One Christ—Many Witnesses: Visions of Mission and Unity,Edinburgh and Beyond

Edinburgh 1910: Cooperation for World Evangelization and the Kingdom of God

In 1910, the youthful energy of the global student Christian movement converged with the missionary network to produce the World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh. Its well-known accomplishments include a broad interdenominational Protestant focus that surveyed the world missionary movement and analyzed such issues as Missions and Governments, the Missionary Message in Relation to Non-Christian Religions, World Evangelization, Education in Relation to National Life, and Missionary Training. Although delegates were mostly mission leaders from Europe and the United States, participants experienced a profound sense of spiritual unity from meeting with each other and engaging with the roughly 20 delegates from Asia and Africa. ¹ At the conclusion of the conference, John Mott expressed the common experience of fellowship with soaring rhetoric:

Gathered together from different nations and races and communions, have we not come to realize our oneness in Christ? … It is not His will that the influences set forth by Him shall cease this night. Rather shall they course out through us to the very ends of the earth. ²

The impressive list of resolutions on cooperation and unity collected by the Commission of that name showed that the Edinburgh 1910 meeting stood at a turning point in Protestant history. The keyword that expressed the growing relationship between witness and unity was ‘cooperation.’ Cooperation as a fresh idea flowed from the experiences of missionaries working together with first and second generation Christians. A collaborative vision of worldwide fellowship both motivated mission work and resulted from it. Concluded the Commission:

While we may differ from one another in our conception of what unity involves and requires, we agree in believing that our Lord intended that we should be one in a visible fellowship … The Church in western lands will reap a glorious reward from its missionary labors if the Church in the mission field points the way to a healing of its divisions and to the attainment of that unity for which our Lord prayed. ³

The Edinburgh Conference stimulated the process of organizing regional Christian councils that included both missionaries and local church leaders. Cooperation in mission assumed a framework of denominational missionary societies, some of them attached to state churches, within which missionaries could cultivate partnerships with each other and with so-called ‘younger churches.’ The practical and political obstacles against interdenominational cooperation were so huge that only a powerful vision of the Kingdom of God could provide an adequate motivation for its pursuit. The Bishop of Southwark said it well in his inspiring address, when he identified Christian unity as “the ideal, the end, the true state of nature in the Kingdom of God. This our Lord has taught us; and the Spirit teaches.” ⁴

From our perspective a century later, ‘cooperation’ had both limitations and strengths as a model for gathering the many witnesses around one Christ. First was its relatively uncritical assumption of the colonial and western Christendom matrix in which the mission movement operated. Its focus on Kingdom building was overly optimistic, with inadequate consideration of the unequal power dynamics between western missions and indigenous partners. At the same time, cooperation recognized that the theological and structural integrity of its participants should be respected. In defiance of the mass destruction of World War I, the ethic of cooperation continued to grow during the 1920s and 1930s. Its ethos was captured by Archbishop Nathan Söderblom of Sweden, the father of the Life and Work movement, who affirmed the spiritual unity of the church, despite its many differences and divisions. Grounded in Christ, Christian unity did not need to be created so much as recognized. ⁵

1948–1963. Ecclesiocentric Ecumenism: One World, One Church, One Mission

Twentieth-century missions grew in tandem with a steadily increasing awareness of global political and economic interdependence. Although modernization and secularization were opposed by many churches, increasing global connections seemed inevitable. By the 1940s, both secular and religious movements sought ‘one world,’ characterized by peace and justice among nations. This longing for peaceful unity intensified among churches during the Second World War. The year 1948 thus saw the birth both of the United Nations and the WCC as the culmination of heroic efforts to move beyond fratricidal conflict toward global community.

The mid-century inseparability of mission and unity was expressed by the word ‘ecumenism,’ defined in 1951 by the Rolle Declaration. The Central Committee of the WCC stated that,

it is important to insist that this word, which comes from the Greek word for the whole inhabited earth, is properly used to describe everything that relates to the whole task of the whole church to bring the Gospel to the whole world. It therefore covers equally the missionary movement and the movement toward unity, and must not be used to describe the latter in contradistinction to the former. We believe that a real service will be rendered to true thinking on these subjects in the Churches if we so use this word that it covers both Unity and Mission in the context of the whole world. ⁶

This vision of mission was broader than evangelization, and included the public witness of a united world church to tackle social problems bigger than any one denomination or nation-state could address.

