries with the intent to convert people a world religion—to follow Christianity in this to Christ as King. multi-cultural approach. Their problem is their When the Protestants got into the act, their scriptures. William Carey Library published first large-scale presence on the open seas were a great big thick book on the Bahai religion, the pirates. The pirates were Protestants, and which published for the first time an English you can imagine how easily this fitted into the translation of their scriptures. You can go around Catholic stereotype of Protestantism. A few and talk to Bahai people, and they’ll tell you weeks ago I told you about Father Baegert, about these ineffable, ethereal scriptures that who pointed out that the Protestants ruled the they have; but that are untranslatable! I think Caribbean, meaning that pirates ruled the Carib- that it is true: they are untranslatable. For when bean. Some of these pirates actually did have you translate them, no modern person with chapels in their outposts across the Caribbean, Ralph D. Winter 15 – 3 in their hideaways. They were religious men: subordinate party in Parliament. They led the with all their cut-throat piracy, they were trying anti-slavery movement. to do God’s will. The impact of Christianity, unknown and When Protestants got into the act, colonization undetectable in secular books on the rise of no longer as often had a Christian dimension Western civilization, accounted for the vitality to it. Remember that the Dutch were allowed and the military power of the West. It is a into the ports of Japan without any problems at strange thing that the very muscle wielded by all, even after Japan was totally sealed off to all the Crusaders in cutting off people’s heads was other colonization. The reason was that no one muscle produced by Christianity. Christianity would have ever suspected the Dutch Protestants makes people healthy. It turns “the hearts of of bringing Christian missionaries. That is not the fathers to the children.” There is a lower quite true; all generalizations are false, including infant mortality instantly when a population this one. The Dutch did bring chaplains with becomes Christian. There are all kinds of good them into Taiwan. At one time there even was things that happen: orphanages and hospitals, a fairly promising movement. They eventually insane asylums. All kinds of things are amelio- did bring chaplains into Indonesia, the so-called rated because of Christianity. That produces Dutch East Indies. But they were just less relig- power, even for those who do not acknowledge ious by far than other colonizing powers. it, and eventually spills over across all the world. Notice that all this immense muscular out- The impact can either be called colonialism burst, whether you call it a crusade or not, to (with an adverse twang to it), or it can be called a great extent was a result of the help of a a blessing. I don’t know of any clear-thinking community produced by the limited tincture of member of a former colonial country who will Christian faith in Europe. When I read secular not be able to tell you how ambivalent people books, sometimes I just have to shake myself. are about the former colonial presence. John You read for hours and hours, books written Philip from India, who was in my class last year, by secular scholars about this sort of thing, and will tell you that there are many people in India soon you have to just shake yourself to realize today who, if they had their choice, would ask that these guys are systematically omitting all the British back. Now, they would probably have of the other stories. I read in books about the to think twice! There would be lots of people Evangelical Awakening and its impact on parlia- who would be opposed to it. And there would ment and everything else; and then I read in a be terrible results. The British are a bunch of secular book no reference of any kind to any- bigots and snobs, hopelessly tyrannical people, thing of that sort! It is just as if you’re reading almost as bad as the Americans! about two different worlds. It is incredible that any one nation would In fact, there was a great deal of vitality, of rule another nation. Allan Moorehead wrote a Christian devotion, of high-mindedness, of book on the South Pacific called The Fatal Impact, social reform, political reform—the ending of and it was literally fatal to thousands of people, slavery is one of the most obvious results of as European diseases flowed over and killed off Christianity. Slavery was not something invented those populations. It was fatal in other ways, as by Christians. In fact, to this date in history, their cultures were destroyed. All of us know there have been far more white people enslaved all of that. by white people, than black people enslaved by The point is that, at some point in history, white people. Who are the Slavs? They are the the vast, massive and, for most people, utterly quarry from which human slaves were brought irreversible movement all of a sudden began to for centuries and centuries, for over a millennium, crumble and to retreat. Four hundred years of the great quarry of human slaves brought into massive, muscular, irreversible outreach, con- use and sold into Africa. Slavery, therefore, was trolling every square foot of the world! not the result of Christianity; slavery was there You say, “Wait a minute! Thailand was before Christianity ever arrived. Christianity never a colony.” Ah ha! An exception to my was what eventually percolated into the higher statement. The only reason Thailand was not a circles and, through John Wesley and the Evan- colony was because the British and the French gelical Awakening, into Wilberforce and the agreed that there would be a no-man’s land Clapham Sect. Clapham was a district of London between Indochina and Burma. Thailand, in its where these evangelicals lived. They were very name, bears the imprint of the English called a sect, although they were really only a language. The impact of Western civilization on 15 – 4 The Retreat of the West Thailand is just as great as in any colonial country. tradition. You cannot be a scientist if you do not So we have this amazing thing. I don’t think believe in the laws of nature. You cannot be a that, as a representative of some kind of wild scientist if you are merely a Hellenistic philoso- polyglot of racists in the Western world, I will pher. Plato believed in a pantheon of quarreling tell you that I don’t think that there is the slightest gods, whose quarrels decided whether it rained intrinsic virtue or superiority in Western man. or didn’t rain. You couldn’t possibly have been I do think that there is a great deal of superiority in a scientific observer of weather if you were a Western culture insofar as it has been affected by the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I will give Plato. There is nothing about the Hellenistic not one millimeter of credit to any other source! tradition that would ever have allowed science It is Christ. “There, but by the grace of God, go I!” to develop. The so-called Greek science, about I was sitting in a hotel room talking to