Edinburgh Conference And The Chinese Church

The World Missonary Conference held in Edinburgh in 1910 was the start of the Ecumenical Movement. Church unity and indigenization had also been the subject of the church development in China since the beginning of the 20th century, and were climaxed by Edinburgh Conference. After this conference, the Ecumenical Movement was gradually in full swing.In this paper, I will investigate what effect the Edinburgh Conference had on the Church in China from the standpoints of church unity and the movement of church self-support. In fact, international propoganda had always been paying close attention to the development of Chinese Church. Some early conferences of the universal Church Movement, such as the Liverpool Conference in 1860, the London Conference in 1888 and the New York Conference in 1900, had already payed attentiont to the Chinese Church. Under the circumstances of China and international propaganda, some missionaries and missionary institutions in China made some effort to the unity and self-support of the Chinese Church before the Edinburgh Conference. The China Centenary Missionary Conference held in 1907 even pushed the call of the unity and self-support of the Chinese Church to a climax.So the atteneion to the development of the Ecumenical Movement before the Edinburgh Conference and the unity and self-support of the Chinese Church is an integral part of this paper.The church organization and member exchange is the major impact of Edinburgh Conference on the unity and indigenization of the Chinese Church.The straight case is that, for answering the conference's call and making new churches be self-government, many Missionary Societies in China were renamed the "Chinese" and began training local staffs. Of course, there are many other changes after Edinburgh Conference. From the National Missionary Conference in 1913 to the National Christian Council of China in 1922, the changes of the church organization and personnel are very complex.I will begin to study the institutions and member exchange of the Church between 1907 and 1920, when the China Centenary Missionary Conference and the National Christian Council of China were held. Meanwhile, combining the Ecumenical Movement and the effects it made on Churches in China, I will analyze the influence of the Edinburgh Conference to the unity and indigenization of Chinese Church from the viewpoint of the institution.