What was the ecumenical mission of one worldwide church to one interconnected world? This question captured the imaginations of the greatest mission leaders of the mid twentieth century. For some, like India missionary Lesslie Newbigin, head of the International Missionary Council (IMC), the new mission was expressed as “The whole Church, with one Gospel of reconciliation for the whole world.” ⁷ In his little book One Body, One Gospel, One World, published by the IMC in 1958, Newbigin reflected that while the mission of Christ’s church remained the same from age to age, the present situation of the Cold War, combined with erupting nationalist movements, meant that worldwide church unity was the only firm basis for mission. The church could no longer talk about world evangelization unless it spoke as one, united body across cultural and racial and political barriers. The launching platform for world mission was no longer the West, but the worldwide Body of Christ, the world church. In fact, he said, “the Church is the Mission.” ⁸ From now on, missions should flow from an understanding of the global unity of the church, not the separate activities of professional, largely denominational missionaries.

The implication for Newbigin of one world and one church was the idea of one mission. Mission was from everywhere to everywhere, not from the West to the rest. The missionary was someone who crossed frontiers of unbelief, wherever they were found. ⁹ Unity in Christ was itself a goal of mission, for

we cannot stand together before men in the highways of the world and ask them to give up everything in order to be reconciled with God through Jesus Christ, if we do not face the question of our own lack of reconciliation. ¹⁰

Following the merger of the IMC into the WCC, ecumenists held the first world mission conference in 1963. With the theme ‘Witness in six continents,’ this meeting in Mexico City was the highpoint of optimism about the inseparability of missions from organic structural unity. The meeting included the Orthodox Churches for the first time, and was held while the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) was opening Roman Catholics to new relationships with other Christians. The convergence of these realities made it seem as if all roads were leading toward missional unity among all branches of Christianity.

The affirmation of one Gospel and one Lord was ultimately the engine behind the mission of one world Church. Stated the conclusion to the 1963 conference message:

We therefore affirm that this missionary movement now involves Christians in all six continents and in all lands. It must be the common witness of the whole Church, bringing the whole Gospel to the whole world. We do not yet see all the changes this demands; but we go forward in faith. God’s purpose still stands: to sum up all things in Christ. In this hope we dedicate ourselves anew to his mission in the spirit of unity and in humble dependence upon our Living Lord. ¹¹

With the hindsight of history, the limitations and strengths of mid twentieth century ecclesiocentric ecumenism are apparent. First was the inability of organic unity to drive the future of World Christianity. The growth of late twentieth century World Christianity proceeded from the expansionist margins and from renewal movements rather than from centralizing denominational organization. A second limitation was the naїve corporate assumption that increased structural unity would necessarily represent progress in mission. The voluntary and evangelistic notion of many witnesses was downplayed in the mid-century love affair with ecumenism. On the positive side, one of the greatest strengths of the mid twentieth century movement was its affirmation that mission flowed to and from everywhere. This post-colonial vision for mission opened the door to self-theologizing among Christians in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

2010 Worldwide Networking: Many Witnesses, One Christ

The Mexico City meeting in 1963 both finalized the linkage between mission and unity that began in 1910, and declared a postcolonial future. Yet in the West, secularization was hollowing out young people’s interest in the ecumenical movement. Amid cries of ‘missionary go home’ by councils of churches in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the old mission structures of western mainline Protestantism entered a period of crisis. Important contextual and local theologies replaced the big tent of ecumenical unity so beloved by the World War II generation. Noted 1960s ecumenists rejected evangelization as a form of imperialism, thereby severing mission and unity from each other. In the meantime, an alternative, increasingly transnational evangelical mission network gathered strength, and it ruptured the hard-won ecumenical agreements that had been crafted over several decades.

By the late 1990s, however, scholars and church people awakened to the reality of ‘World Christianity.’ The growing realization that Christianity had become a multi-cultural religion, with Latin Americans and Africans becoming the majority, clearly had profound implications for mission practice. Unprecedented levels of migration seemed to fulfill the vision of mission to and from everywhere, but without needing the professional missionary society. Growing churches around the world included Catholics, Pentecostals, and Indigenous groups previously considered sectarians, more than the Orthodox and Protestant communions that had struggled together to create the mid-century ecumenical movement. Improved transportation networks allowed millions of ordinary Christians to go on short-term mission trips of two weeks or less to poor countries around the world. By the twenty-first century, missionaries were likely to be Koreans or Nigerians or Brazilians supported by megachurches.

