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‘Lausanne 1974’: The Challenge from the Majority World to Northern-Hemisphere Evangelicalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2013

BRIAN STANLEY
BRIAN STANLEY*
Affiliation:
School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh, New College, Mound Place, Edinburgh EH1 2LX; e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The International Congress on World Evangelization held in Lausanne, Switzerland, in July 1974 was a seminal event in the history of Evangelicalism. This article considers the significance of the congress as an arena for the emergence of challenges from Latin America and Africa to the social and political conservatism that characterised much of the Evangelical movement in the northern hemisphere. These challenges demanded that Christian mission should be defined as a broader process than evangelism alone, and made their mark on the ‘Lausanne Covenant’, a document adopted by the congress which has had normative status among Evangelicals ever since.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 64 , Issue 3 , July 2013 , pp. 533 - 551
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

1 See the Chicago Declaration on Evangelical Social Concern (1973), IRM lxiii (1974), 274–5Google Scholar.

2 Graham, Billy, Just as I am: the autobiography of Billy Graham, London 1997, 568Google Scholar; A. J. Dain to Charles Troutman, 17 Feb. 1972, BGCA 46, box 30/1.

3 Minutes, World Evangelization Strategy Consultation, 27 Nov., 2 Dec. 1971, BGCA 46, box 30/27.

4 Meeting of the consultative conference, International Congress on World Evangelization, Vero Beach, Florida, 23–4 Mar. 1972, ibid.

5 Martin, William, A prophet with honor: the Billy Graham story, New York 1991, 441Google Scholar.

6 Graham, Just as I am, 264; Pollock, J. C., Shadows fall apart: the story of the Zenana Bible and Medical Mission, London 1958, 186, 200Google Scholar; Crockford's clerical directory, 1973–4, BGCA 46, box 30/27.

7 Minutes, World Evangelization Strategy Consultation, 2 Dec. 1971, BGCA 46, box 30/27.

8 Dain to Troutman, 17 Feb. 1972, ibid. box 30/1. See also Dain to S. H. Iggulden, 23 Feb. 1972; Dain to S. Escobar, 12 Apr. 1972, and similar letters in the same file to David Stewart, Michael Griffiths, David McLagan and Ben Wati.

9 Samuel Escobar, cited in Pete Lowman, The day of his power: a history of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, Leicester 1983, 194.

10 Ibid. 202–3.

11 Troutman to Dain, 28 Feb. 1972, BGCA 46, box 30/1.

12 CT, 16 Aug. 1974, 35, lists twenty-nine members. The Lausanne movement's website, http://www.lausanne.org/lausanne-1974/historical-background.html [accessed 25 May 2011], describes the committee as being made up of thirty-one members, but does not list them.

13 J. R. W. Stott to B. Graham, 30 May 1972, BGCA 46, box 29/35.

14 Graham to Stott, 28 June 1972, ibid.

15 Dain to Stott, 18 July 1972, ibid. box 30/1.

16 Dain to Stott, 26 July, 11 Sept. 1972, ibid. Landreth attended Lausanne and defended the congress in the CEN against more strident critics, such as David Winter: CEN, 14 June 1974, 9. For Laird see his autobiography, No mere chance, London 1981.

17 Stott to Dain, 24 Aug. 1972, BGCA 46, box 30/1.

18 Dain to Stott, 11 Sept. 1972, ibid. box 30/12 In June 1972 there were only four members from the majority world out of seventeen on the planning committee (box 30/3).

19 G. Landreth to G. Kirby, 7 Sept. 1972, ibid. box 30/12.

20 Dain to Kirby, 7 July 1972, ibid.

21 Minutes of planning committee, 24–5 Aug. 1972, ibid. box 30/28.

22 Report on congress sites and recommendation concerning congress location, ibid. box 30/23.

23 The Evangelical Alliance began publication of Crusade magazine in 1955 following Billy Graham's London Crusade at Haringay arena in 1954.

24 Christian Record, 2 Nov. 1973, cutting in BGCA 46, Box 29/40.

25 Church Times, 16 Nov. 1973, 14.

26 Crusade (Apr. 1973), 11; (July 1973), 13–16; Michael Harper to Kirby, 20 Nov. 1973, and Harper to Dain, 26 Nov. 1973, BGCA 46, Box 29/40.

27 CEN, 4 Jan. 1974, 5.

28 Crusade (Jan. 1974), 16.

29 Ibid. (Sept. 1974), 25.

30 CEN, 5 Apr. 1974, 12; 24 May 1974, 9; 14 June 1974, 9; Director's monthly reports from Donald E. Hoke, 26 Feb., 23 April 1974, BGCA 46, box 30/1.

31 Martin, Prophet with honor, 442.

32 Ibid; minutes of planning committee, 15 July 1974, BGCA 46, box 122/1. Padilla, C. René (ed.), The new face of Evangelicalism: an international symposium on the Lausanne Covenant, London 1976, 9Google Scholar.

33 Martin, Prophet with honor, 442–3.

34 C. René Padilla, ‘Evangelism and the world’, in J. D. Douglas (ed.), Let the earth hear his voice: International Congress on World Evangelization Lausanne, Switzerland: official reference volume: papers and responses, Minneapolis 1975, 116–33 at p. 126.

35 Crusade (Sept. 1974), 26; CEN, 26 July 1974, 3.

36 Padilla, ‘Evangelism and the world’, 134–6, quotations at pp. 136, 144.

37 Escobar, Samuel, ‘Evangelism and man's search for freedom, justice and fulfillment’, in Douglas, Let the earth hear his voice, 303–18Google Scholar.