John which many books are written, is in a totally Gatu from East Africa. He and I were to debate different category from Western science. The the missions moratorium issue in a few minutes latter is due to the godly reflections of Christian before cameras, and he came up to my room. It people upon the orderliness and beauty of a was his initiative to talk to me, hoping somehow creation which God designed. that we could avoid unnecessary conflict in our There came a time when God obviously said discussions. I’m sure later on he was completely time’s up for Western societies. The crumbling satisfied. But there I was, talking to a man of that vast world-wide empire is the story of whose own people a few months earlier were involved in the Mau Mau uprising. I don’t know the retreat of the West. The retreat of the West if you remember that uprising. If I were John is the retreat of the political and military power Gatu, I would be very embarrassed at the thought of the West. It is not a retreat of the cultural or that my people, the Kikuyu, were involved in economic power, or of the religious influence the orgies and unbelievable atrocities of those of the West. Many people assumed, and maybe Satanically-driven people. What I tried to tell could have hoped, that with the withdrawal of him—what I couldn’t easily convey to him—is the troops and the colonial offices of the Western that I am just as aware of the orgies of brutality powers, they would have taken with them all and bestiality among of the tribal people of my other influences. But, as you’ll see in the chapters own past as he is of his. of my book, in many cases the cultural impact Consider the Irish (my ancestors were Euro- of the West actually escalated, in the absence peans, but not Irish). They were headhunters. Their little boats would go up the Irish Sea and of the stuffy, censorious, and condescending they would go into a little village thirty miles colonial rulers. It was not until the British were away and kill every man, woman and child. gone from Ghana for ten years that the Ghanaians They would pile all the heads into the boats and became more pro-British and more insufferably come back down, almost sinking, and hollow British, with their powdered wigs, than they had out those skulls and process them and drink ever been when the British were still present. out of those skulls. Irishmen were drinking out The other important thing in this whole of skulls as late as the sixteenth century! story is that in most cases the gospel of Jesus Whom are we kidding? Satan is the god of Christ actually was given freer reign. It was this world. We all come from a background of not the gospel that retreated! The Twenty-Five Satanically-controlled cultures. So there is no Unbelievable Years is simply the story of the intrinsic merit in Western society apart from the direct and indirect impact of the gospel of unbelievable fact that the church of Jesus Christ Jesus Christ. emerged from this twenty-five-year period of Science itself is a result of the cosmology Western retreat more powerful, stronger, more which is uniquely found in the Judeo-Christian rooted, more indigenous than ever before! Winter Chapter 16

The Legacy of Edinburgh, 1910

We want to focus today on the famous meeting letter. That’s the way it works. The missionaries at Edinburgh in 1910, the resulting International from the various agencies would get together Missionary Council, and World Council of once a year for a time of fellowship. And usually Churches. In addition we’ll look at the more some American pastor would come down and recent Lausanne Committee on World Evangel- treat the missionaries like his pastoral charge ization and some other structures that have for a few days of retreat and spiritual renewal. developed that have to do with the international That type of inter-mission fellowship brings scene. together people of different kinds. If I had not I wish the book called Ecumenical Foundations, been in that kind of fellowship, I don’t think by William Ritchey Hogg, were more readily I would have gotten to know the California available, but it is out of print. The book has a Friends, the Central American Mission, the very interesting survey of what the author calls Nazarenes, or the Southern Baptists as well as “movements of unity” on the mission field in I did. If I had stayed in California, it certainly the nineteenth century. would never have happened. One thing that you should take note of is that The point is that in the nineteenth century, there are four different streams of coagulation— due to Americans from the same city, say Cin- that’s my word, not his—whereby different cinnati, going to India, they felt closer in India. groups and strands of Christianity began to I lived in a part of Guatemala where there were come together on the field or have their impact practically no Americans at all. Now and then on the field, in, say, India. One was a series of when I would be in a nearby city, and if I would field conferences convened by missionaries. A see an American tourist walking down the street second was conferences held in the home lands. with a wife and a couple of little kids, I would A third was fellowships of mission executives have to just bite my tongue to resist the tempta- in the home lands (such as the IFMA and EFMA tion to stop and talk with them in English! It today). Finally, there was the student movement, would have been so nice! But I had to mind my the SVM and eventually the World’s Student own business and walk on past, for why, in the Christian Federation. I would add that before middle of a city, would you stop somebody even the first of the four mentioned by Hogg, else and start talking to them? I was a person there were field fellowships of missionaries, who was starved for any kind of contact with without which the more formal “field consul- my own people. tations” would never have taken place. Note that it really isn’t any great spiritual achievement or virtue that people from these The Origin of Unity: The Mission Field different backgrounds of Christian tradition How many of you have been to an inter- got together once they got to the field; at least mission fellowship on your field, where all the that is not the only explanation. You cannot various missionaries of the different missions easily say that because the missionaries were get together? How many of you don’t even know holier than anybody else therefore they were what I am talking about? On most mission fields able to see their unity in Christ more clearly. so-called, there is a variety of mission agencies. That might be part of it. But, basically, mission- In Guatemala, there were 40 different mission aries were stunned by the utter contrast between agencies when I was there; by now it’s probably their Christianity, whatever type it was, over 80, as I have not been there for some 12 years. against the Hindu reality. I was the editor of the inter-mission newsletter So all of a sudden Mennonites and Presby- at one point. I got to be editor by the simple terians felt very close together, because in fact, fact that I suggested that there be such a news- comparatively, they were. That kind of unity