In such changing contexts, what is the relationship between many witnesses and the one Christ? Popular discourse on ‘World Christianity’ shows that the dream of worldwide community based on the Revelation vision of persons from all nations and races praising God retains its capacity to inspire. ¹² But instead of World Christianity being a synonym for a united world church, the concept assumes multiculturalism, decentralization and multi-directional personal relationships. In short, united action for mission is characterized not by ambitions for organic unity, but by relational networking across transnational networks. Denominational cooperation and ecclesiocentric ecumenism, although still existing, have yielded to the messier reality of multiple centers of authority, vigorous competition, millions of freelance short termers, Christian migrants empowered by the Great Commission, and the recognition that globalization has unleashed forces beyond the ability of any one movement to control.

One big change from previous eras is that the starting point for discussion is no longer an assumption of Christendom, or western denominational structures seeking diversity. Rather, today diverse witnesses are the norm, not the goal. The evangelistic ferment of growing World Christianity has increased the focus on evangelization to the extent that unity without witness becomes inconceivable. Nevertheless, the diversity of witnesses brings sharply into focus renewed need to reaffirm one Christ as the foundation of a common faith. How can he unite believers amid a multicultural cornucopia of churches? What is Christian witness in a world of religious pluralism? Where is Jesus Christ in the public square, when non-belief has squeezed religious faith out of the older Christian heartlands? We know that witnesses are many. But who is the Jesus Christ to whom all Christians witness?

Common Witness through Global Networking

The vision of Common Witness has increasingly come to characterize networked conversations on the meaning of the one Christ for this generation. The 1997 WCC document ‘Towards Common Witness’ set the ball rolling, with its call for respectful relationships amid the plurality that characterizes the world church today: “Common witness is ‘the witness that the churches, even while separated, bear together, especially through joint efforts, by manifesting whatever divine gifts of truth and life they already share and experience in common.’” ¹³ Rather than focusing on differences, the purpose of Common Witness is to celebrate what Christians have in common. Put another way, instead of defining Christian identity by doctrinal or structural boundaries (bounded set), Christian identity occurs through movement toward the central reality Jesus Christ (centered set). ¹⁴

While differences among Christians abound, the vision of Common Witness gained momentum through the 2010 process, as a series of networked global conversations. Made possible by new communications technologies including live streaming, this conversation crossed ecclesial and national boundaries in a new way. While some critics lamented the small numbers of people who actually attended the Edinburgh 2010 and other meetings, to do so is to miss the point that the several meetings, and their statements and subsequent publications, represent a networked global conversation about the meaning of mission today. Unlike in the past, today’s internet capacity means that people could see the Lausanne Conference in real time, could read the Tokyo documents online, could blog and tweet about what was happening in Boston or Edinburgh or other locations, and can now download for free over 30 volumes of published missiological reflections! The multiplicity of statements, and public reflection on those statements, itself is a conversation through which the meaning of the one Christ can be revealed.

‘Witnessing to Christ Today’ was the theme of the Edinburgh 2010 conference. The Edinburgh 2010 conference involved representatives from all the world’s major ecclesial bodies and church families, including Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, and Indigenous churches. Unlike Edinburgh 1910, Edinburgh 2010 proceeded from the diversity of Christianity as a multi-cultural, worldwide movement. Thus for the Edinburgh 2010 movement, the networked conversation about worldwide witness became a framework for the expression of ecclesial, ethnic, gender, and theological diversity. The ‘Common Call’ that resulted from the conference stated that:

Recalling Christ, the host at the banquet, and committed to that unity for which he lived and prayed, we are called to ongoing co-operation, to deal with controversial issues and to work toward a common vision. We are challenged to welcome one another in our diversity, affirm our membership through baptism in the One Body of Christ, and recognize our need for mutuality, partnership, collaboration and networking in mission, so that the world might believe. ¹⁵

In June of 2011, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (PCID), the WCC, and the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) issued their first common agreement, called ‘Christian Witness in a Multi-Religious World.’ ¹⁶ Despite ongoing theological differences, the combined weight of these developments, including widespread acceptance of the right to change one’s religious affiliation, implies new willingness to accept the validity of each other’s faith. At a formal level, commitment to Common Witness anchors a shared commitment to proclaiming one Christ and recognizing him in the lives of Christians unlike oneself. And the conversation continues. Even though the 2010 process has come to a formal close, the networked conversations have reached new levels unseen in the past. Those of us who are mission scholars must continue paying attention not only to formal theological statements emanating from major conferences, but to the micro conversations that unfold in unexpected places. ¹⁷

One hope for Common Witness is to move beyond words toward acts of solidarity across ecclesial boundaries. For example, the WEA sends out email appeals from persecuted Syrian Christians, and calls to prayer and fasting from the Greek Evangelical Alliance about financial collapse in Greece. In the United States, an extensive array of Christian groups have called for action following the killings of black men at the hands of police, and protest against excessive incarceration of minorities. The Vatican regularly calls for prayer and assistance for migrants and for Middle Eastern Christians. At its best, global networking within a framework of Common Witness can lead to shared action by many witnesses to the one Christ.

