Change in Christian Missionary Attitude Towards Islam: A Case Study of Madras Missionary Conference (1938)

Abstract

In the first half of the twentieth century, Christian missionaries held several Missionary Conferences, which can be considered as one of the major developments in Christian missionary history. Interestingly, some of these conferences became known after the name of important cities of the Muslim world, where these conferences were held, such as Cairo conferences (1906), Lucknow conference, (1911), Jerusalem conference (1928), and Madras conference (1938).

 The objectives of these conferences were to ponder over different problems in missionary fields and to figure out proper solutions. This article is the study of Madras Missionary Conference (1938) with complete details of its background, proceedings, themes, and resolutions. In this conference Christian missionaries started to re-evaluate and change previous aggressive and polemical missionary attitude towards other religions particularly Islam. The reason behind this move were political changes which appeared and had great impact on Christian missionary enterprise like, World War I, the rise of nationalism and communism and the revival of other religions which resulted in the decline of western political dominance. So at the time of Madras conference (1938) the Christian mission was in a critical situation due to inward and outward crises, which compelled Christian missionaries to change their missionary strategy and missionary attitude towards other religions particularly Islam, to adjust Christian mission with the new emerging political situation. In this regard Christian mission moved from polemical and controversial approach towards realization of values in non-Christian religions. Later on, this approach developed into the Christian dialogue with other religions in the second half of twentieth century.