Frank N. D. Buchman
Encyclopedia
Franklin Nathaniel Daniel Buchman (June 4, 1878 – August 7, 1961), best known as Dr. or Rev. Frank Buchman, was a Protestant Christian
evangelist
who founded the Oxford Group
(known as Moral Re-Armament
from 1938 until 2001, and as Initiatives of Change
since then). He was decorated by the French and German governments for his contributions to Franco-German reconciliation after World War II
.
, United States
, the son of a wholesale liquor salesman and restaurateur and a pious Lutheran mother. When he was sixteen he moved with his parents to Allentown
. Buchman studied at Muhlenberg College
and Mount Airy Seminary and was ordained a Lutheran minister in June 1902.
Buchman had hoped to be called to an important city church, but accepted a call to Overbrook
, a growing Philadelphia suburb, which did not yet have a Lutheran church building. He arranged the rental of an old storefront for worship space, and lived upstairs. After a visit to Europe, he decided to establish a hostel (called a “hospice”) in Overbrook, along the lines of Friedrich von Bodelschwingh
’s colony for the mentally ill in Bielefeld
and inspired by Toynbee Hall
. However, conflict developed with the hostel's board. In Buchman's recollection the dispute was due to the board's unwillingness to fund the hospice adequately. However, the Finance Committee of the Ministerium of Pennsylvania, which oversaw the budget, had no funds with which to make up an ongoing deficit and wanted the hospice to be self-supporting. Buchman resigned.
Exhausted and depressed, Buchman took his doctor's advice of a long holiday abroad. Still in turmoil over his hospice resignation, Buchman attended the 1908 Keswick Convention
hoping to meet the renowned Quaker-influenced, Baptist
evangelist F. B. Meyer
(1847–1929) whom he believed might be able to help him. Meyer was not there, but in a small half-empty chapel he listened to Jessie Penn-Lewis
preach on the Cross of Christ, which led to a religious experience.
secretary at Penn State College
. Despite quickly more than doubling the YMCA membership to 75% of the student body he was dissatisfied, questioning how deep the changes went. Alcohol consumption in the college, for example, was unaffected. During this time he began the practice of a daily "quiet time
". Buchman finally got to meet F. B. Meyer, who when visiting the college asked Buchman, "Do you let the Holy Spirit
guide you in all you are doing? Buchman replied that he did indeed pray and read the Bible in the morning. "But", persisted Meyer, "do you give God enough uninterrupted time really to tell you what to do?" Another decisive influence appears to have been Yale University
theology professor Henry Burt Wright (1877–1923) and his 1909 book The Will of God and a Man's Lifework, which was itself influenced by F.B. Meyer
and Henry Drummond
, among others.
Buchman's devotion to personal evangelism, and his skill at re-framing the Christian message in contemporary terms, were admired by other campus ministry leaders. Maxwell Chaplin, YMCA secretary at Princeton University
wrote: "In five years the permanent secretary at Penn State has entirely changed the tone of that one-time tough college," after attending one of the Buchman's annual "Y[MCA] Week" campaigns. Lloyd Douglas, author of The Robe
took part in the same campaign. "It was", he wrote afterwards, "the most remarkable event of its kind I ever witnessed.... One after another, prominent fraternity men ... stood up before their fellows and confessed that they had been living poor, low-grade lives and from henceforth meant to be good."
In 1915 Buchman's YMCA work took him to India
with evangelist
Sherwood Eddy
. There he met, briefly, Mahatma Gandhi
(the first of many meetings), and became friends with Rabindranath Tagore
and Amy Carmichael
, founder of the Dohnavur Fellowship. Despite speaking to audiences of up to 60,000, Buchman was critical of the large-scale approach, describing it as "like hunting rabbits with a brass band". From February to August 1916 Buchman worked with the YMCA mission in China
, returning to Pennsylvania due to the increasing illness of his father.
. However, his criticism of other missionaries in China, with an implication that sin, including homosexuality, was keeping some of them from being effective, led to conflict. Bishop Logan Roots was deluged with complaints, and in 1918 asked Buchman to leave China.
While still based at Hartford, Buchman spent much of his time travelling and forming groups of Christian students at Princeton University
and Yale University
, as well as Oxford
. Sam Shoemaker
, a Princeton graduate and one-time Secretary of the Philadelphian Society who had met Buchman in China, became one of his leading American disciples. In 1922, after a prolonged spell with students in Cambridge
, Buchman resigned his position at Hartford, and thereafter relied on gifts from patrons such as Margaret Tjader.