The Power of Testimony

The power of testimony refers to the way in which diverse personal and communal affirmations of faith in Jesus Christ have become the starting point for Christian unity, rather than traditional doctrinal formulae or ecumenical structures. In other words, the pietists have won! Whether Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Pentecostal/Evangelical or Indigenous, the forces of globalization, urbanization, and modernization mean that personal testimony or ownership is increasingly necessary for Christian identity. Christians all over the world and in all traditions feel the need to claim publicly their identity in Christ, which then becomes a shared experiential framework with other Christians. The resurgence of religions around the world, as analyzed by sociologists, ¹⁸ shows that Christianity is a carrier of the modern sense of self and leads to public engagement. In other words, the voices of many diverse witnesses can create public unity in Christ.

Let me give examples of this phenomenon. The ‘Cape Town Commitment’ that resulted from the Lausanne 2010 meeting differed markedly in tone from its predecessors, the ‘Lausanne Covenant’ of 1974, and the ‘Manila Manifesto’ of 1989. Instead of promulgating a list of doctrinal statements, the listening process and conference produced a document that reads like a personal testimony and call to action. The Foreword notes that “We affirm the oneness of the Body of Christ, and gladly recognize that there are many followers of the Lord Jesus Christ within other traditions.” ¹⁹ It explicitly affirms its stance as an evangelical document, but hopes the document will be useful to Christians everywhere. What follows is a series of testimonies, including ‘We love because God first loved us,’ ‘We love the living God,’ ‘We love God’s word,’ ‘We love God’s world,’ and ‘We love the mission of God.’ Each testimony is unpacked via theological and biblical reflection. The second section of the document includes a set of goals, commitments, and affirmations that further personalize the decade’s priorities of the Lausanne movement.

By the late 1990s, the need to broaden conversations about witness and unity beyond the old ecumenical movement had become urgent. So the Global Christian Forum (GCF) was founded

to create an open space wherein representatives from a broad range of Christian churches and inter-church organizations, which confess the triune God and Jesus Christ as perfect in His divinity and humanity, can gather to foster mutual respect, to explore and address together common challenges. ²⁰

The symbol of the GCF expresses the diversity of contemporary world Christianity. Superimposed over a globe, a simple mosaic cross, made with colored tiles, both evokes ancient eastern traditions of Christian art, and represents the diversity of the world’s Christians united in witness to the Triune God.

The GCF creates networks of personal relationships as the way forward toward unity midst a world in which the ethnic and cultural diversity of World Christianity exceeds that of any time in human history. There is no commitment to an organization, a headquarters, or permanent staff. In early October of 2011 occurred the second worldwide meeting, in Manado, Indonesia. This meeting represented the full range of Christian denominations, communions and traditions worldwide, including Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Pentecostal and Evangelical, and Indigenous churches. The premise of the GCF process is to build respectful Christian community through listening to others’ experiences of Jesus Christ. The process behind the GCF is extremely important because of the competitive anarchy that often takes place among Christian groups, especially where Christianity is expanding. The GCF approach begins with relationships, not with doctrine or even service as the touchstone for Christian cooperation.

Although testimony is only a starting point for deeper theological engagement, it acknowledges shared grounding in a common Christ. Testimony does not represent the full range of ecclesial priorities. Nor does it fix disagreements stemming from competing structures and theological differences. But it does claim witness as the foundation for a multicultural yet global Christian community. As a Methodist, I am reminded of the work of the great evangelist E. Stanley Jones, who argued that focusing on testimonies of Christ allowed him to strip away the western, colonial Christendom baggage from the gospel, and reveal the Christ of the Indian Road. ²¹ Personal testimony reveals the inculturated Jesus Christ, who turns out to be the one Lord and Savior of all.

Centrality of the Holy Spirit

Shared experiences of the Holy Spirit provide another framework in which many witnesses point to the one Christ. The growth of Christian movements in Africa, Asia, and Latin America has expanded awareness of the centrality of the Holy Spirit for mission theology and practice. Prayer and praise know no boundaries. For example, studies from Latin America report that roughly 2/3 of Christians are Pentecostals. ²² This percentage includes Roman Catholicism: the Catholic Charismatic movement involves the majority of active Catholics. It also ranges across older Protestant denominations like Methodists, Lutherans and Presbyterians, to Pentecostal storefronts and Latin American-origin megachurches like the Redeemed Christian Church of God.

