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Kikuyu and Edinburgh: the interaction of attitudes to two conferences
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
Two conferences of some significance took place shortly before the First World War: the World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh in 1910, and the Kikuyu Conference, held at a Church of Scotland mission station at an out-of-the-way place in East Africa in 1913. In an Ecumenical Age, the fame of the former is likely to endure, the notoriety of the latter to be forgotten. Yet it was the controversy raised by the second conference which caused Lord Morley to remark that the ‘cacophonous’ name of Kikuyu might one day rival in fame that of Trent. Another grand claim was made for Kikuyu by the Bishop of Zanzibar—one with which The Times agreed—that ‘there has not been a conference of such importance to the life of the Ecclesia Anglicana since the Reformation’.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1971
References
Page No 345 Note 1 H. J. T.Johnson, Anglicanism in Transition, 1937, 127.
Page No 345 Note 2 Ecclesia Anglicana. For What Does She Stand?, 1913, 17; The Times, 4 December 1913.
Page No 345 Note 3 The Times, 29 December 1913.
Page No 345 Note 4 For the use of the Kikuyu controversy as a rallying-point for an attack on liberal theology, see my unpublished Hulsean Prize Essay for 1968: Liberalism and Liberality in the Church of England, 1911-22 (University Library, Cambridge), ch. 4.
Page No 346 Note 1 ‘The Ecclesia Anglicana’, CQR, April 1914, 141.
Page No 346 Note 2 Layman Extraordinary, John R. Mott, 1865-1955, 1956, 41. See also Hugh Martin, Beginning at Edinburgh, A Jubilee Assessment of the World Missionary Conference, 1910-1960, 1960, 3.
Page No 346 Note 3 Hodder and Stoughton edition, 1964, 550. I would like to acknowledge the kindness and help of Bishop Neill in several discussions on this and other topics, and for introducing me to the relevant papers at Edinburgh House, Eaton Gate, London.
Page No 347 Note 1 ‘ A Great Day in British East Africa—The Problem of Church Union, a Contrast’, The Scotsman, 9 August 1913. This crucial paragraph is repeated in Norman Maclean, Africa in Transformation, 1913, 164 f.
Page No 348 Note 1 28 August 1913.
Page No 348 Note 2 Tatlow, Tissington, ‘The World Conference on Faith and Order’, in Ruth Rouse and Stephen C. Neill, A History of the Ecumenical Movement, 1517-1948, 2nd ed., 1967, ch. 9, 406 Google Scholar.
Page No 349 Note 1 Quoted in Gwendoline Stephenson, Edward Stuart Talbot, 1844-1934, 1936,213.
Page No 349 Note 2 See his address to the Central Committee for Women’s Church Work, Guardian, 5 December 1913, and his Preface to Herbert Kelly, The Church and Religious Unity, 1913, x.
Page No 349 Note 3 See Lord William Gascoyne-Cecil’s speech, quoted in W. H. Temple Gairdner, ‘Edinburgh 1910’, 1910, 193.
Page No 349 Note 4 Groves, C. P., The Planting of Christianity in Africa, 111, 1955, 293 Google Scholar.
Page No 349 Note 5 Stephenson, Talbot, 214.
Page No 350 Note 1 For this aspect of Edinburgh, see Stock, Eugene, The History of the Church Missionary Society, iv, 1916, 560 Google Scholar.
Page No 350 Note 2 R. F. Horton, An Autobiography, 1917, 296.
Page No 350 Note 3 ‘India and Christianity’, The Times, 24 January 1913; Stock, Church Missionary Society, 188.
Page No 351 Note 1 31 January 1913.
Page No 351 Note 2 For a discussion of the views of the Bishop of Madras in connection with Kikuyu, see A. C. Headlam, ‘Notes on Reunion: The Kikuyu Conference’, CQR, January 1914.
Page No 352 Note 1 Guardian, 5 December 1913.
Page No 352 Note 2 Ibid.
Page No 352 Note 3 Oldham later complained that though this resolution was the major topic of discussion at the Committee meeting, it had no connection with Kikuyu, The Scotsman, 20 December 1913.
