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“MISSION TOGETHER IN A FRAGILE WORLD” A Keynote Address to Church World Service Missiological Convocation

October 21, 2008, South Bend, Indiana

Dr. Daryl Balia

Our practice of doing God’s mission together in the world today is premised

on the notion that mission is from everywhere to everywhere. What might be less

clear to us though, is how we have arrived at such an understanding of our

‘missionary calling’ in this fractured and shaken world which we are both blessed and

challenged to inhabit. One way to get a grip of our moorings is to take an historical

overview of the missionary legacy which we have inherited through the witness of

some of the great fathers and mothers of the faith. This is a useful point of departure

for someone more at home with understanding ‘where we are going to’ being

determined by ‘where we have come from.’ First, I attempt to anchor our vision for

mission together in the evangelical convictions about race and equality evidenced in

the theology of John Wesley. Then, we journey with the first American missionaries

to the continent of Africa in search of their first converts among the ‘heathen’ before

we arrive at the door of that great gathering known as Edinburgh 1910. It is here

that the great ecumenical journey towards unity in mission began, albeit against the

backdrop of a very limiting worldview regarding representation, difference, dignity

and friendship. We then follow some of the plans and preparations for Edinburgh

2010 when the occasion of the centenary celebrations is being shadowed with the

need for humility and hope to define the disposition of the next generation of mission

leaders. One challenge for mission stands out most immediately in the form of the

current global crisis, due in no small measure to human greed and corruption of a

proportion that makes our survival on this planet now more threatened than before.

Each one of these parts is of course meant to convey a personal narrative of my own

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journey in understanding, in learning the business of doing God’s mission against the

odds, as a South African Methodist having served both church and government, and

now working in Europe with a heart for mission.

‘God’s Heathens’

World missions, whether for Protestants or Christians generally, was

historically meant to include as primary agents those people who we considered

‘lost’ in a world we knew little about. In a famous journal entry of 1739, John Wesley

had this to say about the world and his perceived role in it then.1

I look upon all the world as my parish; thus far I mean, that, in whatever part

of it I am, I judge it meet, right, and my bounded duty to declare unto all that

are willing to hear, the glad tidings of salvation. This is the work which I know

God has called me to; and sure I am that his blessing attends it.

Wesley, initially at least, might have succumbed to the temptation of seeing

the parish as his world for if mission meant going to mostly white and nominal

Christians who happened to be located abroad; he was content to rather pursue

such work at home. It is therefore no accident, says Henry Rack, that Methodist

missions were acquired the way the British acquired their colonies, ‘in a fit of

absence of mind, coming to terms with them in an official way afterwards.’2 There

was clearly no strategic formulation or policy at work, except the drive to recognise

new circuits that were evolving abroad. While Thomas Coke was agitating for

missions abroad, Wesley remained usually negative and this might have arisen in

part from his own early missionary encounter with native Indians in Georgia. The tide

might have changed in 1778 when the Methodist conference debated the matter of a

mission to Africa, but it was only in 1786 when the Methodist conference for the first 1 Percy L. Parker, ed., The Journal of John Wesley, Moody Press: Chicago, n.d., p 74 2 Henry D. Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism, Trinity Press International: Philadelphia, 1989, p 478

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time sanctioned the sending of William Warrender for ‘heathen’ missions, that is, to

minister to black persons in the West Indies. This was before William Carey had

formed the Baptist Missionary Society, though the first Wesleyan society for foreign

missions was only formed in 1813 after Wesley’s death. Then too, it was not the

usual voluntary society, but one meant to operate as a department of the emerging

church structure.

If the nineteenth century was the ‘great century’ for world missions, it is hardly

surprising to encounter resistance in earlier times to the notion of ‘reaching the un-

reached’ among mainstream Protestants. Some might have earlier believed that the

Great Commission had been directed to the apostles while others, under Calvinist

influences, dared not attempt to do God’s work for God. Having come through two

centuries of struggle for the survival for its heart and soul, Protestants might be

forgiven for having misplaced their missionary zeal for conversions in the eighteenth

century. If John Wesley saw the world as his parish but shared no passion for the

conversion of the heathen, his missionary ‘disposition’ towards the other ‘stranger in

our midst’ remains a challenge for us and was certainly far in advance of his time.

This ‘other’ in Wesley’s England was the black slave, the object of commercial

transactions, human abuse and the ‘sum of all villainies’.

Slave owners and slave traders found justification for upholding their

capitalistic impulses in slave dealing with the belief that blacks were barbaric and

uncivilized. This justification of oppression on the grounds of race was made on

ideological grounds, therefore, as it served their interests to propagate such a view

which seems to have also been held by the likes of George Whitfield and John

Newton. Both were never opposed to slavery as they were to its darker side.

Contrary to Whitfield, Wesley held that the hot climate of Georgia was, no excuse for

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slave holding as for him it was a case of, ‘Better no trade, than trade procured by

villainy.’3 Wesley’s understanding of natural law, human liberty and inherent equality

would not allow him to sit comfortably in midst of such eighteenth century cultural

superiority. In his words, ‘Certainly the African is in no respect inferior to the

European.’4 In an interesting study, Irv Brendlinger has shown that for Wesley the

negro slave was no more the object of evangelical zeal for conversion than the

English nominal Christian.5 In no way were Christian nations required to spread their

brand of ‘scriptural holiness’ as this was the responsibility of individual Christians.

Blacks, wherever in the world and whether slave or free, were neither the ‘noble

savages’ nor the ‘white man’s burden’ but worthy recipients of the gospel of grace

like any other human being depraved by sin.

