The End of Missionary Transloyalties in the Ecumenical Movement? The “Humanisation of the Gospel,” the “Frankfurt Declaration of 1970" and the Long 1960s

Globalisation and de-westernisation were the hallmarks of the 1960s. This applied not only to the social, cultural and political spheres but also to Christianity and its churches. Globalisation and de-westernisation posed a challenge to the Ecumenical Movement, especially to one of its main fields of activity: the mission. The mission was institutionally anchored in the International Missionary Council. This hitherto independent branch of the Ecumenical Movement had been integrated into the World Council of Churches (WCC) at the 3rd General Assembly in 1961. In the mid-1960s, at the latest with the World Conference on Church and Society in Geneva in 1966, it became clear that the ecumenical loyalties that had existed until then between conservative Lutherans and Evangelicals and protestant advocates of the new concept of a “humanisation of the gospel” were going to be broken. How did this conflict and separation come about? After all, almost all of the founding fathers of the Ecumenical Movement did come from the revivalist movement, with its strong missionary drive, just like the evangelical and pietist movements. This article examines the origins of this conflict by showing previous transnational loyalties around the Ecumenical Movement, the World Council of Churches and the International Mission Council. It analyses and explains how new ecumenical transloyalties in the field of missions came about during the 1960s and also how old connections broke up. The so-called evangelical “Frankfurt Declaration” of 1970 marks the end of this development and can be seen as the end of evangelical transloyalty to the Ecumenical Movement - but also as the beginning of a new global evangelical transloyalty.