Student Volunteer Movement - Continued Growth

Continued Growth

The years of steady growth following 1891 were not without their problems. In its report to the Second International Convention, held in Detroit in 1894, the Executive Committee pointed to five "problems" and five "perils" for the Student Volunteer Movement. The problems were: 1) lack of supervision and control over local volunteer bands, 2) inability to keep in touch with isolated volunteers, particularly those who had graduated but had not yet sailed, 3) difficulty in holding volunteers after they had entered theological seminary; "from the beginning to the end of the course the whole presumption in the teaching and attitude of the faculty is that the men are all going to stay home' ) 4) difficulties in connecting volunteers up with mission societies and 5) financial obstacles. by 1894, 630 volunteers had sailed but others had been held back because the mission societies did not have sufficient funds to send them.

The Executive Committee cited two "perils" which related to the Student Volunteer Movement declaration of purpose card, a 3" by 5" card which a volunteer signed to indicate his or her intention to become a foreign missionary. In the summer of 1892, the original phrase for referring to these cards, the "volunteer pledge", had been replaced by the phrase "volunteer declaration". The wording of the card had been changed to read: "It is my purpose, if God permit, to become a foreign missionary." These changes were made to counter the criticism that the card was a binding pledge which caused the volunteer to take his life into his own control rather than relying on the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Charges of pressured emotionalism led to the Executive Committees caution that the declaration card not be used at the wrong time, in the wrong place or under wrong circumstances. The Executive Committee had included in its 1891 report statistics to counter the particular charge that students were being pressured at so young an age that they could not make competent decisions. Only 14 percent of enrolled volunteers at that time were under twenty years of age.

A third peril seen by the Executive Committee in 1894 was that of exaggerating the results of the Movement. Thousands had signed the SVM declaration card but then had no continued contact with the Movement. The Executive Committee decided not to count as members of the Movement those of whom it could obtain no trace. By this policy, the official membership of the Movement was cut drastically from a supposed 6200 volunteers in 1891 to 3200 volunteers in 1894. A fourth peril concerned the growing class of volunteers classified as "hindered", those who had signed the declaration of purpose but now showed little likelihood of making it to the foreign field because of health, family or financial reasons.

The fifth peril brought to the attention of the Convention by the Executive Committee was one which proved to be a nemesis for the SVM throughout its existence. There was a tendency for a breach to form between student volunteers and religiously oriented non-volunteers on college campuses. The volunteers were accused of taking on a tone of superiority and segregating themselves from the general religious associations. Nearly a decade later, Robert Speer again reported to the Executive Committee: "I have found an apparent chasm between the volunteers and the rest of the students in the institution. The Volunteer Band is a little circle cut off from the students and often without a bond of sympathy between it and the students."

The Student Volunteer Movement's early method of presenting the missionary cause through "fact meetings", statistical presentations of the needs of various fields, gave way during this period to missions study classes. An Educational Department was formed in 1894, and introduced its first four courses of study: "The Historical Development of the Missionary Idea", "South America", "Medical Missions", and "China as a Mission Field." Increasing emphasis was placed on forming missionary libraries on campuses.

During the early years of the Movement emphasis had been placed on recruiting young men as volunteers. The traveling secretaries were men, and they had not generally visited women's institutions. The proportion of women accessible in colleges was also much smaller than the proportion of men. By 1892, seventy percent of declared volunteers were men and thirty percent were women although in the general American missionary movement women outnumbered men. In 1895, steps were taken to rectify this situation, including increased visitation of women's colleges.

No major rival movements had as yet arisen to compete for the student religious territory claimed by the SVM although potential rivals apparently existed, as mentioned in the correspondence of 1895:

I do not fear anything of much account from the 'Order of the Double Cross' which originated with Dr. Dowkontt. It cannot hold its constituency together even were it to become fairly organized on any considerable scale. It will doubtless soon die out as other side movements have. At its very best it would not be of much power or a serious menace to our work. Still it is well to keep a watch on it and this we shall constantly do. Later, at a 1904 leaders' conference, a word of caution was again raised; "We must remember an undertone that the Student Volunteer Movement has a monopoly and there is talk of a new movement. The initial fervor of the Student Volunteer Movement cause had swept aside questions regarding specific theological stances but as the Movement became more deeply involved in missionary education work, criticisms inevitably arose. Educational Secretary Harlan P. Beach wrote to John R. Mott in June 1896 regarding criticisms of the Movement's course of study dealing with non-Christian religions. The views of the author, it was charged, were "tinctured with the Parliament of Religions flavor" but Beach maintained that they were not nearly so liberal as that.

In the view of the Volunteer Movement leaders, the entire Protestant missions enterprise seemed to be sagging in the last years of the nineteenth century. Harlan Beach wrote to Mott in 1896: "Sometimes it seems as if the missionary spirit of the churches had received a permanent setback. The panic is far enough in the background now to have lost its power. No immediate prospect of better times is to be seen. What then can be done?" Increasingly, the Movement's task was not only to recruit missionaries but also, through educational methods, to encourage financial support of the mission boards. There were far more recruits than positions to be filled but the SVM justified its continued recruiting activity on the grounds that a wider pool for the boards to select from would result in more highly qualified missionaries.

Despite these negative notes, the Student Volunteer Movement grew steadily during the pre-War era. Regular Quadrennial Conventions were held in 1898 (Cleveland), 1902 (Toronto), 1906 (Nashville), 1910 (Rochester) and 1914 (Kansas City). Convention speakers included such prominent individuals as former Secretary of State John W. Foster, Ambassador of Great Britain in the United States Henry Mortimer Durand and James Bryce. By 1910, 4338 volunteers had sailed to foreign fields. Slightly over fifty percent of all missionaries who sailed from America in the years 1906 to 1909 were student volunteers. The activities of the SVM also had spinoff effects including the formation of the Laymen's Missionary Movement in 1906 and the establishment of home mission projects such as the Yale Hope Mission.

The identification of the work of the Volunteer Movement with the ethos of American society during this period was expressed clearly by the religious periodical The Outlook in its comments on the 1906 Nashville convention:

The confidence which, directed to one end, gives security to commerce was at Nashville a faith in the ultimate worldwide prevalence of the influence and principles of Christ. Ambition, which drives some men into constructing great industries, was there the impulse to have a part in bringing that dominion to pass; and devotion to a purpose, which is the secret of success in commercial enterprise, was there manifest in the determination of those four thousand delegates thus expressed to make known to all the world "in this generation" the Good News.