Page No 353 Note 1 Henson was a persistent critic of Talbot. In 1911, for example, Henson supported J. M. Thompson when Talbot had withdrawn his licence to act as Dean of Divinity at Magdalen College, Oxford. See Mews, Liberalism and Liberality, 66.
Page No 353 Note 2 Temple Gairdner, an Anglican missionary in Cairo, and author of the popular report, also regretted that it was not possible to begin the Conference with the Eucharist, partly because he wanted to draw parallels with the great Ecumenical Councils of the past; Edinburgh 1910, 37.
Page No 353 Note 3 Guardian, 21 November 1913.
Page No 353 Note 4 Ecclesia Anglicana, 17.
Page No 354 Note 1 H. H. Henson to R.T.Davidson, 31 December 1913 (Lambeth: Davidson Papers).
Page No 355 Note 1 H. H. Henson to W. Sanday, 25 October 1899 (Bodleian: Sanday Collection).
Page No 355 Note 2 W. Temple to R. T. Davidson, 11 April 1914 (Lambeth: Davidson Papers). In the event, only Ronald Knox was received into the Church of Rome: E. Waugh, The Life oj Ronald Knox, 1959. F. B. Mackay was Vicar of All Saints, Margaret Street: Sidney Dark, Mackay of All Saints, 1937. J. N. Figgis was a member of the Community of the Resurrection, Mirfield: David Newsome, ‘The Assault on Mammon: Charles Gore and John Neville Figgis’,JEH, xii, October 1966.
Page No 356 Note 1 In his letter to the Record, 9 January 1914, Lurm has wrongly dated the incident as 1893 instead of 1892. Henson attacked the Grindelwald Conferences of both those years (in 1893, he wrote of the ‘ fantastic and disloyal pronouncements made at the so-called Reunion Conferences’, The Times, 15 July 1893), but the Communion incident was in the former year. See also Sir Henry S. Lunn, Chapters from my Life with special reference to Reunion, 1918, 170 f.
Page No 356 Note 2 The Times, 17 September 1892.
Page No 356 Note 3 ‘Unquestionably the Missionary Conference at Kikuyu travelled fast and far. It went, indeed, ahead even of the Edinburgh Conference, the Continuation Committee of which has already condemned its hasty action.’ Guardian, 5 December 1913.
Page No 357 Note 1 The Scotsman, 20 December 1913.
Page No 357 Note 2 Record, 2 January 1914.
Page No 357 Note 3 The Scotsman, 22 December 1913.
Page No 357 Note 4 Guardian, 5 December 1913.
Page No 357 Note 5 Retrospect of an Unimportant Life, 1, 1942, 164. The minutes of the Continuation Committee are kept at the World Council of Churches Headquarters at Geneva. I am indebted to the Rev. Philip A. Potter, Director of the Division of World Mission and Evangelism, for the following note: ‘ We have not been able to find either in the Minutes or in the correspondence of the time any reference to the motion of Dr A. J. Brown or to allegations which the Bishop of Winchester might have made. We do find that some of the background papers which form part of the Appendices to the meeting are missing. We do not know whether one of them might have been an account of Kikuyu plus a motion or proposed resolution. There is, of course, every likelihood that there was confidential correspondence on the matter, and quite possibly a long discussion which it was agreed not to minute. In those early ecumenical days there was a club atmosphere and very controversial matters tended to be kept under the counter and therefore quickly became part of folklore and hearsay.’
Page No 358 Note 1 R.T.Davidson to H. Tugwell, 25 November 1913 (Lambeth: Davidson Papers).
Page No 358 Note 2 A few days before meeting Mott, this point had been made to the Archbishop in a long letter about Kikuyu by Neville Talbot: Talbot to Davidson, 18 Nov ember 1913 (Lambeth: Davidson Papers). That E. S. Talbot held the same view can be seen from the Guardian, 5 December 1913.
Page No 359 Note 1 J. J. Willis to E. S. Talbot, 5 December 1913 (copy in Davidson Papers).