David and Solomon: Missionaries and Churches in Ecumenical-Missionary Reflection
While the ministry of cross-cultural, long-term missionaries was at the heart of the work and reflection of the International Missionary Council (IMC), the meetings of its successor, the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism, paid much less attention to the role of missionaries and even fell vi...
| Published in: | International review of mission |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Wiley-Blackwell
2022
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| In: |
International review of mission
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| Further subjects: | B
International Missionary Council
B Integration B Missionaries B voluntary principle B missionary societies |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | While the ministry of cross-cultural, long-term missionaries was at the heart of the work and reflection of the International Missionary Council (IMC), the meetings of its successor, the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism, paid much less attention to the role of missionaries and even fell virtually silent on it for some decades. This article traces the shift in the perception of missionaries in the ecumenical movement in the era of decolonization, especially in the 1950s and early 1960s. It contends that with the bathwater of colonial ecclesiastical domination, the baby – the cross-cultural missionary – was also thrown out. At the Ghana assembly of the IMC, one delegate compared the missionary societies to David and the local churches to Solomon and argued that the time had come for David to give way to Solomon. While many in the ecumenical movement were inclined to go along with this idea, the voluntary principle that had fuelled the Protestant missionary movement of the 19th and early 20th centuries could not be quelled. Missionaries continued to be sent, often outside the mainstream ecclesiastical bodies, and increasingly from countries in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. This article ends with a plea for fresh ecumenical reflection on the role of missionaries in churches and missions. The illustrations are drawn from the context of the Middle East, where mainstream Protestant missionaries helped birth the ecumenical movement but steadily decreased in number over the course of the 20th century. As elsewhere, new waves of non-mainstream and non-Western Protestant missionaries have come to the Middle East, a development that necessitates renewed ecumenical reflection and new forms of cooperation. |
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| ISSN: | 1758-6631 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: International review of mission
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/irom.12428 |