Wesley was indeed bound by ‘duty to declare unto all that are willing to hear,

the glad tidings of salvation.’ The burden of evangelical obligation is tempered in

Wesley’s understanding by the recognition of human freedom, as the task of

proclamation cannot be undertaken against the will of a person. Such religious liberty

allowed one ‘to choose our own religion, to worship God according to our own

conscience, according to the best light we have.’6 Love of neighbour was not be

construed as ‘desire to convert’ as that would amount to a misreading of Wesley’s

conception of salvation. No one had the right to pronounce judgement and sentence

the heathen to damnation, for it is better, says Wesley, ‘to leave them to him that

made them, and who is “father of all flesh;” who is the God of the Heathens as well

as the Christians, and who hateth nothing that he hath made’.7 As Brendlinger has

3 See Wesley’s ‘Thoughts upon Slavery’ in Thomas Jackson, ed., The Works of John Wesley, 3rd edition, Vol.XI, Wesleyan Conference Office: London, 1872, p 74 4 Ibid., p 74 5 Irv A. Brendlinger, Social Justice through the Eyes of John Wesley, Joshua Press, Ontario, 2006 6 See Wesley’s ‘Thoughts upon Liberty’ in Jackson, Works, Vol. XI, p 37 7 See Wesley’s sermon ‘On Faith’ in Jackson, Works, Vol. VII, p 353

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observed,8 this was an ‘amazing position’ to adopt for an eighteenth century

evangelical, one that transcends time almost as far as world missions are

concerned.

North American Missions

Nineteenth century Christian missions, whether in Africa or elsewhere, were

dominated by what came to be called the three-self formula, namely, the need for

self-governing, self-propagating and self-supporting churches being established on

the basis of missionary efforts. Such churches, though, were required to be

perpetually under white supervision and serviced by natives in possession of ‘wide

experience’ and ‘thorough training’ before they could be entrusted with the onerous

tasks of pastoral office. This unfortunately led to an overtly dualistic practice of

selective ordination by white American missionaries in order to safeguard their

power, privilege, status and authority in the mission field. Ordination in most

Protestant traditions involves the public recognition of one’s calling to be a minister

of the gospel, when one is separated and commissioned for a lifetime of Christian

ministry. It involves receiving divine sanction, usually to preach the word, administer

the sacraments and exercise pastoral responsibility. Within the life of a church

community, this implies that the person thus ordained is given access to power and

authority denied to ordinary members of the church, usually at the start of his or her

ministry. Ordained ministers usually partake fully in all the church’s institutional

structures, including disciplinary matters and those relating to the admission of

candidates for ordination itself. In most traditions, during the nineteenth century

anyway, most ordained ministers were white males who scorned the prospect of

women joining their ranks, let alone men of colour who converted from missionary

8 Brendlinger, p 71

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endeavour. American churches, at this time, constituted a hierarchical institutional

structure which allowed only their obedient native assistants to receive ordination as

a loyalty ‘bonus’ for their perseverance in being trained, validated and eventually

granted access to power. Most importantly, when the exercise of such power and

authority would have shifted the balance against the missionary establishment, it

became a boundary marker and was not to be liberally distributed.

Southern Africa was not the first American missionary foray into Africa,

however, as a journey of inspection had been made in 1833 by John Leighton

Wilson and his native assistant Stephen R. Wyncoop into the wilds of West Africa.

The South African expedition was led by a pioneering party of six men who together

with their wives set sail from Boston on 3 December 1834. This was a time when the

spirit of missions had begun to enter the hearts and minds of New Englanders

largely of course through the work of the American Board of Commissioners for

Foreign Missions, often called the American Board Mission, a voluntary organisation

formed in 1810 and supported by the Congregational, Presbyterian and Reformed

churches. Its founding charter of 1812 was explicit that it was created ‘for the

purpose of propagating the gospel in foreign lands by supporting missionaries, by

diffusing a knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, and by maintaining appropriate

Christian activities and institutions.’9 Work had commenced in places like India,

Palestine, Syria, the Sandwich Islands, and China, while Africa was still that ‘dark

continent’ partially mapped out but mostly comprising that ‘Great Desert’ with the

southern part as yet ‘unexplored territory.’ As George Champion, one of the six

missionaries, would confirm, going to Africa meant entering a land where ‘wild

beasts, savages and every foe to the white man’s health and life were reported as

9 D. J. Kotze, ed., Letters of the American Missionaries, Van Riebeeck Society: Cape Town, p 3

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existing.’10 A most pleasant surprise awaited them upon their arrival in Cape Town

about two months later, for instead of waterless rivers, barren plains and songless

birds, they now found themselves in ‘a land of great, uplifted, fertile, populous

plateaus, of magnificent inland lakes, of majestic rivers that brim their banks’ and

indeed ‘a land of gold, ivory, diamonds and gums, of sugar cane, coffee, cotton,

camwood and a thousand other things that all the rest of the world want’.11 The

missionaries split themselves up into two groups, one bound for the interior part of

the country, and the other for the maritime Zulus on the east coast.

Unlike the London Missionary Society, who sought the conversion of

individuals, the Americans had learnt from other contexts that it was important to

secure the support of the ruling elite and work through them for the conversion of

nations. Despite Zulu king Dingane’s initial hospitality in receiving the missionaries

and giving them an audience, he generally preferred to watch them from a distance.

He did not allow them to set up station at the royal kraal as they had hoped, neither

did he attend their services or partake in their schools. On the back of such a

lukewarm response from the Zulu leader, conversions among the people were few,

attendance at Sabbath services dismal and morale among the missionaries soon

reached an all time low. In 1838, in the aftermath of Dingane’s slaughter of some

Dutch (Boer) settlers, the missionaries fled the scene only to return a year later. This

was after Dingane had been defeated in battle by the Boers, who now began to

settle themselves on large tracts of land, and who, together with the English and the

missionaries on occasion, would dominate the political establishment that was being

formed.