, Oxford. By 1928 numbers had grown so large that the meetings moved to the ballroom of the Randolph Hotel, before being invited to use the library of the Oxford University Church, St Mary's.
In response to criticism by Tom Driberg in his first scoop
in the Daily Express
that this "strange new sect" involved members holding hands in a circle and publicly confessing their sins (a fabrication according to those who were there), the Express printed a statement by Canon L.W. Grensted, Chaplain and Fellow of University College
and a university lecturer in psychology bearing "testimony not only to [their] general sanity... but also to [their] real effectiveness. Men whom I have known... have not only found a stronger faith and a new happiness, but have also made definite progress in the quality of their study, and in their athletics too."
In the summer of 1928 six of these Oxford men traveled, without Buchman, to South Africa where the press, at a loss how to describe this new religious movement, coined the term the "Oxford Group". Between 1931 and 1935, around 150 Oxford undergraduates were attending Oxford Group meetings every lunchtime. Paul Hodder-Williams, of the publishing firm Hodder and Stoughton, arranged for a regular column about the group to appear in the firm’s magazine, the British Weekly. In 1932 Hodder also published a book about the group: For Sinners Only by A.J. Russell, managing editor of the Sunday Express, which went through 17 editions in two years and was translated widely. During university vacations, teams from Oxford took part in campaigns in East London and other industrial areas. Meanwhile, the numbers attending "house parties" grew to several thousands.
Buchman traveled widely in Europe during the 1930s. With the rise of the Nazis he focused on Germany, holding house parties and meeting church leaders. In 1932 and again in 1933 he sought, unsuccessfully, to meet with Adolf Hitler
, whom he hoped to convert. By 1934 the Oxford Group's activities in Germany was being spied on and prominent members interrogated, making effective work there increasingly difficult. In response, Buchman focused efforts on Scandinavia, believing that demonstrating a Christian revolution there would have a great impact in Germany. Accepting an invitation from Carl Hambro, he led a team to Norway in 1934. The Oslo daily Tidens Tegn commented in its Christmas edition "A handful of foreigners who neither knew our language, nor understood our ways and customs came to the country. A few days later the whole country was talking about God, and two months after the thirty foreigners arrived, the mental outlook of the whole country was definitely changed." In 1935 Bishop Berggrav of Tromsø said "what is now happening in Norway is the biggest spiritual movement since the reformation." Major splits between conservative and liberal factions in the church were healed, paving the way for more effective church opposition to Nazi rule during the war. A campaign in Denmark a year later had a similar impact. Speaking to the World Council of Churches in Evanston, USA in 1954, the Bishop of Copenhagen, Fuglsang-Damgaard, reported: "The visit of Frank Buchman to Denmark in 1935 was an historic experience in the story of the Danish Church. It will be written in letters of gold in the history of the Church and the nation."
Buchman attended the 1935 Nuremburg rally.
In 1936 the Central Security Office of the Gestapo sent out a document warning that the Oxford Group was "a new and dangerous opponent of National Socialism". This was followed by a 126 page report in 1939 claiming that the Oxford Group was "the pacemaker of Anglo-American diplomacy" and that "the Group as a whole constitutes an attack upon the nationalism of the state.... It preaches revolution against the national state and has quite evidently become its Christian opponent."
he continued: "I find here the same sort of inflammable matter that made Spain possible. Unless we and others see the bigger vision of spiritual revolution, the other may be possible." At this point, some who had been active with the Oxford Group ceased working with Buchman, uncomfortable with what they saw as a new "political" direction.
as a contribution to morale
. At this time MRA started what became an extensive use of theatrical reviews and plays to convey its message. A play, You Can Defend America, based on an MRA booklet of the same name which called for "sound homes – teamwork in industry – a united nation", toured through 21 states and performed before more than a quarter of a million people. In Britain, novelist Daphne du Maurier
wrote a best-selling book Come Wind, Come Weather dedicated to Buchman, telling stories of how ordinary people affected by MRA were facing up to wartime conditions.
Buchman and his team were in San Francisco at the time of the first United Nations conference in 1945. A dispute over the "Trusteeship Chapter" in the proposed UN Charter was averted by the change in General Romulo, attributed to MRA.