© 1996 R. Winter. No copy may be made without the author’s permission. 16 – 1 16 – 2 The Legacy of Edinburgh, 1910 was almost inevitable, no great credit to the all previous meetings or subsequent meetings. missionaries. Never before in history, and never after 1910, It is a fact, in any case, that movements for has there ever been a world-level conference to unity in Western Christendom are preemi- which people were invited specifically because nently, in terms of originating energy and they were mission agency leaders! Never before momentum, the result of mission field events. had anything like that been convened, nor since*. Students found each other on the campuses, It was an absolutely unique meeting in the sense from the same country. They found each other that it drew together, not church leaders, but on the mission field from different countries. mission leaders. Missions got acquainted, and then their field At the conclusion of the 1910 meeting, a churches were brought together in councils of continuation committee was formed. The con- churches, which tended to weld Lutherans and tinuation committee had its work blasted to Baptists and Methodists on the field far sooner smithereens by the First World War. So it was than it ever would have happened in the United not until 1921, at Lake Mohonk, New York, States. that the IMC (International Missionary Council) That is what the first hundred or so pages in was formed. The IMC, not the World Council of the book by Hogg are about. Ritchey Hogg, by Churches, was the immediate subsequent result the way, was a student, a protégé, of Latourette. of the Edinburgh 1910 meeting of missionary I met Latourette and talked with him on several executives. occasions, at length, before he died, but I was The International Missionary Council thus never a student of his. Hogg was actually a drew together all the various associations of doctoral student under him. This book is a his- mission agencies. In North America, for example, tory of the International Missionary Council beginning back in 1892, there was the Foreign (IMC). Mission Conference of North America (FMCNA). That was a conference of mission executives in Edinburgh, 1910 the United States. There was a similar conference In 1910 a very significant meeting took place in Norway, a similar conference in England. In England they always have more modest titles in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was called, simply, for things, being an understating sort of nation. the World Missionary Conference. There had So they called this a British Foreign Missions been a meeting in 1900, called the Ecumenical Secretaries’ Bag Lunch, or something like that. Missionary Conference. It is rather amazing Mission executives got together in the various that they used the word ecumenical in the year countries of the sending part of the world. But, 1900. That was in the United States at a very there was a sending portion of the globe and a large meeting, a huge meeting, of church people receiving portion. This is not a proper distinction mainly, a mission mobilization conference, not today, but it was a practical distinction then. a strategy consultation; and the assumption was So in the sending part of the world, you had the that every ten years there should be a meeting FMCNA, the Norwegian Missionary Council like that. (which still exists full blast), the British Foreign By 1910, John R. Mott, most easily character- Secretaries whatever, and so forth. And each of ized as being the leader of the Student Volunteer these sending associations were members of the Movement, was about 44 years old. The SVM International Missionary Council. got started in 1886, when he was maybe 20. Then on the receiving end, what do you think After 24 faithful and energetic years of labor, they had? This is interesting—a very subtle he and his friends now had an immense, inter- event took place. Immediately after the 1910 national influence through the World Student conference, in various countries of the world Christian Movement and the Student Volunteer you had a new phenomenon. The different Movement. He was the one, for example (his agencies working in a country like India had eye on a meeting he attended in Madras—a been getting together for an annual inter-mission strategy meeting of mission leaders), who fellowship of some sort. Now they formed the decided almost singlehandedly that the 1910 National Christian Council of India. That Council meeting in Edinburgh would not be an meeting and others like it in other mission fields also of church leaders, as in 1900, but rather a meeting of mission leaders, focusing on strategy rather *This statement was made in a classroom of missionaries in 1979. At the end of that class a missionary (Leiton Chinn) than mobilization. agreed to serve as the secretary for a founding committee This sets the Edinburgh 1910 meeting off from for a proposed 1980 meeting similar to 1910. Ralph D. Winter 16 – 3 became members of the IMC, which then was What are they doing here? It’s the church in India composed of both sending councils in the home that counts!” countries and field councils of missionaries in It’s an interesting thing that no one noticed the mission lands. These two kinds of councils that two mission agencies already existed which would eventually be its undoing. were Indian mission agencies, agencies born in Thus the International Missionary Council India of Indian national initiative. They were was exclusively mission-agency oriented at its both founded by Bishop Azariah of the Anglican inception. But from the word go a subtle trans- Church. One was the National Missionary Soci- formation took place. The immediate goal of ety, sort of a home mission society in South India, missions is to plant the church. So, the mentality founded in 1905. But that wasn’t good enough. of the missionaries (when a little later on you Then about 1907 there was the National Indian not only had mission agencies in the field, but Missionary Society. The point is that these two also had resulting national churches to which agencies were nation-wide and interdenomina- these missions were tied) was the thought, tional. These two mission organizations existed, “What will we do with the emerging national but nobody took them seriously. church leaders? Shall we incorporate them into I want to go back to something I said earlier: the National Christian Council?” Of course, the The greatest strategic hiatus in modern mission strategy answer was “Yes! Certainly. This was the pur- has been the near total absence of anybody saying pose of our being in India, to produce national we have to start mission societies run by nationals. churches.” We’ve started churches run by nationals, but Soon, then, you had two different kinds of no one (or practically nobody) has thought of leaders coming together in the field councils: starting cross-cultural missions. But Bishop you had expatriate missionaries, who represented Azariah did! Actually, it was Sherwood Eddy, spheres of financial power and intellectual a Student Volunteer man in the YMCA move- power and schools