10 Sarah Tuttle Champion, ed., Rev. George Champion: Pioneer Missionary to the Zulus. Sketch of His Life and Extracts From His Journal, 1834-1838, Morehouse and Taylor Press: New Haven, Conn., 1896, p 7 11 Luther M. Keneston, ed., The Autobiography of the Rev. Lewis Grout, Clapp and Jones: Brattleboro, VT, 1905, p 22

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Missionary Mandates

Instructions given to those destined for foreign service as missionaries were

usually similar in content with some variation in details depending on the anticipated

exigencies to be faced in new situations. The first set of guidelines for the South

African pioneers were written by Rufus Anderson12, the ‘senior secretary’ of the

American Board Mission. While the ‘object of the missions of the Board is

everywhere the same,’ he urged his colleagues to set up their mission stations

‘where the soil, water, climate, prospect, proximity to the natives, and inducements

for them to settle around you and cultivate the land, are all as they should be.’ In

addition, the missionaries were advised to consider ‘the measures to be adopted to

raise up native assistants in sufficient numbers for the mission,’ but they were

warned that their secular assignments will ‘sometimes make those of you who are

preachers feel that you have almost ceased to be ministers of the gospel by

becoming missionaries.’13 This subtle distinction between minister and missionary

was characteristic of Anderson’s theology where the missionary is supposed to have

no business with Christian believers save for the unconverted. His primary function is

to preach the gospel and plant institutions related to that task. He plants new fields

and then hands them over to indigenous pastors to exercise oversight, and then

moves on to new pastures. The missionary is a pioneer, an ambassador of Christ,

proclaiming the gospel where it has not been heard, and the one who will gather the

people together to form a local church.

12 The guidelines were also signed by the other secretaries of the American Board Mission at the time, namely, B. B. Wisner and D. Greene. See ‘Instructions of the Prudential Committee to the Rev. Daniel Lindley, Rev. Aldin Grout, Rev. Alexander E. Wilson, M.D., Rev. George Champion, Rev. Henry I. Venable, and Newton Adams, M.D., and their Wives. Given in Park Street Church, Boston, Nov. 22, 1834.’ A copy is published in Letters of the American Missionaries, pp 46-52 13 Letters of the American Missionaries, p 47, pp 50-51

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The missionary was not to remain to be a pastor to the people. ‘As quickly as

possible,’ says Anderson, ‘the missionary is expected to raise up indigenous clergy

to take charge. He should not even be a member of the national ecclesiastical body

when it is formed, because he is a foreigner, he is temporary’.14 Or, to put it in

another way, ‘After a native church is formed, it should have, as soon as possible, a

native pastor and the needed church officers; and the native pastor should have

ample scope for preaching and for all his ministerial and pastoral abilities and duties.’

Yet, as Anderson would very wisely qualify this view, ‘It is a great point to know when

to do this.’(emphasis added)15 In the event, as one commentator later notes, ‘no

other policy was more redolent of good intentions, nor more likely to produce

ingenious reasons why missionaries should stay just a little longer.’16 Rather than get

up and go, the classic case was of a missionary who chose to settle down to his

‘pastoral’ role in the absence of mass conversions, surrounded by a prodigious band

of native assistants who were ever willing to roam the heathen kraals to put their

newly-acquired faith and preaching skills to the ultimate test – of doing that which

was necessary to be found acceptable in the eyes of the missionaries for admission

to company of the ‘ordained’ men of God.

By 1891, after more than half a century of missionary endeavour, Rev. Josiah

Tyler was adamant that, ‘There are no instances in which educated Zulus have

attained distinction in divine knowledge,’ though, as he put it, ‘some have so studied

14 R. Pierce Beaver, ed., To Advance the Gospel: Selections from the Writings of Rufus Anderson, W.B. Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 1967, p 28 15 Memorial Volume of the First Fifty Years of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Fifth Edition, ABCFM, Missionary House: Boston, 1862, p 251 16 William R. Hutchison, Errand to the World: American Protestant Thought and Foreign Missions, University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London, 1987, p 97

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the Bible and have their hearts so permeated by the Holy Spirit that they have been

truly eloquent’.17

As disturbing as the picture of South Africa’s Zulu mission might have looked

by 1910, it was not dissimilar in India where ‘the American Board missions had been

working for forty years without putting a single native pastor over a church, or

indeed, ordaining a single native preacher.’18 Missionary work among the American

Indians and on the Sandwich Islands generated a similar paucity of ordinations. The

South African pioneers might have made a false start as many others have done and

from which only confusion and failure have resulted. Consequent upon their failure to

secure conversions on a mass scale, they developed a long term vision where a

mission was established with ‘a certain permanence.’ Though the task of the mission

was to establish native churches, it ended up establishing itself at the expense of the

Church, a point often made by missionary critic Roland Allen.19

One did not have to look far it seems, to find excuses to justify the change of

approach. One was that the fault lay with the native people themselves who were

simply uninterested, with no notion of the demands of pastoral office, but a penchant

for men with social prestige in the community rather than young men of promise.20

