The Ecumenical Quest for Agreement in Faith

Abstract

"The ecumenical movement (however one assesses it) has cer¬ tainly been one of the outstanding phenomena of twentiethcentury Christianity, and evangelicals (however much they may now protest) played a large part in bringing it into being. The example of international, interdenominational activity by evangelicals, particularly the founding of the Evangelical Alliance in 1846, provided an object-lesson of what was poss¬ ible; and various other international and interdenominational societies, which were originally evangelical but afterwards became non-evangelical (such as the YMCA and YWCA) or anti-evangelical (such as the SCM), were more directly influen¬ tial. John R. Mott, an evangelical who played a leading role both in the YMCA and in the SCM, and who was devoted to the cause of Christian missions, was mainly responsible for convening the World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh in 1910, and it was from this that the modern ecumenical movement sprang."