and hospitals, running their ment, who encouraged him to do it, so it wasn’t own little colonial empire in India. They met purely a nationalized idea. together, but they eagerly—it wasn’t reluctantly, Then there was a parenthesis until around it was very eagerly—said, “The national church 1945, when some leaders suggested a change. leaders should come to our meeting!” And the These were missionaries speaking, not national National Christian Councils all over the mission leaders necessarily. It isn’t as if the national lands more and more were formed with the leaders said, “Let’s get rid of these missionaries.” idea that the churches would be represented, The missionaries were the idealists, the arm- not just expatriate missionaries. chair strategists who said, “We shouldn’t be So now you had what I call in my writings the ones to be here, you know; we ’re going to an “oicumenical” gathering. The phrase has be retiring. Push the national leaders forward.” never stuck, but at least what it means for me And so here they were saying, “Let’s change is a meeting where you have both church leaders the constitution of the NCC of India.” and mission leaders. That is not ecumenical. Incidentally, what I am telling you is simul- Ecumenical today means church leaders only, taneously happening in many other mission lands, and there is no word for mission leaders only. in the National Christian Council of Kenya, and If you want to dream up a word, I’ll be glad to the National Christian Council of South Africa, try to make it popular. The tragedy is we don’t or whatever—it’s all happening simultaneously. even have labels for these crucial realities. The national churches are growing up. Their We’re talking now about 1850–1950. Pretty very presence and existence is just lionized. soon, in the mission lands, the churches became It is the precious fruit of missionary work! very important and the mission agencies not so And so in 1945 they said that the mission important. There may be a few mission agencies, organizations and their people aren’t even going Johnny-come-lately’s, that didn’t produce much to be members of these national councils. The of a church. And you had a few churches on National Christian Council of India should now the field that had no related mission agencies. be called the National Council of Churches of But gradually, as the National Christian Council India. So you have the NCC becoming the NCC; (NCC) of India consisted more and more of that is, the National Christian Council becoming church leaders, there came a day when some- the National Council of Churches. They didn’t body said, “Why do we have any missionaries always change the name. In India, in fact, you in this meeting at all? Who are the missionaries? still have the National Christian Council; but it 16 – 4 The Legacy of Edinburgh, 1910 has a different function. But in Melanesia they creeping liberalism, there is here a structural changed it to the National Council of Churches transition, which is not a theological change but of Melanesia. And in most other places they did a sociological change. This structural transition actually change the name from NCC to NCC, should not be blamed as characterizing creeping so to speak. liberalism. Just because the National Christian Who cares about names? We’re interested in Council of India no longer talks about missions structures and forms and functions, and what is does not in itself prove that they lost their mar- really happening. The fact is that over a period bles or lost their faith or lost their Bibles or lost of time in the receiving areas of the world, you anything else. They just simply lost their mis- went from a mission situation to a situation sionaries. where you had just churches. You ended up They lost the mission agencies as members. They with a bunch of National Councils of Churches ruled them out in the finest hour of their ideal- in the receiving countries, even though in the ism. Here’s the fly in the ointment, and this is sending countries you still had a bunch of why I always use India as the example of this missionary-sending councils. The Norwegian transition: they even ruled out, structurally, two Missionary Council: there it sits, abandoned, indigenous mission societies that were perfectly lonely in the West, an anachronism to the legitimate and totally national! In other words, rising and transcendent reality of the church! they made a structural shift, not merely a national And so you had these great missionary and shift. church statesmen orbiting the earth, talking So when I ask, “What was the structural shift about the New Era of the National Church. in India that was not merely a nationalization Archbishop Temple: “The younger churches shift?” you should be able to answer the ques- are the great new fact of our time.” Oh, what tion. For this is the crux of the whole thing: a thrilling and a fabulous development it is! They threw out the mission agencies, including The Church has come of age! those two poor little national mission agencies. In every nation of the world the Church is They shifted from mission agencies to churches, there; and the mission agencies can just take a not merely from foreigners to Indians. back seat or wither away, which they themselves Church theology is different from mission wish to do, in most cases anyway. The only ones theology. If you don’t believe it, walk from the we hear about now are the ones that hung on School of World Mission to the School of Theol- for dear life and made a great big stink. Henry ogy in Fuller Seminary. The School of Theology Venn’s famous goal statement in the nineteenth is dominated by the concerns of the church. century was “the euthanasia of the mission By saying that, you know by now, I have a very (structure).” slight prejudice, but no ill-will. I believe that Most mission agencies naturally wanted the means nurture: nurture theology, pastoral care, national churches to be prominent. However, E-1 evangelism at best. this produced what was a fundamental structural Mission theology is something else. I am told anachronism in the International Missionary it doesn’t exist: missiology isn’t an academic Council. You had at one end of the scale a whole field, they told me. And I had to take the initia- bunch of National Councils of Churches (NCCs). tive, along with Gerald Anderson, to start the These people, incidentally—I guess I don’t have American Society of Missiology, because Dave to tell you—are not the kind of people who, Hubbard, President of Fuller, said, “You can’t when they gather together, are going to pull out offer a Ph.D. degree in Missiology; there isn’t their Bibles and read the Great Commission for even such a field! There is no scholarly society, their devotional period. Not on your life! Back no scholarly journal in missiology.” So we in the earlier IMC, when they pulled out their started a scholarly society and we started a Bibles they refreshed their minds on the Great scholarly journal. Now, finally, seven years later, Commission. In the new NCCs, when they you can get a Ph.D. in Missiology here at Fuller, pulled out their Bibles they read about social but it is