Another often repeated view was that though Africans made great preachers, they

lacked ‘distinction in divine knowledge’ and more importantly, possessed no ‘moral

backbone’ for the task.21 Still another was the risk of causing the Africans to ‘lose

their mental balance’ and respect for the missionaries and the communities they

17 Josiah Tyler, Forty Years Among the Zulus, Congregational Sunday School and Publishing Society: Boston and Chicago, 1891, p 171 18 Robert E. Speer, Studies of Missionary Leadership, Westminster Press: Philadelphia, 1914, p 264 Speer was himself only too well aware how immensely difficult it was to adhere to the Pauline method of conducting foreign missions, yet credits Anderson for his emphasis on the local church and native pastorate. 19 Roland Allen, Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s Or Ours, Robert Scott: London, 1912 20 See Richard Sales’ edition of A. F. Christofersen, Adventuring with God: The Story of the American Board Mission in South Africa, Durban, 1967. 21 Forty Years Among the Zulus, p 176

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served.22 This latter argument might have found sympathy with Anderson himself

who, though a strong advocate for native ordinations, was not in favour of equality

between missionary and native pastor. He preferred to see natives trained to accept

their duties and responsibilities in a state of subordination to their ‘more intelligent

and experienced missionary brethren’ with less autonomy and a lower rank.23

Seminary education should be adapted accordingly for a people emerging out from

‘barbarism’ and a sudden elevation to the highest office of ministry would make

native helpers too proud. In Sri Lanka and India, the situation was apparently no

different where the fundamental challenge consisted of ‘trying to keep native agents

in subordination and dependency while preparing them to assume leadership over

self-supporting and self-governing churches.’24 The inherent contradiction is

ineluctable if one considers that it cost the American Board Mission almost the same

to educate a thousand young people in India, out of which could arise about 200

native preachers who would be supported with their families, as it was to maintain

twenty five missionaries and their families there. Economics mattered most to men

like Anderson, but not at the expense of creating a situation of ‘too much too soon,’

one where a supposedly (theocratic) missionary form of authority would be

subverted by native (democratic) claims of equality.

If native pastors were lacking in the equality stakes, what consideration might

have spawned the onset of the discriminatory ideology to cause them to be treated

differently by their superiors? The missionary movement was an institutional channel

that offered Americans a window through which they might encounter peoples of the

22 Rev. Holbrook to Dr Judson Smith, 9 March and 29 October, 1889. Quoted in J. M. Chirenje, Ethiopianism and Afro-Americans in Southern Africa, 1883-1916, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge and London, p 19 23 Paul Harris, Denominationalism and Democracy: Ecclesiastical Issues Underlying Rufus Anderson’s Three Self Program, North American Foreign Missions, 1810-1914, Ed. Shenk, Wilbert S., William B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids and Cambridge, 2004, p 75 24 Ibid

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world. It was cast in a unique Christian framework which turned out to be ‘less

selfish, less harsh and more considerate of the problem children’.25 From being

‘babes’ the native converts grew up to become ‘our children,’ and then headstrong

youths who still needed ‘a loving, guiding hand especially in temperance, social

purity, foreign mission and other work.’26 It was therefore considered unwise for the

native pastors to be left with the work ‘wholly in their hands’ even when they might

have believed, as some did, that ‘Heretofore we have been children, and have

followed our missionary, now we are men and may think and act for ourselves.’27 In a

native sermon delivered on the occasion of Daniel Lindley’s departure from the

mission field in 1873, the missionary is mentioned as a ‘blameless example’ of

someone who is repeatedly upheld as ‘father’ of ‘children,’ ‘boys,’ and ‘orphans.’28

The paternalistic attitude of the missionaries had clearly been imbibed by their

converts whose status as children was merely reinforced by the extended delay in

them being brought forward for ordination. A consensus view held in 1897 was that

these children ‘must, from the nature of the case be under the general supervision

and oversight of ourselves as agents of the Board till such time as we and not they

shall deem it safe in the interests of Christ’s kingdom to turn the work wholly into

their hands.’29 Not surprisingly, the missionaries believed that there should be no

reduction in their ranks for a considerable time yet. Their intransigence was probably

confirmed by the failure of suitable candidates to rise up from the classes of

25 V. H. Rabe, The American Protestant Foreign Mission Movement, 1880-1920, Harvard University Ph.D. Thesis, Boston, Mass., 1965, p 817 26 W. C. Wilcox (Mrs), Other Societies: Is there yet work for the Zulu Mission in Natal? South African Deputation Papers, American Zulu Mission, Natal, South Africa, 1904, p 89 27 Quoted by Aldin Grout, who was stationed in Mvoti, at a time when his authority was being challenged by some of his converts. See Norman Etherington, Preachers Peasants and Politics in Southeast Africa 1835-1880: African Communities in Natal, Pondoland and Zululand, Royal Historical Studies in History Series, No. 12, Royal Historical Society, London, 1978, p 142 28 Forty Years Among the Zulus, p 171 29 American Board Mission Annual Reports, 1848-1897: General Letter, 1897. See A. W.Z. Kuzwayo, A History of Ethiopianism in South Africa with particular reference to the American Zulu Mission from 1835-1908, MA dissertation submitted to the University of South Africa, 1979, p 61

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‘children’ being kept at the seminary. Lindley once lamented that, ‘Some of our best

men are so deep in worldly affairs that I hardly see how they can creep out from

under the load they are now carrying.’30 The African pastors would have received

very low salaries compared to their missionary brothers, and it would appear that

gifted men who had families to support were able to find more economically viable

ways of living. As Etherington observed, ‘Pastoral work was a full-time job. It could

perhaps be combined with simple farming but not with long-distance operations in

trade and transport. Many sensible Africans, therefore refused to enter the

ministry.’31 Interestingly, Anderson’s list of reasons for few ordinations generally

included one ‘whereby our candidates for the ministry overseas become too strongly

exposed to the temptations of higher wages in the business of the world.’32 The

African congregations being formed were hardly willing to receive their own ‘children’

as pastors and generally preferred to hold on to their white missionaries. It seemed

at times that the people had been ‘taught not to respect black preachers’ and ‘they

don’t respect them,’ observed Katherine Lloyd, a mission teacher who strongly

supported native ordinations.33 This lingering suspicion of black pastors, which was

ascribed to the native converts, was obviously something which again made the

possibility for change that more limiting.

