Yannoulatos, Anastasios Yarnell iii, Malcolm B. Yarnold, Edward Yates, Nigel Yates, Timothy Yengo, André Yfantidis, Evangelos Yiannaras, Christos Yoder, Don H. Young, Andrew Young, Robert Yu, Guozhen

In: Volume 1 Dawn of Ecumenism | Part II. Prehistory: The Challenges of Modernity previous chapter 1 Introduction In the seventh chapter of her 1954 history of the ecumenical movement, Ruth Rouse noted two starting points to what she called “the modern ecumenical movement”: the Grindelwald Conferences and the scm.1 According to Rouse, this interdenominational Protestant movement, in which she herself worked, produced the main leaders of the ecumenical movement of the 20th century. She also showed that the American Methodist John Raleigh Mott w…

In: Volume 1 Dawn of Ecumenism | Part II. Prehistory: The Challenges of Modernity previous chapter 1 Introduction The American Social Gospel was one of the movements for Christian socialism and social Christianity that swept across England, continental Europe, and North America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, even though it was an example of historic international trend, it was utterly distinct within this phenomenon for the American Social Gospel was a cultural earthquake that could be called…

In: Volume 1 Dawn of Ecumenism | Part III. Beginnings: Movements Become a Movement previous chapter 1 Introduction Just as the wmc in Edinburgh in 1910 had been for the rest of the world,1 the ccwla (Panama, 1916) is regarded as the birthplace of the Latin American ecumenical movement2 in its first intra-Protestant phase, by then termed “movement of missionary cooperation.” The literature available makes it sufficiently clear that the Panama Congress was largely an effect of what had happened in Edinburgh, but it is a little more complex to d…

In: Volume 1 Dawn of Ecumenism | Part II. Prehistory: The Challenges of Modernity previous chapter 1 Introduction The Reformation, which had once set out to renew the one (Western) Church, not only led to a schism between Catholics and Protestants but also to further separations and divisions among the latter. Even before Luther’s death, the division into a Lutheran and Reformed wing had already become firmly established. The “radical” (i.e. non-magisterial) Reformation of the 16th century also led to the emergen…

In: Volume 1 Dawn of Ecumenism | Part III. Beginnings: Movements Become a Movement previous chapter 1 Introduction It is beyond doubt that the ecumenical movement was relaunched after the Great War.1 The conflict lent a sense of urgency to the desire for reconciliation and unity, while the fall of the German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian Empires had changed the religious balance in many countries of the European continent and opened new mission spaces in the East. The defensive outlook with which the intra-Christian cooperation groups had been imbued for some decades2 may hav…

In: Volume 1 Dawn of Ecumenism | Part III. Beginnings: Movements Become a Movement previous chapter 1 Brent: Missionary Bishop When, on June 14, 1910, at the age of 48, Charles Henry Brent set foot in the meeting room of the United Free Church of Scotland, where the wmc of Edinburgh was to take place, he already boasted of moderate international fame, nine years of experience as missionary bishop in the Philippines, and several articles in The New York Times recounting his successes in converting the peoples of Southeast Asia along with the war he was waging against the tr…

In: Volume 1 Dawn of Ecumenism | Part III. Beginnings: Movements Become a Movement previous chapter 1 Introduction When browsing through the impressive biography compiled by Raymond Loonbeek and Jacques Mortiau,1 the reader may gain the impression that Fr. Lambert Beauduin lived several consecutive lives: first as a diocesan priest involved in education (1897–1899) and as a labor chaplain (1899–1906), then as a Benedictine monk at Mont César Abbey in Leuven (1906) and as the initiator of the Belgian liturgical movement (1909–1914). After the interlude of World War i, he reappeared …

In: Volume 1 Dawn of Ecumenism | Part II. Prehistory: The Challenges of Modernity previous chapter 1 Introduction The first World’s Parliament of Religions was held in Chicago in 1893 during the World’s Columbian Exposition, which celebrated 400 years of America.1 Conceived by the lawyer Charles Carroll Bonney, it convened in the main hall of the Chicago Art Institute and attracted 150,000 people, according to a generous count. The 1893 parliament has been analyzed by present-day scholars from various angles, not only as a landmark in American religious history …

In: Volume 1 Dawn of Ecumenism | Part II. Prehistory: The Challenges of Modernity previous chapter 1 Introduction Considered purely in terms of its 19th-century political and social influence, Slavophilism as a major force in 19th-century Russian life was rather short-lived. The two most notable Slavophiles, Aleksey Stepanovich Khomyakov (1804–1860) and Ivan Vasilyevich Kireyevsky (1806–1856), both died relatively young. Konstantin Sergeyevich Aksakov (1817–1860), another of the original Slavophiles who had met r…