sort of a compromise, with masses of justice and all other kinds of problems that are monocultural theology and actually less true the normal and natural and inevitable and per- missiology than the Doctor of Missiology degree! fectly reasonable concerns of national churches. The fact is that there was a structural shift, I don’t want to excuse liberalism or excuse from focus on missions to focus on the needs of theological decay or erosion or anything like the churches, which meant a whole new agenda. that. But in addition to all that you know about Don’t get uptight about this. It’s inevitable, it’s Ralph D. Winter 16 – 5 reasonable, it’s normal. What do you talk about, national mission society in India, run by Indians. after all, in the family circle? You talk about the And though Azariah was the founder and was family bank account and whether or not you involved in both of those two mission societies, should buy brown rice. But when you go to the it apparently did not occur to them to invite office, you talk about things of the office. The either of those societies to the 1910 IMC meeting. office where you go to work is a task-structure. As a matter of fact, it did not occur to Latourette The home is a caretaker structure. The churches, himself, writing all this up in his History of whatever else they are, have to be caretaker Christianity, mentioning Azariah several times, structures. And when church leaders get together, to mention that he was a mission leader, not just they talk about caretaker problems. a church leader! Where is the link between mission theology That hiatus, however, is not a defect in the and church theology? The Fuller Theological structure of 1910, it is a defect in the implementation Seminary Statement of Faith was being revised of 1910. When we have our meeting in 1980, a few years ago. They asked the School of World we will follow the same structure exactly, and Mission to make some remarks about it, so for we will try this time to implement it properly. the second time I looked at it closely, the first We will invite any mission society, from any place time being when I became a professor. I realized in the world. the first time through that that whole statement Thus, the IMC met in Jerusalem and then in of faith structurally was built, like any other Madras, and then they finally went to Ghana to Protestant statement of faith, to explain how it have a meeting in 1958 to consider the develop- is that we’re Christians and nobody else is. The ing anomaly. At the Ghana meeting they said, element of the Great Commission, of redemption, “What are we going to do? We now have mainly comes in the secondary sense. So when we said representatives of national churches coming to that we didn’t have any problems with the our meetings.” I happen to have a copy of the Statement of Faith, except for its fundamental verbatim transcript of everything that was said structure, there was a tense little back-and-forth at Ghana. The next meeting was in New Delhi, discussion for a time! It’s basically a church creed. then in 1963 in Mexico (by this time the IMC had What about the Apostles Creed? Does it say merged into the World Council of Churches), anything about taking the gospel to the ends then came Bangkok, and then Melbourne in 1980. of the earth? No. It’s a church creed. So, the IMC was eliminated, or, that is, it Now, when the church leaders became ascen- was incorporated into the World Council of dant in the field councils, an adjustment became Churches. It became an associated council of necessary in the IMC itself. The IMC now faced councils. It also became a WCC “Commission a dilemma. The transition for the IMC took on World Mission and Evangelism,” and under place between the meeting in Jerusalem in 1928 the latter name it still met, bravely, in Bangkok, and that in Ghana in 1958. Already at the Jeru- and it tried to pretend that it was still interested salem meeting you could see the predominance in missions. Yet what they really did at that of church leaders crowding into the meetings. meeting was to say that missions is over, it is No longer, as in 1910, did they just invite mission a thing of the past! It is no longer legitimate to leaders, and nobody else. send missionaries from anywhere to anywhere! It’s a curious thing: Bishop Azariah, who had (I edited a little book, The Evangelical Response helped to found the two mission societies of to Bangkok). India in 1905 and 1907, was at the 1910 meeting But that’s what you call church theology. at Edinburgh. He was there, but he was not Churches are now everywhere, so what’s the there as a mission leader. He was there because use of missionaries? Let’s not be so uppity about the CMS (the Church Missionary Society of the sending our people to tell somebody else what Anglican Church) said, “Hey, Azi, why don’t to do. “Mission in Six Continents” is the new you come along with us to this conference in phrase. What a terrible heresy! “Mission in Six Edinburgh?” The expatriate missionaries in Continents.” Notice that word in. In other words, India saw him as an outstanding church leader, it takes place within each nation; it does not take and the mission was proud of the church. So place between nations. Well, yes, they have talked they said “Bishop, you come with us!” So he of “from” six continents “to” six continents, but was there at Edinburgh 1910. But the Western what they are referring to are church-to-church missionaries ignored—I’m sure unintentionally— workers, not mission outreach to unreached the enormous significance of the founding of a peoples. 16 – 6 The Legacy of Edinburgh, 1910 The WCC (World Council of Churches), in councils! So what is the use for us to continue preparation for its Melbourne meeting, devoted a to exist?” And so they invented a new category whole issue of the International Review of Mission of the WCC called the Associate Councils of the to an analysis of the IMC’s 1910 meeting, 1928 World Council of Churches, to handle things meeting, and 1936 meeting, and all the meetings like councils of churches. down to Bangkok, and then looking forward to Up until this time the WCC reached around Melbourne. I was asked—I don’t know how this the whole world to churches (and denomina- happened!—to write the article on the Ghana tions) by themselves, not councils of churches. meeting for that issue of IRM. Well, I was flab- Individual churches are direct members of the bergasted and pleased! I said, “Wow, what a World Council. Once the IMC was merged with privilege!” This was the crucial meeting in the the WCC, the latter gained a new department whole history of the International Missionary that takes the National Councils of Churches Council! I wrote back and asked, “May I write into membership. So now the IMC’s Council of not only about Ghana, but also about the struc- Councils is a department of the World Council tural changes that flowed up to it, and so forth?” of Churches, and for many people that effectively The editor said, “Sure, that’s OK!” So I wrote takes the place of the whole missions sphere of an article analyzing this whole trend.