It might have made for interesting reading had the American missionaries

designed a measure by which their success or failure on the mission field could be

gauged. With hindsight, we would wish that the number of indigenous church leaders

who came up from within the missionary fold might inform such a performance

indicator. What is more apparent, though, is that an ideological framework was 30 Smith, p 398 31 Etherington, Preachers Peasants and Politics, p 149 32 F. F. Goodsell, You Shall Be My Witness, American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions: Boston, 1959, p 37 33 Preachers Peasants and Politics, p 147

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created for the American encounter with peoples of distant lands and a

predisposition nurtured through oversimplified distinctions. That the missionary lived

as an aristocrat, having full authority and even time for leisurely or promotional

writing, cannot be denied. The only time he might have felt inferior was when some

superior from the home office came around on the rare deputation. Being usually a

trusted friend of the colonial government, if not its civil servant at prayer, there was

nothing to fear about state intervention. It is quite remarkable to think that most of

these missionaries were volunteers, supported by voluntary organisations and

dependent on the generosity of regular churchgoers. Their salaries were as a rule

regularly paid unlike their native pastors who were increasingly required to depend

on the unpredictable contributions of their congregants. Not surprisingly, at an

American Board Mission meeting of native pastors held in 1903, there was a

unanimous view expressed that it was ‘the duty of the missionaries to look after the

salaries of the pastors.’ Even more pointedly, ‘It was said that this was their

[missionaries’] business. The question asked of missionaries at this gathering was,

‘What business have they in the churches, if it is not that?’34No missionary at the

time would have quite agreed that his function was a fiduciary one while that of

saving souls rested with his native subordinates. It does, however, challenge the

commonly held view that the role of the missionaries was to provide supervision of

native churches or pastoral oversight of their native assistants. Unless one assumes

of course that the one who has to ‘look after’ monetary matters is de facto the one in

charge.

34 W. C. Wilcox, The American Zulu Mission in its Relation to the African Congregational Church, South African Deputation Papers: Presenting some aspects and problems of the work of the two South African Missions of the American Board, American Zulu Mission, Natal and the East Central African Mission, Rhodesia, 1904, p 14

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Questions relating to the suitability of native converts to progress towards the

ordained ministry were never dealt with lightly by the missionaries. The doctrine of

ordination as generally understood, when it was implemented in the mission field,

symbolised more of a transition from an inferior status corresponding to one’s

insecurity among ‘brothers in Christ’ and an ambiguous position in society, to one

where at a ripe old age the power advantage it brought was rendered superfluous

and ineffective. Black men who had offered sterling and submissive service to the

missionary cause were ‘knighted’ with the token gift of ordination towards the end of

their ministry. The authority conveyed by such divine rite was only open to be shared

when one proved oneself, over a lifetime, to have met explicit and hidden standards

of belief and behaviour. Such standards covered considerations such as sexual

morality, observance of the Sabbath, no beer drinking or drug consumption, no belief

in ancestor worship, conformity to church rules, being properly clothed, educated

and knowledgeable about the Bible. By the turn of the century, however, the tide

would turn quite dramatically with the rise of ‘Ethiopianism’ as those who were held

back with a timid and fearful hand would go on to form new African independent

churches and plunge the missionary enterprise into its worst crisis. Missionaries

were at a loss to understand why such a movement had arisen and offered

conflicting explanations to a phenomenon which has swept across the African

continent. Might it not have arisen largely due to their intransigence over ordaining

more of their native helpers, preferring instead to keep them in a subservient

position? One missionary was at least clear in his understanding: ‘With ordained

pastors over self-supporting churches, it is plain that we cannot have the same

authority over the churches we once had.’35

35 South African Deputation Papers, p 12

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Edinburgh 1910

Against this background of insights into the policies and practices of the

American Board Mission, it is now possible to turn to one of the most significant

gatherings of Christians involved in the missionary movement. This was called the

World Missionary Conference, which took place in Edinburgh in June 1910, and

which was attended by over 1300 delegates. The foundations of the modern

ecumenical movement are held by many to have been laid by this landmark event.

The renowned Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, himself a student

delegate at the conference, would later observe that it was ‘the greatest event in the

life of the Church for a generation’. This was not a far fetched insight if we concur

with a similar view that ‘Edinburgh 1910’ was ‘unique in the impetus it gave to

Christian activity in many directions’ and ‘a fountain head of international and inter-

church co-operation on a depth and scale never before known.’36 Writing much later,

the mission historian, Brian Stanley, points out that the conference was not in fact a

gathering of all associations of Christianity and suffers from ‘the distortions of

hindsight’.37 It was not geographically representative neither were churches

delegated to attend to the same extent that mission agencies were, let alone

‘younger churches’ of the time.