In: Volume 1 Dawn of Ecumenism | Part II. Prehistory: The Challenges of Modernity previous chapter 1 Birth of the Oxford Movement John Henry Newman has been commonly acknowledged as the leader, if not the main inspiration for that religious revival within the Church of England from the early 1830s onwards known as the Oxford or Tractarian Movement. Normative beliefs are shaped by particular historical contexts and circumstances and the Oxford Movement was no exception to this rule. The Movement’s origins partly lay i…

In: Volume 1 Dawn of Ecumenism | Part II. Prehistory: The Challenges of Modernity previous chapter 1 Introduction We tend to think of the ecumenical movement – the main modern expression of the desire for Christian unity – as a purely 20th-century phenomenon, stemming, in its institutional form, from the wmc held in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1910.1 The standard ecumenical narrative portrays ecumenism as then gradually gathering strength with the founding of the Faith and Order and Life and Work conferences, from the 1920s, making a breakthrough with th…

In: Volume 1 Dawn of Ecumenism | Part II. Prehistory: The Challenges of Modernity previous chapter 1 Introduction In 1856, when Fr. Jean-Xavier (Ivan Sergeyevich) Gagarin, a Russian Orthodox who had converted to Catholicism and become a Jesuit, chose primary sources for the appendices of his book, La Russie sera-t-elle catholique?, he could only publish old texts: the decree of union of the Council of Florence (1439), Clement viii’s bull on the reunion of Russian bishops (1595), and Benedict xiv’s encyclical to missionaries assigned to the East, Allatae sunt (1755).1 The situation w…

In: Volume 1 Dawn of Ecumenism | Part II. Prehistory: The Challenges of Modernity previous chapter 1 Introduction When war broke out, the editor of the Protestant journal Christianisme au XXe siècle, Paul Doumergue, wrote in sorrow: “For twenty centuries now, in our so-called Christian civilization, the church has preached: love one another. This is certainly an hour of mourning for all Christians.”1 War, by its very nature, seemed to widen the gaps between confessions as it did between nations. The Christian ideals of fraternity, charity, and unity found …

In: Volume 1 Dawn of Ecumenism | Part III. Beginnings: Movements Become a Movement previous chapter 1 From Gestation to Birth The emergence of the imc from the Edinburgh 1910 wmc was like the birth that comes at the end of a long gestation period.1 The subtitle of William Richey Hogg’s classic history of the imc is revealing: A History of the International Missionary Council and Its Nineteenth-Century Background.2 After tentative beginnings in the 18th century, the Western Protestant missionary movement truly came into its own from 1800, leading Kenneth Scott La…

In: Volume 1 Dawn of Ecumenism | Part III. Beginnings: Movements Become a Movement previous chapter 1 Christian Peace Initiatives between 1907 and 1914 Although it may seem surprising, the decade that preceded the outbreak of World War i was characterized not only by numerous crises but also by several Christian peace initiatives that originated, in particular, in Great Britain and Germany and were above all intended – in the face of the manifold political tensions between both countries (due to naval and colonial rivalry)1 – to promote binational understanding.2 The editor of The Peace…

In: Volume 1 Dawn of Ecumenism | Part II. Prehistory: The Challenges of Modernity previous chapter 1 Inspiration Simon Kimbangu was a thaumaturgic prophet of Baptist upbringing who began healing the sick and raising the dead in March 1921 in Nkamba, his home village in the district of Bas-Congo in what was then the Belgian Congo. From this small settlement, about 50 kilometers from Thysville, a vast religious movement radiated out into the entire Congo region, spreading over an area fragmented by Belgian, French,…

In: Volume 1 Dawn of Ecumenism | Part III. Beginnings: Movements Become a Movement previous chapter 1 Historical Overview The Catholic liturgical movement, particularly in German-speaking areas, first arose in the 19th century and gradually developed during the following century along with the changes in the political, economic, and cultural context.1 The years 1909 and 1947 may be considered indicative of this history, since it was in 1909 that a Roman Catholic congress was held in Malines, Belgium, at which Dom Lambert Beauduin,2 a Benedictine monk of the Mont César Abbey a…

In: Volume 1 Dawn of Ecumenism | Part I. Preamble: Long Term Issues previous chapter 1 Introduction In his preface to Les défis de la modernité, which he edited for Jean-Marie Mayeur’s Histoire du Christianisme, the master of French religious historiography Bernard Plongeron asserted that no diachronic synthesis or reconstruction of the Christian experience can avoid dealing with certain “hot spots”1 in the history of the churches, even when it is not tempted to be an histoire événementielle and when it permits itself to go beyond the usual sphere of institutional histor…

In: Volume 1 Dawn of Ecumenism | Part III. Beginnings: Movements Become a Movement previous chapter 1 The Early Years Lauritz (Lars) Olof Jonathan Söderblom, called Nathan from his boyhood, was born in the small village of Trönö, province of Hälsingland, Northern Sweden, on Jan 15, 1866. He was the second of seven children, two of whom had died in infancy. His father Jonas, an adherent of Carl Olof Rosenius’s new-evangelical revival movement, was the Lutheran pastor there. This movement was strongly indebted to Ang…