Featured
The rise and fall of the Student Volunteer Movement
The American High
The period from 1946 to 1964 is sometimes referred to as “The American High.” It: “witnessed America’s ascendancy as a global superpower. Social movements stalled. The middle class grew and prospered. Churches buttressed government. Huge peacetime defense budgets were uncontroversial. Mass tastes thrived atop a collectivist infrastructure of suburbs, interstates, and regulated communication. Declaring ‘an end to ideology,’ respected authorities presided over a bland, modernist, and spirit-dead culture.” (Strauss and Howe 1997) It was certainly anything but a high for the SVM.
In 1944, the United Student Christian Council was formed as a national federation of the YMCA, YWCA, and denominational student movements. The federation was ecumenical on the national level, but did not have regional or local representation. The SVM agreed to serve as the Missionary Committee of the USCC, although it would insisted on remaining independent in policy, administration, and finance. However, since the USCC had no regional structures for the Movement to work through, it was restricted to the national level: planning the quadrennial student mission conventions and producing educational material.
The SVM was intended to be a grassroots recruitment force. Without that, it would lose much of its identity. The SVM was able to do some campus itineration through the sponsorship of campus mission programs, and from 1945 to 1947 it tried to keep contacts at the grassroots level through a system of campus representatives—but failed. In 1947 a Special Commission on the Future of the Student Volunteer Movement recommended that SVM campus missionary fellowship groups be reestablished as informal interest groups rather than official organizations: students interested in missions were calling for missionary fellowship groups because their special needs were not being met by the general student movements. The “peril of separatism” (articulated by Mott back in 1894) which had caused the local Volunteer Bands to be eliminated,was now less a peril than losing the support of the volunteers.
Tags: 
Other Related Posts
- None Found
Discussion
One comment for “The rise and fall of the Student Volunteer Movement”
Post a comment
Categories
Most Emailed
- How new missionaries choose their country of service: do we need a change? - 13 emails
- Google Motion Chart: Global Population by Religion, 1800-2025 - 9 emails
- The Chinese are Coming - 9 emails
- For Profit Structures in Mission Movements - 8 emails
- Second Coming in 2015! - 6 emails
Justin, thank you for a well researched SVM article. Over the past 30 years I have had an enduring interest in this history, as a scholar, practitioner and mobilizer. http://www.jaygary.com/students.shtml
But now I think the student generation following World War I also made good choices regarding the gospel. While Robert Wilder chose fundamentalism, Sherwood Eddy embraced both the gospel and social justice, and rallied the church to work with marginalized urban youth. As 21st century Christian leaders, we must not let this divide between evangelism and social action divide us any longer. Even as evangelicals, both WEA and Lausanne have dealt with this both theologically and practically for 30 years now. There are new paradigms of global engagement emerging. We must not be frozen in the 19th century, but open to our own paradigms becoming more biblical and integral.
Second, whatever calls to come to a new generation, their watchword must deal substantially, in a post-Bosch world, on how the gospel must change both the evangelized and the unevangelized. Jesus linked both the rich man and Lazarus in his parable. We must link our overconsumption with the destitution of the developing world, and consider ways to create sustainable enterprises that are culturally relevant, environmentally appropriate and wealth generating among the bottom of the pyramid. See the work of Stuart Hart in this, his book _Capitalism at the Crossroads_ http://www.stuartlhart.com/frameworks%20and%20t...
I am encouraged by your work from Asia. May God continue to give you strength to sound the trumpet.
–Jay, Program Director, M.A. in Strategic Foresight, http://www.regent.edu/global/msf
Assistant Professor, School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship, Regent University