* reality. For many people the churches are the In that article, I said that what we need is not reality, and so it’s been a shift that has gone only Mission in Six Continents, but missions full circle. The structure of missions itself has from and to six continents, if necessary. That thus been eliminated. was what had been dropped out of the picture. At this point in history, then, the gatherings I’ve been unfolding to you a “plot” that was of the new WCC entity only invite mission not the design of any human being, but which structures connected to member churches. This was a very understandable transition, which, means that quite a few very significant struc- nevertheless, wrecked a Council founded to tures simply do not fit into the normal pattern focus on missions. It changed because its pillars of participants in the formal meetings of the now were set upon a different kind of entity. WCC’s Commission on World Mission and When all these church leaders from around the Evangelism—for example, a “World Mission” world came to the meeting at Ghana, the West- organization like Wycliffe Bible Translators, ern delegates (in the minority)—those from the or an “Evangelism” organization like the Billy Norwegian Missionary Council, the German Graham Evangelistic Association. This is in Missionary Council, etc.—said, “We can’t vote decided contrast to the tradition of the IMC against all these nice national leaders, all these and the Edinburgh 1910 tradition. church leaders!” It was obvious that it was too late at Ghana *My article was given a name within the series of articles in that issue. The Ghana meeting is where to do anything else. They said, “We don’t have the “marriage” between the IMC and the WCC was any reason for existence, because the World decided upon. Thus, I entitled my article (no doubt Council of Churches is a council of churches, unwisely) “Ghana: Preparation for Marriage.” By and now we also have become a council of church itself that title is clearly misleading. Winter Chapter 17

Missions and Church Councils

… The point is that if you don’t have such “Should our church or denomination join the mission organizations, you can’t have an asso- World Council of Churches?” I always smile ciation. In India they had two, then they had and say, “Yes! By all means, join the World three, then they had four. Now they have five Council!” Then I get horrifyingly grave faces or ten mission organizations in India that have on the other side. They say, “What?! You mean gathered together finally, only last year, to to say that we should join the World Council of form an association of mission organizations. Churches? Don’t you know the WCC is liberal?” I would add one other organization that I My answer is, “If your denomination would think every country needs: a center for frontier join the World Council, it would be less liberal. missions. On the diagram I’ve made it into a And you could out-vote anybody else. diamond-shaped organization. It is basically a If all the churches in the world were to join the sodality. I am a proponent of the idea that every World Council of Churches, it would absolutely country needs a desk, an office, a little building, be transformed and dominated by evangelicals! or maybe a modest campus, such as ours in It is simple statistical fact. If you don’t go out Pasadena, that will attract the attention of all and vote, don’t complain that the government mission agencies and churches and persuade is going wrong. All the different evangelical them to be serious about the frontiers of mission churches in the world that are now getting work around the world. together in Evangelical Fellowships: of India, We’re hoping for sixty such organizations. of Thailand, of Indonesia, of Zambia, etc. If all We have one in Hong Kong, two in Korea, one those churches would simply boldly join the in Scotland; there’s the beginning of one in Brazil, World Council—they can do so directly—and there’s one we think we can lay our hands on then go to its meetings, they could throw the that already exists, sort of, in Stockholm. We bums out! are just looking around the world eagerly to There are quite a few evangelicals already in try to find organizations that will pray with us the World Council. Bishop Arias from Bolivia and work with us as an international network made an out-and-out statement about evangel- that will stress frontier missions. ism. The dominant mood of the World Council Look again at this diagram. In each country at Nairobi was evangelism. But it is the top brass, of the world you’ve got different kinds of things. the staff in Geneva (not all of whom are bad guys You have mission agencies and you’ve got either), who are really controlling the World churches. The International Missionary Council Council of Churches. Yet I tell you, the balance originally was related to mission organizations would be shifted immediately, if a lot of evan- like this. Originally its members were National gelicals and denominations joined. Immediately! Christian Councils. Those Christian Councils If you stay away from the polls because you fell by the wayside, which produced a situation don’t like who’s elected, it isn’t going to do much in which there were both missions and churches, good. For the evangelical churches to withdraw or just churches, and the IMC was related to their funds is the logical move. Maybe they felt these Councils. These are now called National that to withdraw as members would create more Councils of Churches. The World Council of public relations or something, I don’t know. Churches is not related to these National Coun- It’s up to them to decide. I’m kind of glad that cils; rather, it is related directly to the various somebody made that kind of a move. But in the churches. In other words, individual denomi- long run, the WCC will be hanging around for- nations are members of the World Council of ever, hanging around our necks, unless we get Churches (WCC). in there and cleanse the temple. The fact is, if Every place I go in the world, if people ask me, you look across the world today, most of the

© 1996 R. Winter. No copy may be made without the author’s permission. 