38 Idem, ‘Evangelization and man's search for freedom, justice and fulfillment’, ibid. 319–26 at pp. 322, 326.

39 CT, 13 Sept. 1974, 24–5.

40 Stott, John, ‘The significance of Lausanne’, IRM lxiv (1975), 288–94 at p. 289Google Scholar.

41 Allen Yeh, ‘Se hace camino al andar: periphery and center in the missiology of Orlando Costas’, unpubl. DPhil. diss. Oxford 2008, 42–4.

42 Orlando Costas, ‘Depth in evangelism – an interpretation of “in-depth evangelism” around the world’, in Douglas, Let the earth hear his voice, 675–94 at p. 682.

43 CT, 13 Sept. 1974, 66.

44 Church, J. E., Quest for the highest: an autobiographical account of the East African Revival, Exeter 1981, 248Google Scholar; Gatu, John G., Joyfully Christian ┼ Truly African, Nairobi 2006Google Scholar.

45 Gatu, Joyfully Christian, 169–76; Kendall, Elliott, The end of an era: Africa and the missionary, London 1978, 86–107Google Scholar.

46 Kendall, End of an era, 92; Christian Century, 25 Sept. 1974, 871.

47 Personal conversation with John Gatu, 22 Apr. 2008.

48 CT, 13 Sept. 1974, 90; Billy Graham, ‘Why Lausanne?’, in Douglas, Let the earth hear his voice, 33; Crusade (Sept. 1974), 24.

49 CT, 16 Aug. 1974, 36–7.

50 Crusade, Sept. 1974, 30; Christian Century, 21–8 Aug. 1974, 790.

51 Compare paragraph 8 of ‘the first draft’ of the Covenant in BGCA 46, box 27/4, with paragraph 9 of the final version in Douglas, Let the earth hear his voice, 6.

52 http://www.lausanne.org/all-documents/lop-3.html#9, section 9D [accessed 25 May 2011].

53 Padilla, New face of Evangelicalism, 165. See also Gatu, Joyfully Christian, 136. Personal communication with John Gatu, 22 Apr. 2008.

54 See, for example, Moody Monthly (Sept. 1974), 25.

55 Padilla, New face of Evangelicalism, 163–76.

56 Accounts of the origins of the Covenant vary in the respective roles given to Douglas and Stott. Compare minutes of administrative committee, 26 Mar. 1974, BGCA 46, box 27/4 (to which is appended what is termed ‘the first draft’ of the Covenant, but is in fact the third draft submitted to all participants mid-way through the Congress); Stott's own preface to the Covenant at http://www.lausanne.org/all–documents/lop–3.html#P [accessed 25 May 2011]; Crusade (Sept. 1974), 31; Dudley-Smith, Timothy, John Stott: a global ministry, Leicester 2001, 212–13Google Scholar; and Padilla, New face of Evangelicalism, 10. The definitive scholarly biography of John Stott by Alister Chapman, Godly ambition: John Stott and the Evangelical movement, New York, 2012, appeared too late to be fully referenced in this article, although I am indebted to Dr Chapman for his comments on an earlier draft.

57 Dudley-Smith, John Stott, 212.

58 Minutes of planning committee, 19 July 1974, BGCA 46, Box 122/1. Douglas's fifteen points were reduced to fourteen by the third draft, but the final version reverted to fifteen through the addition of a section on freedom and persecution.

59 IRM lxiii (1974), 574–6. For the youthful composition of the Theology and Radical Discipleship see CEN, 9 Aug. 1974, 2.

60 Crusade (Sept. 1974), 29; CT, 13 Sept. 1974, 66–7; Dudley-Smith, John Stott, 215. Paragraph 6 of the Covenant urged that ‘a church which preaches the cross must itself be marked by the cross’.

61 Compare the third draft in BGCA 46, Box 27/4, with the Covenant in its final form in Douglas, Let the earth hear his voice, 3–9.

62 Crusade (Sept. 1974), 31, cited in Dudley-Smith, John Stott, 215.

63 Kirby to Dain, 13, 30 July 1974, BGCA 46, box 30/12.

64 Dain to Stott, 20 Aug. 1974, ibid. box 29/35.

65 Dain to Kirby, 1 Oct. 1974, ibid. box 30/12. For one such example see Malcolm MacRae in CT, 25 Oct. 1974, 21.

66 Crusade (July 1974), 7; (Sept. 1974), 23–32.

67 CT, 16 Aug. 1974, 36; 27 Sept. 1974, 21–2.

68 Stott, ‘The significance of Lausanne’, 288.

69 CT, 30 Aug. 1974, 27.

70 CT, 13 Sept. 1974, 21–6.

71 Escobar to Dain, 10 Oct. 1974, BGCA 46, Box 30/5.

72 Dain to Escobar, 17 Oct. 1974, ibid.

73 Peter Wagner, C., ‘Lausanne twelve months later’, CT, 4 July 1975, 7–9Google Scholar.

74 Henry, Carl F. H., Confessions of a theologian: an autobiography, Waco 1986, 350Google Scholar.

75 Two further congresses have been held, at Manila in 1989 and Cape Town in 2010. The analogy between Lausanne and Vatican II is drawn by Freston, Paul, Evangelicals and politics in Asia, Africa and Latin America, Cambridge 2001, 36, 150, 242Google Scholar.