Digging Out the Embedded Church - The Maranatha Community

Denominations began to form their own home missions by the middle of the 19 th Century and
one famous denomination was born out of this time. By 1878 the Christian Mission in the
East End of London was called the Salvation Army. It was founded as a non-sacramentalist
body, storming Satan‟s strongholds as an army and not trying to be a „church‟. Today, at the
beginning of the 21 st Century, the Salvation Army now calls itself a „Church‟.
Nasmith wore himself out in the service of his vision of a non-denominational mission, dying
a poor man at 39 years of age. He was buried from a Wesleyan Chapel with prayers led by a
Presbyterian and an address given by a Congregational minister. The interment was
conducted by an Anglican in Bunhill Fields Cemetery, the Dissenters‟ burial place in City
Road, London, just opposite Wesley‟s Chapel. Several cities in Britain still have City
Missions working as part of the City Mission network, though now some Mission Halls have
been given up and some have become independent congregations.
The Evangelical Alliance was founded in 1846, when Evangelicals were at their most
influential in Britain but were feeling they needed to consolidate their position. This was in
part to counteract the threat from the growing Catholic influence of the Tractarian (Oxford)
Movement. It was a remarkable alliance of 800 Christian leaders from many countries, 10%
of whom were from America and 6% from the Continent of Europe. Fifty-two branches of
the Church were represented, all, of course, Protestant. Rouse and Neill write:
„It was the one and only definitely ecumenical organization – which arose out of the
Evangelical Awakening of the 19 th Century.‟ 120
The only article of faith in their doctrinal basis of nine articles which could be considered
distinctly Protestant was Article 2: „The right and duty of private judgement in the
interpretation of (the) scriptures.‟
The Alliance promoted prayer among Evangelicals and was deeply committed to the overseas
missionary movement, planting the idea of cooperation among missionary societies in India.
It was also a voice in support of religious liberty in a variety of political situations, but as
Rouse and Neill point out, it did not have an agenda for bringing denominations together, but
saw itself as a central organisation for a voluntary union of individual Christians of different
churches. It was strongly Protestant and incurred some censure for its hostility to Rome from
some of its members, yet it was a step forward as an expression of Christian unity.
The only other notable ecumenical attempt in the 19 th Century was the founding of the
Association for the Promotion of the Unity of Christendom, and it held out a wider hope than
the Evangelical Alliance. The Association was founded in 1857 as a result of Anglican and
Roman initiatives, and embraced Orthodoxy as well. It had a sole object, to pray for unity,
„that visible unity may be restored to Christendom.‟ 121 But the reactionary Pope Pius IX
disapproved of its aim and in 1864 forbade it to Roman Catholics.
120 Rouse, Ruth and Neill, Stephen C, A History of the Ecumenical Movement, 1517-1948, SPCK,
London, 1954, p 320.
121 Rouse, Ruth and Neill, Stephen C, A History of the Ecumenical Movement, 1517-1948, SPCK,
London, 1954, p 279.
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