Edinburgh 1910 was a prototype, nonetheless, in that it stood out as the first

‘world’ gathering of missionaries and the scope of its work embraced missionary

efforts (albeit Protestant) from most parts of the world than had been possible

before. Its purview was intentionally global and those who gathered came from some

of the remotest parts of the mission landscape. John Mott, a lay youth leader of the

36 Hugh Martin, Beginning at Edinburgh: A Jubilee Assessment of the World Missionary Conference 1910, Edinburgh House Press, 1960, p 3 37 Brian Stanley, Edinburgh 1910 and the Oikoumene, Ecumenism and History: Studies in Honour of John H. Y. Briggs, Paternoster Press, Carlisle, Cumbria, 2002, p 90

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World Student Christian Federation, was the genius behind the World Missionary

Conference which he organised along the implicit principle that most of Europe and

North America were Christian. It is important to note, as Brian Stanley does, that the

1910 gathering was not about world mission but rather about mission from

Christendom to heathen lands. It was concerned, ‘not with mission of the church to

the entire inhabited globe, but rather with mission to those portions of the globe

which everybody could agree were beyond the frontiers of Christendom.’38 Mott’s

book, which appeared immediately after the conference, was called ‘The Decisive

Hour of Christian Missions’ where he outlined a strategy to meet the missionary

challenge for the twentieth century. It is interesting to observe how John Mott,

himself a Methodist, inspired by the same gospel, and emerging as a leader with a

universal message but living a century apart from John Wesley, could share such

opposing views of the urgency for God’s intervention in human affairs.

Edinburgh 1910, despite Mott’s best efforts, is infamously remembered for its

truncated delegations that served to exclude those from the ‘younger’ churches. It

was Mott, says his able conference lieutenant, Joseph Oldham, who above all others

had ‘insisted in the face of a good deal of conservative opposition that the younger

Churches should be represented’.39 In the event, only seventeen delegates of colour

or ‘natives from mission lands’ were brought to Edinburgh. The conventional view

seems to have been well articulated by a London Missionary Society secretary at the

time when he observed , ‘I do not think the time is ripe for the inclusion of delegates

appointed by the Churches in non-Christian lands in any great conference such as

ours.’40 Edinburgh’s clock in 1910 was not one where Roman Catholic, Orthodox or

emerging forms of independent Christianity featured at all; God’s decisive hour 38 Stanley, p 100 39 J. H. Oldham, John R. Mott, Ecumenical Review, 7, 1955, p 258 40 Letter of Ralph Thomson to J. H. Oldham, 7 February 1910. Quoted in Stanley, p 93

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seemed to be directed to God’s agents in heathen lands who were mostly white,

male and mainline Protestants only, with a small band of women helpers in

attendance.

Edinburgh 2010

To overcome the paralysing inertia of missionary paternalism that has

dominated succeeding paradigms of mission in the twentieth century, those involved

in planning the centenary celebrations of the great World Missionary Conference

sought a break from the immediate past. The initial conversations in looking towards

a centenary gathering (called Edinburgh 2010) revolved around the need to

articulate a theology of ‘mission in humility and hope’. This was later modified to

include the notion of ‘serving God’s mission together’ lest too much attention be

given to applauding the human effort in missionary conquests. Still, the overriding

considerations related to the presence of the ‘other’ with due recognition that the

majority of Christians in the world were now no longer located in the global north.

Women had exercised a profound influence on Christian missions and would no

longer accept being subservient partners in the task of evangelizing the world.

Pentecostalism was a relatively new phenomenon since 1910, but accounting for

over twenty five percent of world Christianity. In a world that had come through

enormous and profound change, Christian discourse about mission was in need of a

new way of speaking about God, a new language and a new ‘translation’ of God’s

love for the same world.

Edinburgh 2010 was therefore conceived as an opportunity to do God’s

mission again, in the presence of witnesses from all parts of the world and without

cultural domination by any one particular language or form of discourse. It was

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deliberate about the need to develop mission synergies and expand networks across

the globe, provide new guidelines based on a ‘polycentric’ study process that

included participants from all traditions sharing the same common space and

responding to the one mandate. The hope was for a vision to evolve among

churches that would provide fresh energy and impetus for undertaking the task of

mission in ways that would not cripple existing resources or structures, nor be a

burden in times of rapid decline of church memberships. World mission seemed to

have come full circle with the increasing advocacy by many of the pluralist view of

world religions to undergird the approach to mission which, effectively, removed the

urgency to seek the conversion of individuals anymore. Edinburgh 2010, like so

many of its conference predecessors, (was)is meant to be a time to reflect, rethink

and become resolute about God’s mission again when all signs seemed to be

pointing towards ecclesiastical fracture and ecumenical fatigue.

The missionary paradigm perpetrated by John Mott and his generation, as

evidenced in Edinburgh 1910, suffered severe distortions from its inability to

transcend divisions of humanity into those civilized and those ostensibly waiting to

be acculturated into the Western way of life. Fortuitously, there has also been a

fringe movement throughout the past century that has fought for ‘enculturation’ to be

a hallmark of the Christian encounter with peoples of cultures from the global south.

To escape the limitations of the historical baggage, leadership in mission is

increasingly being placed into the hands of leaders of the more vibrant and growing,

but still, younger churches. Methodists have a helping hand in making the transition

in world mission, from seeing people in distant lands as objects of God’s mission, to

a recognition of the world as the parish for mission. Churches that are growing the

fastest seem to be those of the ‘stranger in our midst,’ in other words, the immigrant

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churches. Vitality is a feature of church life in the emerging churches who do

ordinarily send overseas missionaries but who are more mindful of their local and

immediate surroundings. The landscape for mission in the twenty first century has

certainly changed as, it might be said, the world becomes a smaller place where

mission is from everywhere to everywhere. This, though a mantra of Edinburgh

2010, was not in any way near to the understanding of mission at evidence during

Edinburgh 1910.