17 – 1 17 – 2 Missions and Church Councils churches in the world, in sheer numbers, are transition from a situation in which the mission no longer in the West, no longer in Europe and agencies were prominent in the councils, in the America. Furthermore, the churches in the non- days of the National Christian Councils, to a Western world, despite the zany Westernization situation where there were both, and then to a and philosophical confusion of some of their situation where there were just churches. The leaders, nevertheless are still much more likely National Christian Councils became National to be deep-down evangelical churches than are Councils of Churches, and then it was too late the older denominations in the West. Therefore, for the mission agencies to have a voice. if they were all to join the World Council—or Back in Norway you still have the Norwegian even half of them—they could out-vote every- Missionary Council. But the American mission- body else in the WCC. ary association had already been absorbed into I think that the low opinion in the Western the National Council. So the overseas churches lands of the World Council derives from the carried the day, and the Ghana decision was low opinion that the missionaries have of the inevitable and irreversible. World Council, because most of the American All of this occurred in the context of a vast missionaries come from churches that are not worldwide phenomenon which I have called members of the World Council. So we’ve taken the break-down of the uniformitarian hypothesis. our disputes over across the world. The thing This hypothesis grew up as a result of the mono- that we fail to realize is that our own National lithic structure of the Roman Empire. It was Council is so far worse than the World Council championed for the longest time by the Roman that we can’t believe there’s any good in the Catholic Church. Its first major setback was World Council or any hope for it. Yet, frankly, when the Protestant Reformation took place, I think that the World Council, with a twist of and there was a breakdown between Teutonic the wrist, could become dominated by evangel- and Mediterranean cultures. That was the evi- icals. I don’t really expect this to happen. I’m dence of a crack in the monolithic nature of the only telling you what could happen. Christian movement. Now the next thing that happened was that, It turned out that in both camps the concept since the IMC and the WCC were both related of pluralism did not grow effectively, and when to churches—one related to individual denomi- German missionaries went to Brazil, for instance, nations and the other related to whole bagfulls they planted German churches. They taught of denominations—then what was the use of the Brazilians how to speak German. I was in those two organizations staying separate? As a a Missouri Synod seminary in South Brazil and result, the World Council of Churches absorbed was shown into a room with 20,000 books. I said, the IMC. It has a sort of associate department, “Isn’t this wonderful! What language are these the Associated Councils of the World Council books in?” Here I am in the Brazilian-speaking of Churches. This is still related to the councils world, and the guy said, “Well, 60% of them of churches, while the WCC itself is still related are in German.” This is an American Lutheran to the individual churches. The IMC has now in Brazil, and 60% of the books in the seminary become a shorn lamb. It’s become the DWME, library were in German! I said, “What about the the Division of World Mission and Evangelism, other books?” The other 40% were in English. with a very flimsy Commission on World Mis- You see, the uniformitarian hypothesis—that sion and Evangelism (CWME, which in my everybody has to learn German, or if not article is spelled OWME). It met in Mexico in German at least English, in order to be a really 1963, Bangkok in 1970, and Melbourne in 1980. full-fledged Christian—has become almost an That’s just to tell the story. It’s not to evaluate inevitable theological assumption. I call it an it or anything. In my Ghana article it is spelled hypothesis, that everybody has to speak the out in greater detail, but without the diagrams. same language: the Latin mass, for instance, The central transition that took place was the has to always be in Latin. Winter Chapter 18

The Story of Global Civilization as of 1945

It has never been an option for most human things they study and upon which they are beings in history to muse about the shape and forced to focus, are not event-oriented but are trend of things at a global level, much less instrumental, having to do with current affairs, developments across the centuries. Those who current studies of the natural world, current have traversed this study program to this point trends in the commercial sphere, skills, practical are some of a very small, favored few. But we knowledge, from which their livelihood must need to make sure that none of us misses the come. Thus, even among “educated” people main point of this program. there may be few courses which offer the basic Millions of people go through college without data for any kind of overall picture. ever really expecting to see any order or overall The closest approximation to what we are pattern to the story of man. Is this because others talking about is embodied in the widely popular have looked for it and have not found it? Is it text we employ which is entitled precisely that they do not care? Are they no more con- Global Civilization, a book which is an outgrowth cerned about the overall global picture than a of a course on Western Civilization. In this book kitten sitting on someone’s lap worries about and others like it, a great wealth of information city or state or federal elections? is to be found. Much of it is descriptive of what One thing we can observe, and that is the happened. Much of it could be employed to fact that the desire to see some sort of meaning feed the kind of education in which there is no to history has not always in every place been order, no pattern—things just happened—in even a concept much less a major concern. Most which case the definition of an education becomes individuals in history have been struggling to merely to memorize what happened, to learn survive. This is still true today in our troubled the “major” people and places and events or world. My wife and I are strangely moved even the great ideas. when we read current literature bewailing the While that kind of pursuit might be of some plight of working children around the world. value, it would seem to be much more attractive We note that children in the work place in to believe in the possibility of discerning real Honduras are earning only 31¢ an hour, which development in global affairs across history, is more than an adult male earned in a ten-hour and even, perhaps, to reflect on the future. day in our time in mountains of Guatemala. This entire study program would not exist People in such circumstances do not have if we did not feel sure there is meaning and the luxury of reflecting on the meaning of the movement, a discernible pattern. In the process last 4,000 years. They cannot even acquire the of discovering this pattern we cannot expect to basic information out of which any kind of a avoid or eliminate mystery. We cannot expect picture would emerge. It is probable that a to explain or understand everything. Our 400- large percentage of the people in the world are year epoch approach gives us ten pegs on which not even aware of the name of the country in to hang things, and the possibility of any sort which they have been defined by the global of pattern conforming to those pegs must not powers-that-be. be expected unless there is evidence for it. The opposite kind of problem arises, however, But by 1945, although much of the world in the case of the 1% of world population that was in ruins, and many rosy assumptions has the amazing privilege of going to college. about the phenomenon of progress were shot People in that category do not lack the rudimen- to pieces, the very tools of that war, the very tary knowledge which imperils understanding possibility of air travel and electronic communi- on the part of the other 99%. They take courses, cation, were evidences of totally unprecedented which flood them with facts. Yet most of the achievements. The energies demanded by this

