Joseph Houldsworth OldhamCBE (1874–1969), known as J. H. or Joe, was a Scottish missionary in India, who became a significant figure in Christian ecumenism, though never ordained in the United Free Church as he had wished.
Life
J.H. Oldham was the son of George Wingate Oldham (1807-1859) and Eliza 'Lillah' née Houldsworth (1845-?). He was born in India and brought up in Bombay until age 7, when his family returned to Scotland, living in Crieff and Edinburgh before matriculating as a student at Trinity College, Oxford. Joseph then went to Lahore in 1897, a missionary for the Scottish YMCA, there marrying in 1898 Mary Anna Gibson Fraser (1875-1965), daughter of Andrew Fraser and Agnes Whitehead née Archibald (1847-1877). He and Mary both suffered with typhoid, and returned to Scotland in 1901.[1]
He became editor of the International Review of Missions in 1912, and travelled widely.[2] At the end of World War I he was a secretary of the Emergency Committee of Cooperating Missions, chaired by John Mott.[3] Article 438 of the Treaty of Versailles dealt with the property of German missions in territories ceded to the Allies by a mechanism of putting them in trust, and its inclusion is attributed to lobbying by Oldham.[4]
His book Christianity and the Race Problem (1924), against scientific racism, has been called "a sophisticated attempt to develop an alternative Christian analysis of racial relations by attacking the determinism of Stoddard and Grant, both of whom are cited, on scientific, economic, and ethical grounds".[13] His proposed solutions, however, have been criticised as vague.[14] At the time of publication it was reviewed positively by Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje.[15]
Oldham was a principal leader in organizing and writing and editing material for the "Conference on Church, Community, and State", known as the Oxford Conference of 1937.[16]
At the First Assembly of the World Council of Churches in 1948 Oldham contributed the important paper "A Responsible Society".[17]
^William Minter. King Solomon's Mines Revisited (1988), p. 64.
^W. Otterspeer, Leiden Oriental connections, 1850-1940 (1989), p. 215.
^see W. A. Visser 't Hooft and J. H. Oldham, The Church and Its Function in Society (Chicago: Willett, Clark & Co., 1937) and J. H. Oldham The Oxford Conference (Official Report) (New York: Willett, Clark & Co., 1937).
^The Church and the Disorder of Society, vol. 3, Man's Disorder and God's Design (New York: Harper & Bros., 1948), 120-54.
George Bennett, Paramountcy to Partnership: J. H. Oldham and Africa, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Oct., 1960), pp. 356–361.
Dennis Bates, Ecumenism and Religious Education between the Wars: The Work of J. H. Oldham, British Journal of Religious Education, Volume 8, Issue 3 Summer 1986, pp. 130–139.
Tom Steele and Richard Kenneth Taylor, Oldham's Moot (1938-1947), the universities and the adult citizen, History of Education, 4 August 2009