Historical Foundation
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
10:57 AM
The modern Ecumenical Movement often takes the 1910 Edinburgh World Missionary Conference (June 14-23) as its starting point.  Prior to the Edinburgh conference there had been other missionary conferences.  A conference was held in 1888 at the centennial of the modern Protestant mission work in London.  From April 21-May 1, 1900, the “Ecumenical Missionary Conference” composed of North American British and other European mission societies was held in New York.  One of the goals of these conferences was to come to comity agreements that would define the relationships between denominations as they entered the same mission field.   The difference of the Edinburgh conference said, James Barton was, “This was the first Missionary conference where the membership was confined to officially appointed delegates from recognized societies, and upon membership determined on a principle of proportion.  This made the Conference a representative body as no preceding Conference had been.”[1]       
One of the principal organizers of the World Missionary Conference was John R. Mott, a Methodist and leader in student ecumenical movements. Mott had developed to become a principal leader in the YMCA movement.  Long before the YMCA was a gym, it was an international movement to unite young men in Christian discipleship. Jurgen Moltmann, for instance, identifies the work of the YMCA in Scotland as contributing to his conversion to Christianity after WWII (The Source of Life: The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Life, p. 8). Mott was also a significant leader in the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions.  Mott was co-awarded the 1946 Nobel Peace Prize alongside Emily Greene Balch.      The First World War interrupted this germinating ecumenical work.  In 1925, Nathan Söderblom organized the first Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work in Stockholm, Sweden.  One of the themes expressed during this conference was that service unites, doctrine divides.  The specific issues addressed had to do with social and moral problems, economic and industrial conditions, the church’s role in fostering improved international relations, and education (Fitzgerald, 89).  Söderblom, by the way, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1930.  
Before the interruption of the First World War, the need to address theological difference was becoming apparent.  In 1927 (August 3-21), the first Conference on Faith and Order was held in Lausanne, Switzerland.  Its principal leaders were Swedish Lutheran Bishop Nathan Soderblom, Episcopal (US) Bishop Charles Brent, and Orthodox Metropolitan, Germanos Strenopoulos from Constantinople.  Unlike the Edinburgh conference that had been composed entirely of Protestants, the 1927 Faith and Order Conference brought together Orthodox, Anglican, Old Catholic and Protestant Churches.  The language that began to emerge through the Faith and Order movement was the language of “visible unity.”  This conference was to finding ways of expressing theological consesnsus.        
At this point in the history, three “streams” of ecumenism had been identified.  Evangelism as represented in the Edinburgh Conference of 1910, Service as represented by the 1925 Life and Work Conference, and Theology as reflected in the 1927 Lausanne conference.  In 1937, the Life and Work movement held a conference in Oxford and about a month later the Faith and Order movement held a meeting in Edinburgh.  Delegates approved motions for the two movements to unite and form the World Council of Churches at both conferences. It served as something of a culmination the preceding movements.  The Second World War interrupted this progress.  The World Council of Churches would be officially launched in 1948 in Amsterdam.    
[1] Christian Unity at Work:  The Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, in Quadrennial Session at Chicago, Illinois, 1912, Rev. James L. Barton, "Co-operation Among Christian Forces on the Foreign Field:  Report of the Committee on Foreign Missions," p. 81ff
From <[link]> 