‘Greed and Corruption’

No missiological presentation on the eve of one of America’s most significant,

and we hope, defining moments of her history would be complete without reference

to the current turmoil in world economic markets, due to ‘greed and corruption,’ a

term recently used by Sarah Palin on at least three occasions in her television

debate with Joe Biden. I take up this theme as a challenge to mission in the twenty

first century in a way that she did not. Now if corruption amounts to a misuse of

public office for private gain, and if it has manifested itself in unmanageable ways in

the developing world over the past two or three decades, such that it has prompted

Western scholars to devise tools for its measurement, has it ever caught the

attention of any faith community? One participant at a church-sponsored conference

on corruption, a European business executive working in the area of risk

management, remarked that in ten years experience of attending anti-corruption

conferences he has not encountered a church leader. In his words, ‘It is essential

that the churches be an active voice in national discussions’.41 At the 8th Assembly

of the World Council of Churches in Harare, Zimbabwe, held in December 1998, a

most forthright statement was made by Protestant churches about corruption, albeit

41 Edward L. Cleary, New Priority for Churches and Missions: Combating Corruption, International Bulletin of Missionary Research, October 2007, Vol. 31, No. 4, p 184

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in the context of the struggle to provide debt relief to developing nations.

Representatives of over 350 million Christians called on their member churches to

advocate for “ethical governance in all countries” and urged governments to take

“legislative action against all forms of corruption and misuse of loans”.42 Delegates at

the Assembly furthermore, in the debate on human rights, recognised that “corrupt

practices are a major evil in our societies” and pledged therefore to uphold the

“elementary right” of every person to be protected under the law against such

practices. As the threat of corruption to development was not being viewed

comprehensively enough, at least at this time, nothing of substance has further

emanated from the World Council of Churches (WCC) since. At its subsequent

assembly held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in February 2005, despite the full onslaught of

global capital on poorer nations, and the rapid rise of corrupt practices throughout

the world, nothing new was mentioned about the evolving fight against corruption.

The WCC’s reticence to speak out against corruption might be viewed as a missed

opportunity for prophetic engagement when the ‘signs of the times’ were everywhere

present. Yet other churches elsewhere, especially those in Latin America, were not

silent in the face of the new pervasive evil.

Fresh from having lived through legacies of undemocratic rule, military

dictatorships and authoritarian regimes, countries in Latin America have begun to

experience a new wave of democratic participation in civic life. From Brazil to Bolivia,

from Chile to Paraguay, and from Nicaragua to Costa Rica, civil society movements

have spawned a new and vibrant experience of participatory democracy, one where

the churches have been no silent witnesses. On the contrary, in the words of one

missionary observer, “very large numbers of Christians filled the ranks of human

42 Reports of the World Council of Churches Eighth Assembly, December 1998. See pttp://www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/assembly/index

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rights groups formerly against military abuse and now against corruption.”43 Many of

these would be members of small Christian communities while others were leaders

of churches, like Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez, the Archbishop of Tegucigalpa in

Honduras. He rose to prominence when, almost by default, he was invited to lead a

national commission against corruption and also went on to become President of the

Latin American Bishops Conference from 1995 to1999. Using this latter platform, the

Cardinal helped lay a solid foundation for making corruption ‘the new battle horse of

the Catholic Church’ in Latin America. In the Philippines, another part of the world

dominated by Catholic Christians, church leaders have adopted ‘people power’

campaigns to oust corrupt leaders. Archbishop Angel Lagdameo, President of the

Catholic Bishops conference there, has pleaded for a revolt against endemic

corruption perpetrated by President Gloria Arroyo who faced mounting calls to resign

amidst bribery allegations against her government.

From the most cursory reading of church history it should be apparent that

churches have not completely ignored the prevalence and practice of corruption in

society. John Wesley spoke out against it in his time. At the 1767 Methodist

Conference, delegates were asked to ponder the question of how bribery may be

prevented at the ensuing elections.44 But it might be misleading to claim that the

‘Christian faith and tradition has a long history of condemning corruption’ when it fact

the opposite is true.45 Throughout their history, Christian churches have played a

dubious role in facilitating corrupt practices within their own ranks and outright

condemnation has been slow in coming, if at all. Consider the abuse of trust and

power by parish priests for personal, or sometimes sexual gratification, and the fact 43 Cleary, p 183 44 R. E. Davies and E. G. Rupp (eds.), A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, Vol. I, London: Epworth, 1965, p 65 45 Mark Zirnsak, Kerryn Clarke and Annie Fieth, From Corruption to Good Governance, United Church in Australia, Victoria and Tasmania, March 2008, p 24

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that many such known cases remain unpunished. If we had to imagine the number of

times when the noble values of transparency and accountability, so necessary in the

fight against corruption, have been trampled upon in the name of theocracy we will

hesitate to paint the churches as acting virtuously in these matters. The churches’

complicity in corrupt behaviour is not our primary concern in this book, though.

The challenge to fight the abuse of public office for private gain is still not

something the churches should be afraid of adopting. The struggle for the moral

transformation of society does not require that artisans for the new humanity in

Christ be first themselves ‘cleansed’ from corrupt influences as though this is ever

possible. Churches have and can bring their moral capital, accumulated over

centuries and embracing the entire world, to bear on the global effort to combat and

prevent corruption. A much more nuanced, thorough and contemporary

understanding of the problem and its current manifestations are a prerequisite if we

are to be effective in adding strategic value to ongoing efforts already underway. As

the Vatican so wisely recognised when the fight against corruption became a subject

for reflection within its precincts, we should initially aim ‘to arrive at a better

understanding of the phenomenon of corruption’ before we attempt to devise ways of

contributing towards its reduction in society.46

If churches are at the forefront of the campaign to address the collapse of the

moral order of society, through greed and corruption, they can wisely contribute

towards the creation of an autonomous entity that would drive a moral regeneration

campaign. Global concern about the moral decay of societies, as evidenced by

spiralling crimes of murder, theft, domestic violence against women and children,

and corruption, is commendable, as would be any attempt to work with religious

46 Statement on the Fights Against Corruption, Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, 2-3 June 2006, Vatican, Rome, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical-councils/justpeace/documents/rc_pc_ju

