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The rise and fall of the Student Volunteer Movement

1910s: Cooling Ardor

The percentage of the missionary force working among the least evangelized peaked shortly after 1910, then began to decline. American women had a significant presence on the field: in 1910, 55 of 100 missionaries were women; by 1925, 4,824 single American women and 4,661 married American women were on the mission field.

People continued to talk about the unfinished task. Samuel Zwemer published The unoccupied mission fields of Africa and Asia, which mapped out the unfinished task in great detail. In 1914, the Edinburgh 1910 Continuing Committee launched the International Review of Missions.

Conferences of agencies were giving way to councils dominated by churches. The notable World Missionary Conference was held in Edinburgh (later referred to as Edinburgh 1910). Out of this conference came a Continuing Committee which would sponsor many of the functions of the later International Missionary Council. Mott toured the Far East, holding 21 regional missionary conferences in India, China, Japan and Korea resulting in the famous “Twenty Two” councils catalyzed in missionary-receiving countries; unfortunately, as these became dominated by local churches, a debate over the nature of missions and particularly the need for missionaries began to be held, and the passion for missions began to cool.

True, the Student Volunteer Movement, was still rolling along. It issued text books for mission-study classes, and established mission-classes with enrollment of 36,580 in 1912. It held quadrennial conventions and annual summer college conferences. It employed “traveling secretaries”—essentially, mission speakers. “It prepared the way for the foreign mission work of the YMCA.” By 1916, the Movement had resulted in 5,569 volunteers from America and 1,696 volunteers from the United Kingdom. “More volunteers were ready and acceptable than could be sent” (Erb 1916). In 1919, at the SVM Quadrennial Convention at Des Moines, the registration was limited to 6,890 only by the size of the facilities available. Yet these were the peak years for the SVM.

During the decade, the rift widened between conservatives and liberals. The SVM was rooted in premillenialism, but the optimism had been shattered with the turn of the millennium and World War I. Sherwood Eddy wrote, “I believe that the demand of the progressive students at Des Moines voiced the new sentiment in the colleges for a more socialized and broader presentation and conduct of our whole movement… The next Convention might well spend several days in making indelibly clear the Pagan racial practice both at home and abroad, the Pagan industrial situation here and in other lands, Pagan nationalism at home and abroad, and against such a background make clear the vital need for Christ’s teachings and for Christ’s power if the world is to be Christianized.” (Smalley 1980)

The struggles of liberals v. conservatives impacted the women’s movements too: “The leaders of the woman’s foreign mission movement embraced modernity as the product of social and material progress, not realizing the secularization that accompanied modernization would eventually undermine their movement. Without the melodramatic appeal that worked so effectively on the sensibilities of Victorian females, the women’s societies experienced difficulties in recruiting new members in the era of modern missions.” (Hill 1985)

Some sense of this struggle can be heard in WMU President Fannie Heck’s comments. As she celebrated the opportunities for missions training available to the next generation of Baptist women, she also recognized these opportunities posed a threat: “The girl who enters college never returns quite the same… she may drift from her moorings.” For Heck, the social gospel emphasis on physical well being was no substitute for the Christ-centered work of soul saving.

In an attempt to preserve the WMU, they introduced a “Standard of Excellence”: a good society was a society which was (1) praying for and studying mission; (2) was increasing in contributions and membership; (3) which reported regularly; (4) had not just a faithful few but a high average attendance from the total membership. The standards enabled each society to compare itself with others and improve its performance. This perhaps was one of the factors in keeping the WMU organized—it was something the SVM did not have.

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© 2008 Momentum Magazine.
Related: The Mission Manual · Justin Long's Annotated Links and Notes