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Rating: 
Summary: The Father of the Ecumenical Movement
Review: This is much more than a biography. J H Oldham is the Father of the Ecumenical Movement and it is impossible to tell his story without recounting the way in which churches and missionary societies all over the world were growing closer together throughout the whole of the 20th century, going back before the Edinburgh Conference, 1910, until his death in1969. Oldham was a major player in it all.But it is also about much more than the churches. For Oldham every issue in society or international relations called for the challenge of the gospel, be it education, race relations, women's suffrage, colonialism or economics. During a short period working in India around 1900 he set himself too build bridges between the Indian and missionary communities because foreignness was a hindrance to evangelism and he knew only too well that what the Indians wanted most was friends and love. He may have spent his working life in the ecclesiastical institutions but his eyes were always on secular horizons and his greatest disappointments were when the institutions became more interested in themselves than in the world they were there to serve. Clements is to be congratulated on his achievement. Brilliantly written. Compulsive reading. Every Christian professional should take it seriously. No theological library can afford to be without it. Alec Gilmore University of Sussex
Rating:
Summary: The Father of the Ecumenical Movement
Review: This is much more than a biography. J H Oldham is the Father of the Ecumenical Movement and it is impossible to tell his story without recounting the way in which churches and missionary societies all over the world were growing closer together throughout the whole of the 20th century, going back before the Edinburgh Conference, 1910, until his death in1969. Oldham was a major player in it all. But it is also about much more than the churches. For Oldham every issue in society or international relations called for the challenge of the gospel, be it education, race relations, women's suffrage, colonialism or economics. During a short period working in India around 1900 he set himself too build bridges between the Indian and missionary communities because foreignness was a hindrance to evangelism and he knew only too well that what the Indians wanted most was friends and love. He may have spent his working life in the ecclesiastical institutions but his eyes were always on secular horizons and his greatest disappointments were when the institutions became more interested in themselves than in the world they were there to serve. Clements is to be congratulated on his achievement. Brilliantly written. Compulsive reading. Every Christian professional should take it seriously. No theological library can afford to be without it. Alec Gilmore University of Sussex
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