Student Volunteers

Last week, in Detroit, 3000 college students from Canada & the U. S. gathered to attend the Tenth Quadrennial Student Volunteer Convention. They wanted to find out "What is right, what is wrong and who is responsible for good or bad in foreign missions?" To answer these questions for the 3000 students came missionaries from dangerous distant lands, U. S. leaders of all Protestant Evangelical denominations. They met together in a Masonic Temple.

Right at the start, speakers began to find fault with present missionary and ministerial conditions. The most obvious and threatening obstacle to missionary success, they pointed out, is the effect of denominational rivalry upon the potentially Christian inhabitants of heathen countries. Said Canadian Dr. Richard Roberts: "The business of Christian missions is not to get people to call themselves Christians but to make friends." At this there was a murmur of approval from the students.

Other speakers found other faults, suggested remedies. Said small, earnest Dr. Roy H. Akagi of Japan: "If Christianity is to become a living force to the Japanese people, it must first be Japanized." Said vigorous Dr. John R. Mott: "A synthesis of Eastern & Western relationships must claim all secular agencies as well as our Christian organizations. . . ." Other speakers pointed out that racial prejudice hampered African Missions, that the Church Charities are joined in "common law marriage" to extraneous economic agencies. Said explosive Dr. Sherwood Eddy, Y.M.C.A. Secretary at large for Asia: "The new slogan is not to evangelize but to Christianize. Missionaries must go to other lands with a gospel of love, not gunboats. We want no such protection."

Said Dr. Robert Elliott Speer, secretary of the Board of Missions of the Presbyterian Church, suggesting to the 3,000 students that non-Christian lands had need of 100,000 physicians to deal with 1,000,000 lepers and hundreds of thousands of blind throughout the non-Christian world: "Outside of four or five cities, you cannot find 10 qualified physicians for the 10 million people in Persia."

The 3000 students found questions revolving in their minds. They attended "colloquia" where they could ask their questions for any one to answer. Most of the questions exhibited a naive idealism and an insistence on the particular rather than the general. Said one student: "Would it be possible for Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism to be worked together into a whole?" "It would not," said Dr. Francis C. M. Wei, President of Central China Christian University. Many asked: "Can't the missionaries bring Christ to the foreign fields without also bringing Christianity or Christian Civilization?" One asked a question which precipitated a debate: "Would Christ be neutral in China today?" Of the students' questions, many remained unanswered.