24

groups to bring the matters to the nation’s attention. With the establishment of a

programme to manage the activities related to moral regeneration, the role that

government will play is something that will require further clarification. While a moral

regeneration movement might be a vehicle that can be effectively used to fight

corruption, this can only be done at a civil society level. The project of fighting

corruption in the public sector is one that must be driven by governments as legal

authority rather than government as moral conscience of the nation, particularly

when matters of law enforcement are concerned. That there exists a groundswell of

moral outrage within governments towards many of society’s ills, including

corruption, is commendable provided that government does not usurp civil society’s

role of holding governments themselves accountable to their citizens for their

actions.

If we looked at the salient elements of a national strategy against corruption in

the developing world we soon see that corruption has become a serious problem

warranting review of legislation to prohibit corrupt practices. New laws to promote

transparency, access to information, whistle-blowing and more effective prosecution

of corruption should therefore be devised in terms of the national strategy a country

adopts. Proposals for media campaigns that get so boldly announced but often fail to

take off should not be allowed to collect dust. While the ‘zero tolerance’ approach to

fighting corruption in a law enforcement mode is mostly articulated, it is rarely fully

implemented owing largely to a shortage of capacity and resources. We generally

witness few attempts by governments anywhere to carefully balance the costs of

fighting corruption against the benefits that might accrue to society. The task of

fighting corruption may be construed as part of any government’s wider strategy of

making the territory under its tutelage a favourable destination, for investment and

25

other purposes, by creating the necessary ‘rule of law’ climate to reign supreme.

With the burden of responsibility for health, education, unemployment, and crime,

governments are loathe to vote or commit funds in a substantial way to a concern

that must rank as marginal within its budgetary framework. Yet, the fight against

corruption can only produce a positive impact and translate into a public benefit (and

be effective as a result) if the resources that are committed towards it are efficiently

managed.

Thus the political rhetoric that we are accustomed to hearing, often ad

nauseam, about how serious governments are about tackling corruption must be

judged by their willingness to fund the implementation of their proposals. In many

cases, failure to deliver results not simply from broken promises but policy muddles

ignore the costing or budgetary aspects about intended actions. Al Gore provided an

‘inconvenient truth’ to the world not only about climate change but about corruption

too when he convened the first ‘Global Forum on Fighting Corruption and

Safeguarding Integrity’ as United States Vice-President in 1999, and observed,

‘We are on the eve of a new millennium. As never before, the world’s

people need officials of their governments to serve them with

unquestioned integrity. Corruption of justice and security officials especially

betrays their trust. Corruption cannot long co-exist with democracy and the rule of

law. Corruption misallocates resources, hurts the poor, and weakens economies

and societies. We emerge persuaded that corruption is not inevitable. It is made by

actions of men and women. Governments and their peoples can act and can

succeed in our struggle against it, if only we have will and the determination to do

so.’47

47 Report of the Conference on Fighting Corruption and Safeguarding Integrity among Justice and Security

26

Like the mistake so often made, we assume that will and determination are

the ‘only’ ingredients to spur us into action when it fact resources, both human and

financial, must be procured as well. Of course, in many cases, the one leads to the

other, but for governments of less developed countries of the world, corruption

cannot be willed out of existence. With their dependence on the affluent North

growing by the day, they remain hard pressed to join the struggle against corruption

without adequate resources being placed at their disposal. To advocate for lower

corruption in the global South, where it is vacantly endemic, is to indirectly call for

higher levels of monetary support from wealthy nations towards meeting the criteria

for good governance. That is how the problem of corruption might best be addressed

for efficacy sake, as a good governance challenge, and the churches can be

summoned to share this understanding and advance this struggle.

The public sector has expanded enormously over the past century and has

been largely penetrated by market values. Politicians are often required to decide on

contracts for massive public works and welfare programmes involving large sums of

money, while the same politicians belong to parties that must run costly campaigns

to ensure their re-election. Corporate political funding then becomes competitive

where ‘buying voters, legislators and state officials is “good business” if it produces

cost-effective results’.48 When the boundaries of capitalism and democracy can be

merged to serve such self-serving ends, the reconfiguration of the public and private

domains of power gives rise to its unchecked usage for corrupt purposes. The basic

misfit between the two systems (political and economic) causes the majority will of

citizens to come up against the narrow interests of economic power. Politicians

would ordinarily be the mediators in cases of competing interests between the two in Officials, Washington, D. C., 24-26 February 1999, United States State Department, Washington, D. C. 48 John Girling, Corruption, Capitalism and Democracy, London: Routledge, p 4

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a democracy but, as John Girling points out, ‘prudent politicians cannot afford

seriously to jeopardize business interests, because in the long term an effective

economy is crucial to political survival’.49 For this reason also, even politicians of high

integrity are often tempted to compromise on justice and the rule of law for the

private benefit of a few corporate elites. This collusion (the accommodation between

politics and economics) is then the precondition for corruption to occur. Yet given

that corruption can thus be attributed to a whole range of possibilities, as is mostly

the case, it becomes very difficult to attempt more than a cursory discussion of the

contextual factors that give rise to its origin at any given time. We therefore remain

unsure, and perhaps unconvinced, about the remarks made by Sarah Palin on this

subject of greed and corruption but that does not detract from the enormity of the

challenge it presents to us who are seeking to do God’s mission in the world today.

49 Ibid., p 8