Uppsala Betray The Two Billion: An Analysis

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Uppsala acknowledged secular world as locus and context of mission, “to a humanity that cries passionately and articulately for a fully human life.” This shift of focus from individual conversion towards world foreshadowed the crisis in mission as found in Donald McGavran’s question “Will Uppsala Betray the Two Billion?” According to McGavran the document “Renewal in Mission” did not give an authentic proposal for personal proclamation of the gospel, necessity of faith, the unevangelized people and sending of missionaries was not found. According to Arthur Glasser, “the conservative evangelicals reacted strongly to “Renewal in Mission” because it “appalled them with its secularized gospel and reduction of the mission of the church to social and political activism.” McGavran in response to Uppsala’s commitment to mission said that:
We cannot believe that the renowned and honored missionary societies which together make up DWME will allow any such draft to set forth as expressing their 1968 purpose of mission. We cannot believe that this great missionary planning session can neglect so completely both Vatican II on Mission and the Wheaton Congress of 1966.
Some of the ecumenical members were not happy with the Report on Renewal in mission as in
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According to Won Yong Ji, the FD presented a distinct accent of mission theology that manifested in views of liberal ecumenicals and conservative Evangelicals, of functional dimensions of Gospel, and service in the world that inevitably created some tension between “horizontal” dimension of liberalism and “vertical” dimension of conservatives, who both in their exclusive approach stood aloof from one another. According to Hendrikus Berkhof, the Bermen Declaration of 1934 became the basis for Evangelicals that provided foundation to their ongoing struggle with

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