International Brethren History Conference

The International Brethren History Conferences are open to all who are interested in the history of the movement.

The fifth conference will be held at Lindors Country House Hotel, Gloucestershire, England, from 25th until 27th June. The topic of the conference will be 'Brethren and mission'.

The Christian Brethren were, in the phrase of David Bebbington, ‘evangelicals of the evangelicals’. As such they were enthusiasts for mission. It has been calculated that at least 1% of the British membership became overseas missionaries—an impressive statistic—and of course there were the numerous full-time evangelists in the countries of origin while much of the life of local assemblies was geared towards outreach. Brethren missiology placed great importance in gathering converts in assemblies, thus fulfilling the Great Commission to ‘make disciples’. The concept of 'living by faith' which a number of Brethren writers articulated also had a wide influence across evangelicalism on the theology of the faith mission movement. Women could find a liberty in evangelism which they could not always readily find in other areas of assembly life, and they were often actively promoted in this area. Their contribution to foreign mission was considerable. In recent discussion ‘mission’ has come to have a wider meaning than just being a synonym for ‘evangelism’. Here too the Brethren embraced opportunities to found hospitals and schools as part of their overseas missionary work. This conference will be an opportunity to assess the Brethren concept of mission in historical perspective.
Papers on any aspect relevant to the topic are invited. Further details can be had from Bahn's convener.

A booking brochure is under preparation and will be available on this page at a later date.

 

 Lindors Country House Hotel

 

Previous conferences were held:

  • on 9-11 July 2009, in Scotland at Carberry Tower, Musselburgh (near Edinburgh), on the theme of 'Brethren Spirituality'.
  • on 5–7 July 2007 at Liverpool Hope University and was organised in conjunction with the Christian Brethren Archive. The subject was ‘Brethren, Culture and Society’ (Brochure for information). As part of the proceedings, Dr Ward Gasque of Canada gave a F F Bruce memorial lecture on the subject of ‘F F Bruce: an unhyphenated evangelical’.
  • at Wiedenest Bible School, Germany, from 3-5 July 2005 on ‘Witnessing in Many Lands: the Theology and Practice of the Brethren Movement’. The papers from the conference are being prepared for publication.
  • at Redcliffe College Gloucester in July 2003 on "The growth of the Brethren movement: national and international experiences". The papers from the conference were published in Neil Dickson and Tim Grass (eds), The Growth of the Brethren Movement: National and International Experiences (Carlisle: Paternoster 2006).

 

For further information, contact Neil Dickson

 


Last Updated 2010-06-24 12:09:23