The necessity of the Holy Spirit for witness to one Christ is apparent in many of the mission documents that have been produced over the past decade. ²³ Notable, in particular, is the pneumatological foundation of Together Towards Life, the affirmation on mission and evangelism approved by the WCC Assembly in Busan, Korea, in 2013. The document begins with a Trinitarian basis for mission. It powerfully affirms the role of the Holy Spirit in witness to Christ:

How important it is to “receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22) to become living witnesses to the coming reign of God! … Life in the Holy Spirit is the essence of mission, the core of why we do what we do and how we live our lives. ²⁴

The document links its pneumatological framework to the growth of World Christianity, the movement of people to and from everywhere, and the recognition that mission flows from the margins. The four major headings of the document flow from the centrality of the Holy Spirit: the Spirit of mission as the breath of life, the Spirit of liberation flowing from the margins, the Spirit of community as a church on the move, and the Spirit of Pentecost as good news for all. This profound statement affirms the holistic and transformative power of the Holy Spirit over all aspects of life.

Reflection on the Holy Spirit enhances contemporary witness to the one Christ in multiple ways. First, the relationality of the three persons of the Trinity, the Triune God, reminds Christians that witness to Jesus Christ occurs in community. Second, worship is a core means of many voices witnessing to Christ through empowerment by the Holy Spirit. ²⁵ Third, because the Holy Spirit links the work of Christ to the world, focus on the Spirit opens witness to issues of healing (both personal and communal), social justice (including poverty and structural inequalities), and care for the earth. At the WCC mission plenary in Busan, Catholic mission theologian Stephen Bevans quoted the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams: “Mission is finding out where the Spirit [is] at work, and joining in.” ²⁶ This last comment raises the importance of ongoing discernment to ensure that interpretations of the Holy Spirit stay moored to the work of Christ.

The Ecumenism of Blood

The fourth contemporary framework for linking many witnesses to one Christ is less represented in the missiological reflection of the 2010 process, and more related to the crisis situation of Christians around the world, especially in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. The ancient meaning of the word ‘witness’ is that of ‘martyr.’ Unfortunately, martyrdom of Christians has exponentially increased in recent memory. The Pew Research Center on Religion and Public Life notes that Christian martyrdom has increased because Christians are increasingly found in largely non-Christian countries that do not practice religious freedom. ²⁷ Also, with the largescale conversion of religious traditionalists over the past century, Islam and Christianity are increasingly in conflict because the ‘buffer’ zone of traditional religions is disappearing. The loss of Christian identity in Europe and North America also increases the vulnerability of Christians in those regions. In June a young white man in Charleston, South Carolina, felt free to violate the sacred space of a church prayer meeting and assassinate nine African-Americans at prayer. The African-American Methodists had welcomed the killer into their midst before he killed them, and so they have become martyrs because of their compassion to the stranger. Typically it is peacemakers who suffer. The families of those murdered have already granted forgiveness to the killer, as consistent with ancient Christian principles based on Jesus’ plea, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” ²⁸

Who cannot help but be moved by the dislocation and suffering of Palestinian, Iraqi, Karen, Dani, Egyptian, Syrian, Nuba, and other minority Christians? What about the disproportionate number of Christian migrants trying to get into Europe, or cross the desert to enter the United States illegally? Syrian Archbishop Yohanna Ibrahim, who participated in multiple missiological conversations, was seized with another Orthodox bishop by Islamicists two years ago, and never heard from again. Chinese Christians were denied visas to attend the Lausanne conference in Cape Town. The whole world saw the prayers uttered to Jesus by 21 Coptic Christians beheaded by Isis in February of 2015. That these were young male migrant workers—not a group necessarily seen as particularly religious—made their execution even more poignant. As Pope Francis wrote to Coptic Pope Tawadros II, “We are united by the ecumenism of blood.” ²⁹ Through remaining faithful to Jesus by suffering and even death, many witnesses proclaim one Christ.

In a homily delivered in February to celebrate the conversion of St. Paul, Pope Francis preached on Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman. The Pope acknowledged that through her encounter with Christ the Samaritan woman became a ‘missionary.’ The ‘ecumenism of blood’ identified by Pope Francis as the common Christian heritage in martyrdom extends to all who follow Christ, through the ‘paschal mystery’ of Jesus’ death. In this quintessential missionary sermon, Pope Francis connected many witnesses to one Christ:

By the working of the Holy Spirit, we have become one in Christ, sons in the Son, true worshipers of the Father. This mystery of love is the deepest ground of the unity which binds all Christians and is much greater than their historical divisions. To the extent that we humbly advance toward the Lord, then, we also draw nearer to one another. ³⁰