© 1996 R. Winter. No copy may be made without the author’s permission. 18 – 1 18 – 2 The Story of Global Civilization as of 1945 war actually went far toward ending the painful but its literature has certainly become global in depression years through which the United impact. And the closest thing to a world lan- States, and much of the world, had been passing. guage, English, reflects a stream of history Indeed the war-enforced disciplines and the war- which has probably imbibed more influence required skills provided an incredible advance from the Judaic than any other global sphere. in industrial and scientific muscle, which became However, other nearly global languages, such the basis of even greater accomplishments at as French, Spanish, Portuguese are also deeply an accelerated speed from that point on. impacted by the small, ancient Judaic tradition. For one thing, in 1945, it was still not quite How did this happen? It was, in part, the very clear that there was a single global story to tell. simple migration of Jewish believing commu- Looking back, for example, it is curious that nities, earlier than 1,000 BC in Egypt, later in the truly brilliant Maya did not build on the Assyria and Babylon, and later still throughout knowledge of the Romans. The Maya developed the vast reaches of the Roman Empire. Instru- a calendar which is to this day superior to any mentally undergirding even that huge diaspora developed in any other civilization. But, though was the amazing and ubiquitous existence of they lived 1,000 years after the Romans built the Septuagint. This selection of earlier documents their 125,000 miles of incredibly durable roads, had a life of its own, taking advantage of the the Maya apparently could employ the wheel phenomenal spread of the Greek language— only in the construction of toys. Meanwhile, learned and used by people from India to Ire- the Roman calendar was, by comparison to the land, and providing the major portion of the Maya’s, an absolutely crude contraption. structure of the modern Bible, to which no other Thor Hyerdahl went to great lengths to document is parallel in global dispersion and prove to many that the Peruvian peoples were translation, or influence. The Qur’an, while capable of coming across the Pacific from Asia, widely revered, is officially untranslatable, and but the discovery in recent times of earlier and thus, as a book, is not at all widely read and earlier evidences of human populations in the understood by comparison. However, even the Western hemisphere deepens the mystery Qur’an cannot be explained apart from the regarding the origins of the so-called New impact of the Septuagint and parts of the New World civilizations or connections in ancient Testament, some scholars suggesting that times with other parts of the globe. Muhammad essentially did for the Semitic Don Richardson has written of the common sphere what Paul did for the Hellenistic sphere, existence in many different cultural streams of in the sense of building on the Judaic base, except a High God concept. This may not provide that Muhammad had contact with the result of evidence of cultural diffusion as readily as Paul’s work, while the reverse was not true. common earlier awareness. But whether or not Thus, today, three major forces in global civil- there is any evidence of a single origin for human ization, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, all civilizations, it is certainly clear by 1945 that derive from a single ancient tradition. Toynbee there is eminent reason to speak of a growing has called these the Judaic religions. Perhaps it phenomenon of global civilization. That is, it is the very smallness of that ancient tradition does not have to be shown to have begun at one which has in part enabled its literature to be so place to be leading to toward a single place. widely influential. We say, “in part” because Leaving out the Western hemisphere, it is smallness alone would by no means explain evident that there is some real evidence of the growth in influence. We may often get the progress in Asia from ancient times, as well as impression that the influence of the Judaic tra- interpenetration between China, India, and the dition is primarily reflected in the Christian Mediterranean. For example, the possible impact tradition. We fail to recognize that in Luther’s of what is called the “New Testament” on the day there were more Muslims than Christians terminology and content of the Gita is some- in the world, even though Islam got started thing we have read about. half a millennium later. The rationale for looking closely at the Judaic Typical Christian bias down through the story could not be because of the size or extent centuries has disguised the hundreds of contri- of its people, even under Solomon, since there butions, scientific, social, legal, artistic, medical, were many other larger empires. Again, the that have come from this other major Judaic reason is much clearer in 1945. The Hebrew stream. It is nevertheless clear, as Christopher language has not become a world language, Dawson so convincingly points out, that, if we Ralph D. Winter 18 – 3 look closely, there is finally a rise in Western Christianity than at any time before. civilization for which there is no parallel. This This is to distinguish between what was seen is an astonishing conclusion with which few at the time, in 1945, and what we know now secular historians agree. about what had happened by then. It is the In the beginning of this module we tried to latter that forms the basis of our analysis at this suggest that whether a student agrees with time. Yet, even as this is being written, in 1996, Dawson or not, it is in any case highly instruc- there are many intellectuals who still insist on a tive to abide by his conclusions and study his pessimism which overlooks the influence of the reasons. We have said the same for the five Judaic faiths in favor of the decline of Western renaissances which seem to offer an easily political power. Those who decry the loss of the employed set of milestones against which to latter are ill prepared to identify the extravagant compare events, whether or not they all fit neatly expansion of the former. This is the problem into the simple scheme of five renaissances. which Latourette faced in his time and to a Once more, it is easier to see these things lesser extent optimists face in our day. The word from the vantage point of 1945 than at any ear- nowadays for optimists of this kind is the word lier date. This is not because of the discouraged triumphalist. climate of that period, soon to be heightened by An outstanding example of the strong pres- the triumph of communism in China. Rather it sure on historians to downplay any thought of is because, as we now know, there was so much the triumph of Christian faith is the final page more evidence of the worldwide spread of in Paul Johnson’s History of Christianity: