What is it about?
This article is a history of a Christian student organization called European Student Relief (ESR) that operated immediately after World War I and provided food relief and other assistance to refugee students across Europe and Russia. November 2018 is the hundredth anniversary of the end of World War I. The ESR worked in the immediate aftermath of that war. The ESR was an arm of the World's Student Christian Federation, the most important global campus ministry organization in its day. European Student Relief collaborated with a lot of other organizations and was a leader in bringing about a kind of global consciousness among students and others known then as "internationalism."
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Why is it important?
This article is important in understanding the early years of several other nongovernmental organizations that started around the same time (Mennonite Central Committee, American Friends Service Committee, and others) and gives historical context for contemporary persons involved in various forms of campus ministry efforts. It is also important because it helps us to reflect on the hundredth anniversary of the end of World War I. Refugee movements were a big problem then. The refugee crisis today is also growing. People involved in refugee work can deepen their understanding of their own work by studying the work of those movements that came before them.
Perspectives
In doing the research for this article I became deeply impressed by the people involved in European Student Relief, their efforts to do this relief work in an authentic way as Christians and also their efforts to involve people of other faiths in that work. They ultimately moved in a secularizing direction, but for a time I think they were really doing something praiseworthy in the interfaith friendships that developed along the way. I also think that the work the ESR did in promoting "student exchanges" over the summer was the earliest expression of what is now known as "short term mission trips." Most historians trace the genesis of the short term mission trip movement to the 1960s. I think the ESR was doing that in the 1920s. I didn't develop that aspect of their story as much as I would have liked in this article, but it is there!
Benjamin Hartley
George Fox University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Saving Students: European Student Relief in the Aftermath of World War I, International Bulletin of Mission Research, June 2018, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/2396939318782886.
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