Overcoming class and coloniality through the reformed tradition in the twentieth century: the radical missional paradigms of the Iona community and the Council for World Mission

Abstract

This thesis explores why progressive Christian mission in the 20th century increasingly focused theologically, and structurally, on themes of community. To answer this question, the project focused on two case studies, the Iona Community (1938) and the Council for World Mission (1977) which both adopted new structural models to meet their distinctive missional contexts. The thesis sits in the fields of World Christianity and Missiology and has adopted a historical methodology to outline the evolution of both the case studies in the 20th century.

The comparison of the two Reformed, UK-based mission agencies, one predominantly functioning in the UK, and the other active outside of the UK, has revealed that both developed paradigms of mutuality to deliver mission on a bi-directional pattern.

The Iona Community model was intended to re-connect the Church of Scotland with the alienated industrial working class. For the Council for World Mission, their problem to tackle was an internal one, where decolonial movements had led to the whole export model of foreign missions from the West coming under critical scrutiny. They replaced their predecessor organisation, the London Missionary Society (1795), by a partnership of churches who each direct, deliver and receive mission equally and collectively.

Notwithstanding their disparate church traditions, locations, and missional aims, the thesis argues that both case studies responded to the perceived needs of their contexts and ultimately moved in similar directions. It traces how both missional organisations radically revised traditional styles of doing mission. The Iona Community pioneered an approach to urban mission in Scotland that looked to missional, quasi-monastic communities as a solution to the alienation of the urban working class. The Council for World Mission abandoned the voluntaryist model of the LMS in favour of a church-centric practice of mission—where the church was seen as God’s instrument and mission was understood to be the prerogative of all congregants—rather than the specially called. Both case studies finally moved towards a position that advocated for God’s mission as being active outside of the church—bringing an increasing challenge to power dynamics within British church bodies. The thesis argues that these models were created in response to the understanding of the need for churches to join in with the margins, where God’s mission was already operational.