To choose for the theme of the presidential address RivalPresuppositions in theWriting ofChurchHistory is not to whet the knife. There is no scandal among contemporary church historians in America. In the course of time, through coöperation, such as is organized by this Society, we are tending to develop views more comprehensive and less prejudiced than those which characterized the church historians of one or two centuries ago. We are endeavoring to study and describe the phenomena of organized religion in our American past, in all other lands, and throughout all the Christian centuries; and to make our survey properly scientific.

The present interest in the question of the reunion of the Churches, as evidenced by the Stockholm and Lausanne Conferences, by the work of the Federal Council, by the community church movement, by the overtures for union between particular denominations, such as the Universalists and Congregationalists, and the Congregationalists and Christians, the formation of the United Church of Canada, and many other signs and tokens, suggests an inquiry into the relations existing among the various bodies of Christians at the period in our national history which was perhaps marked by more cooperation and less animosity than any other prior to our own time.

Those Christians who have been taught by Western Protestant missionaries have come to be critical of the name by which they are called. They are no longer simply “missions” or “missionary churches,” “native churches,” or even “indigenous churches.” They believe that such terms are now marks of condescension on the part of those using them, and so insist upon a non-compromising nomenclature. The Jerusalem Conference gave it; even though it is slightly inaccurate—“The Younger Churches.”