THE WITNESS OF THE STUDENT CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT
By Robin Boyd
SPCK. 208 pages. £14.99
ISBN 0-281-05877-6
This new history of the Student Christian Movement (SCM) is interesting because from it one can gather the causes of the SCM’s collapse as an evangelical movement and therefore be warned. The author traces the steps in this decline without understanding the underlying issues. He relates the history as follows.
The SCM grew out of the Student Missionary Volunteer Movement, started in 1889, through which many good evangelical students committed themselves to missionary service. Several hundred went abroad as missionaries and it merged with the growing number of university CUs into the British Colleges Christian Union, where the Cambridge (CICCU) and Scottish CUs were the leaders. Finally, in 1905, it adopted the SCM name. So far, so good.
