A Centennial Not Much Noticed

I don’t know what occurs to the average newspaper reader if one observes that 2010 marks a centennial. Whatever happened in 1910? Some international incident anticipating World War I? A revolution in China? As I’ve just discovered, the first congress of German sociologists? Hardly. But among Evangelicals the centenary significance is clear: A hundred years ago the World Missionary Conference met in Edinburgh. This particular centennial provides an interesting occasion to reflect on what has happened since then to the Christian missionary enterprise.

Edinburgh 1910 can be seen in retrospect as a culmination of the Protestant missionary impulse of the nineteenth century (which, culturally and politically speaking, did not end until 1914). Those who participated in it saw it as a preview to a century of missionary triumphs. It turned out to be not quite that, at least not as then envisaged.  But it is useful to look at both the continuities and discontinuities since then.