Christianity in the Eastern Conflicts by William Paton

In preparation for the 1938 Oxford Conference on Christian Missions, William Paton the Secretary of International Missionary Council, embarked on a tour of Asia and the Near East. This volume represents a summary of his tour and its findings. My thanks to the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide for providing a copy of this book for digitisation.

William Paton [1886-1943], Christianity in the Eastern Conflicts. A Study of Christianity, Nationalism and Communism in Asia. London: Edinburgh House Press, 1937. Hbk. pp.224. [Click to visit the download page]

Contents

• Author’s Preface
• Introduction

1. Japan
2. China
3. India
4. The Near East
5. The Gospel and the New Age
6. Church, Community and State
7. The Life and Witness of the Church
8. The Church and the Social Order
9. Conclusion

• Book List
• Index

Introduction

This book is based chiefly upon the experiences of a journey which it was my good fortune and privilege to undertake during the autumn, winter and spring of 1935-6. Travelling from England through America and Canada, during seven months I visited Japan, Korea, Manchuria, China, the Straits Settlements, Java, India, Egypt and Palestine. The principal object with which this journey was undertaken was to discuss with representative Christians of the indigenous Churches and with missionaries in the different countries the plans that had been outlined for holding in the Far East, in the autumn of 1938, a world meeting of the International Missionary Council, in succession to those held in 1910 at Edinburgh and in 1928 at Jerusalem. These plans were made in outline at the meeting of the Committee of the Council in Northfield, Massachusetts, and I left the meeting to go directly to Japan, there to begin an intensely interesting process of testing, in innumerable discussions, whether the themes which the Council had chosen as the subject-matter of its proposed World meeting were in fact the most important…