G. Sherwood Eddy and the Attitudes of Protestants in the United States toward Global Mission

Bibliographic Data

ID3326650
AuthorsRick Nutt (Muskingum University, corresponding author)
Year1997
Volume66
Issue3
Pages502-521
Publication date1997-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueChurch History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0009-6407 • E-ISSN: 1755-2613
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3169454
OpenAlexW2055575669
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited10

G.Sherwood Eddy (1871-1963), a leading figure in American Protestantism through the first half of the twentieth century, is currently most often relegated to footnote references or mentioned only in relation to two of his most famous colleagues, Kirby Page and Reinhold Niebuhr. He was, however, one of the most renowned international evangelists of the time who worked closely with John R. Mott and Robert Speer in the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) and the Student Volunteer Movement (SVM). While a student at Yale, Eddy experienced a dramatic deepening of faith in 1889 at the famous Northfield Student Conference and then, while a student at New York's Union Theological Seminary and later at Princeton Theological Seminary, joined the SVM. Despite his seminary study, Eddy chose to remain a layman all his life. As a YMCA traveling evangelist in India from 1896 to 1911 and in Asia from 1911 to 1931, Eddy embodied many of the attitudes and methods of Protestant global mission for the approximately fifty years of its greatest activity. Primarily engaged in student evangelization, Eddy manifested a deep ambivalence toward the method of mission work. An examination of Eddy's life reveals that in Eddy one finds both the cultural imperialism with which nineteenth-century missionaries are often charged and a sensitivity to other peoples and a commitment to indigenous churches and leadership.While Eddy's ministry spanned over five decades, this essay concentrates on Eddy's labor prior to World War I, for in those years Eddy was most in conflict withhimself

Faith · Protestantism · Sociology · Theology · Christian Theology and Mission · History · Pentecostalism and Christianity Studies · Philosophy · Religion, Society, and Development · Religious studies

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