Meanwhile, building on earlier foundations laid at the Conference on Missions held in 1860 at
Liverpool (The Secretaries, 1860) and at the Centenary Conference on the Protestant Missions of the World held in 1888 in Exeter Hall, London (Johnston, 1888), the Protestant Ecumenical Conference on Foreign Missions, held in 1900 in New York City (Ecumenical Missionary
Conference New York, 1900) endeavoured to bring together the united thought of Christendom from all over the world. They grappled with problems relating to the world’s evangelisation in an effort to call the church to her missional responsibility for world evangelism. Wilson summarises that the concern was not just to impart training but to
13 Those of the Evangelical, or Pietist movement in Western European Protestantism called themselves
Fundamentalists. The term Fundamentalism arose out of a concern among British and American Protestants about what they perceived as being liberalism and modernism in Christianity. They asserted ideas they considered fundamental to Christian life and teaching such as: the inerrancy of the Bible, sola scriptura, the virgin birth of Christ, substitutionary atonement, the bodily resurrection and imminent and personal return of Jesus Christ. Marty, Martin, 1990. North America. In: McManners, John (ed.) The Oxford illustrated history of Christianity. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press:384-419 and Chadwick, Owen, 1990. Great Britain and Europe. In: McManners, John (ed.) The Oxford illustrated history of Christianity. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press:341-83.
facilitate the effective development of leadership in their engagement with the world (2013:625).
There was a further move towards international dialogue in the World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh in 1910, representing mostly Protestant mission councils from the Western world. Of the 1400 participants, only 17 came from the Majority World and significant nations were excluded (World Council of Churches, 2009a:1). For example, there had been major missional activity in Sub-Saharan Africa nearly a century earlier, yet although Europeans who worked in Africa were at the 1910 Conference representing Africa, no African Christians were present (Omenyo, 2006:244). However, Werner states that this conference was marked by a strong commitment to theological education, reflected in:
a) ... the interest for a proper policy for general education of the people ... b) ... a major concern for common approaches in higher theological education of the missionaries in particular and (c) a specific concern for the theological training of indigenous church leaders in vernacular languages’ (2009a:10).
The report of the Commission III concluded:
We believe that the primary purpose to be served by the educational work of missionaries is that of training the native Church to bear its own proper witness ... and ... move forward towards ... independence and self-government ... We believe that the most important of all the ends which missionary education ought to set itself to serve, is that of training those who are to be the spiritual leaders and teachers of ... their own nation (World Missionary Conference, 1910:371-72).
A further recommendation was that:
The greatest possible care ... be taken to avoid the risk of denationalising those who are being trained. In particular, we desire to lay the greatest emphasis on the importance of giving religious teaching, not only of the elementary kind, but as far as possible throughout, in the vernacular (World Missionary Conference, 1910:373).
Although the First World War affected progress of theological education from a European perspective, Edinburgh 1910 paved the way for terms not yet used like indigenisation and contextualisation, which fully emerged in the 1970s.
Again by the 1930s, cries for renewal began to be heard within Protestant theological education calling for curriculum focussed on practice rather than on research. A study
directed by Brown and his colleagues reinforced this call but unfortunately gave no guidelines for implementation (Ferris, 1990:8). At the International Missionary Council (IMC) meetings in Tambaram, India in 1938, younger churches expressed their dissatisfaction with theological education that they believed was out of touch with current realities and the needs of the people, and lacked in leadership (Ferris, 1990:9; Newbigin, 1979:105). They appealed for the Committee to consult with the churches in order to take positive action in the task of ministry preparation and to develop theological education in the language of the people it served (Ferris, 1990:9-10; Laing, 2009:15).
In 1937, leaders representing more than 100 predominantly Protestant and Western churches agreed to establish a World Council of Churches (WCC) to promote global unity between churches and to foster common witness and service. The historical roots of this council ‘are found in student and lay movements of the 19th century, the 1910 Edinburgh world missionary conference, and a 1920 encyclical from the (Orthodox) Synod of Constantinople suggesting a “fellowship of churches” similar to the League of Nations’ (World Council of Churches, 2009b:1). With the outbreak of the Second World War, its inauguration was deferred and many theological colleges were either closed, damaged, or became expressions of mission in themselves, being used as hospitals or for accommodation.
Once the war was over, more careful attention needed to be paid to the task of ministry preparation (Newbigin, 1979:105). The WCC was finally inaugurated in August 1948 when representatives of 147 churches assembled in Amsterdam for its constitution (World Council of Churches, 2009b:1). This council, representing a broad spectrum of voices, provided the worldwide church, and effectively theological education, the opportunity to hear about and connect with what God is doing in the world through debate, response to challenges and involvement in community and social issues.
A survey conducted by WCC soon after its inception showed that the subject of mission was rapidly disappearing from the curriculum of many theological colleges in North America (Beaver 1984:76 cited in Esin, 2005:3-4). The demise continued as schools became increasingly modelled on Greek thinking (underpinning Western rationalism) and educational patterns of modernity, industrialism, colonialism and individualism (Bosch, 1991:330; Wanak, 2000:3). Concurrently however, Bible schools and in-service training of North American Pentecostal mission remained active, producing growing, indigenous Pentecostal churches throughout the world (Anderson, 2004b:5).
The two World Wars of the twentieth century ‘ripped Europe apart and terminated its dominance of the Old World’ in what has been called the ‘age of decolonisation [between WWII-1980, when] regions conquered by European empires gradually obtained their independence’ (Essential Humanities, 2013). The independence of India in 1949 thus set off what Anderson calls a ‘domino-like fall of colonies culminating with South Africa in 1994. The end of colonialism gave rise to a new and strident nationalism, and more recently there has emerged a new continentalism that emphasizes human dignity’ (2004b:6).