1910－New Partners in the Great Commission: Baptists from East and West at the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh

1910 - New Partners in the Great Commission: Baptists from East and West at the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh

Brian STANLEY

The World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1910 is widely recognized as a turning point in the history of Christian mission, when Asian Christian voices first began to command the attention of Christians from Europe and North America. This article examines the contributions of the young Chinese delegate, Cheng Jingyi, and of six Baptist delegates from the non-Western world. Cheng Jingyi urged the conference to take seriously the Chinese Christian demand for a form of Christianity that would be free of Western denominationalism. Mark Christian Hayford, a pioneer of the Baptist movement in Ghana, was the only native-born black African delegate. John Rangiah, a Baptist missionary sent from South India to minister to Indian laborers in the sugar plantations of Natal in South Africa, reminds us that “South-to -South” mission is older than we may think.