DYK: The 1910 Edinburgh Missionary Conference Excluded All Black Africans?

The 1910 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh is hailed as the birthplace of the modern ecumenical movement—a supposed effort to unite the global Christian mission.

Yet, this "global" meeting of 1,200 delegates, representing the peak of Western missionary effort, excluded all Black African attendees and leaders from colonized nations. The white leaders felt the African church was not yet "mature" enough to contribute to the global mission strategy.

This exclusion perfectly encapsulates the Paternalism Tax and the Empire DNA: even when discussing the future of Christianity, Western control was prioritized over the voice and lived experience of the growing global church.

"...black Africans were not invited because, as it was understood back then, they were not mature enough to belong." — Harvey Kwiyani, Ph.D., Decolonizing Mission

The delegates' confidence was so great that they aimed to "Evangelise the World in Our Generation", yet they failed to recognize that the majority of that world was ready to speak for itself. The inhabitants of Africa were, in 1910, "regarded as primitive, childlike, and at the bottom of the evolutionary hierarchy, relatively unimportant for the future of the world church". This profound disregard for non-Western spiritual agency is the heart of the colonial missionary project.

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