“Mission and Decolonial Perspective: World War I as the Catalyst for a Global Process” - Conference proceedings from the conference of the same name held from October 12 to 14, 2017

We have succeeded in bringing together representatives from various fields and disciplines of research. The planned volume will provide a better understanding of the history of Christian mission and the formation of independent churches as important prerequisites and components of the history of the decolonization process in the 20th century. For the First World War was not only a global event from a military-historical perspective, but also had a significant impact on missionary activity outside Europe. While missionary churches were still mostly led by white personnel, the world war marked the beginning of a development in many places in which “locals” took on positions of responsibility. This process was accompanied by a “nationalization” of church organizations and the independence of mission areas. At the same time as this diversification of various Christian missionary enterprises, non-Christian missionary initiatives increasingly emerged in the regions still colonized by Europe and also became globally active. The contributions planned for the anthology explore the question of the extent to which the First World War can actually be considered such a turning point. The planned and achieved conference goal, which is to be reinforced with the planned volume, highlights developments during the war and post-war periods and adds a history of the long development that preceded and was a prerequisite for the visible decolonial processes.
As several contributions exemplify, young men and women had been trained since the nineteenth century and took on responsibility in the missionary churches, which were still very much organized along colonial lines. During this period, organizational structures and intellectual potential emerged, which were able to develop particularly during and after the war years. The individual contributions make it clear, to varying degrees and with examples from different regions of Africa and Asia, that the period of the First World War should be regarded as a transitional period, because in the aftermath, national churches avant la lettre emerged in many mission areas dominated by very different denominations and colonial powers – although the nations and national states as counterparts were (still) largely absent. These new formations were in communication with each other to some extent, which is why transfer processes and the global scale of these developments cannot be ignored.