, above Lake Geneva for use as a conference centre. From 1946 to 1999 the Westminster Theatre
served as the London base for MRA, continuing the tradition of using plays and reviews to promote its message.
and its work in the coal and steel industries of both countries. German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer
was a regular visitor to the MRA conferences in Caux, and Buchman facilitated meetings between Robert Schuman
, French Foreign Minister, and Adenauer. Buchman was awarded the Croix de Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur
by the French Government, and also the German Grand Cross of the Order of Merit
for this work. Buchman's contact with surviving anti-Nazi Germans, stemming from his pre-war work in Germany, was an important factor in facilitating this reconciliation.
Similarly, MRA facilitated some of the first large delegations of Japanese to travel abroad after the war. In 1950 a delegation of 76, including members of Parliament from all the main parties, seven Governors of Prefectures, the Mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and leaders of industry, finance and labour travelled to the MRA centre in Caux, and from there to America, where their senior representative, Chorijuo Kurijama, spoke in the Senate apologizing "for Japan's big mistake". In 1957 Prime Minister Kishi made historic apologies in nine of Japan's South-East Asian neighbours, significantly improving relationships. Returning to Tokyo he told the press: "I have been impressed by the effectiveness of Moral Re-Armament in creating unity between peoples who have been divided. I have myself experienced the power of honest apology in healing the hurts of the past."
wrote to Buchman: "I thank you for all you have done for Morocco, the Moroccans and myself in the course of these last testing years. Moral Re-Armament must become for us Muslims just as much an incentive as it is for you Christians and for all nations." In December that year President Habib Bourguiba
of Tunisia declared: "The world must be told what Moral Re-Armament has done for our country." Attempts to provide similar mediation in Algeria failed.
In 1955, Buchman suggested to a group of African leaders from several countries meeting in Caux that they put what they had learned of MRA into a play. The play, Freedom, was written within 48 hours and first performed at the Westminster Theatre
a week later, before touring the world and being made into a full-length colour film. In Kenya the film was shown to the imprisoned Jomo Kenyatta
who asked that it be dubbed into Swahili
. The film was shown to a million Kenyans in the months before the first election. In the spring of 1961 The Reporter of Nairobi wrote that: "MRA has done a great deal to stabilize our recent election campaign."
In order to "remake the world", people had to change.
Launching a campaign for "Moral Re-Armament" in East Ham Town Hall, 1938, Buchman said
Drawing on his experiences in Penn State and China
, Buchman advocated personal work with individuals that would go deep enough to deal with root motives and desires. Asked on a ship to China how he helped individuals, Buchman replied with the "five C's": Confidence, Confession, Conviction, Conversion, Continuance. Nothing could be done unless the other person had confidence in you, and knew that you could keep confidences. Confession meant getting honest about the real state of affairs behind the public persona
. This would lead to a Conviction of sin – a desire to change, leading in turn to Conversion – a decision of the will to live God's way. He felt that the most neglected "C" was Continuance, the ongoing support of people who had decided to change.
One further aspect of becoming a free person was the need to make restitution – to put right, as far as possible, any wrong done (e.g. returning stolen goods or money or admitting to having told lies). Sometimes, if the sin was a public one, restitution might involve making a public confession.
Buchman always stressed that 'life changing' was not a matter of technique so much as the natural result of asking God for direction. God alone could change a person and the role of the "life changer" was to listen in silence for the "still small voice" of God.
Foundational to Buchman's spirituality
was the practice of a daily "quiet time" during which, he claimed, anyone could search for, and receive, "divine guidance" on every aspect of their life. Because of the dangers of self-deception leading a person to mistake their own will, or shadow
, for the will of God, Buchman proposed a "six-fold test" of the thoughts which came in the quiet time:
1. Look for a willingness to obey, without self-interested editing.
2. Watch and see if circumstances intervene to make the thought impractical.
3. Compare the thoughts against the highest moral standards of absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness and absolute love.
4. Is the thought consistent with Holy Scripture?
5. Get the advice of trusted friends.
6. Draw on the experience and teaching of the Church.
The founders of Alcoholics Anonymous
, William "Bill W." Wilson
and Robert "Dr. Bob" Smith
were both active members in the Oxford Group and believed that the principles of the Oxford Group were the key to overcoming alcoholism
. Psychologist Howard Clinebell called Buchman “one of the foremost pioneers of the modern mutual-assistance philosophy”. Swiss psychologist and author Paul Tournier
said: "The whole development of group therapy in medicine cannot all be traced back to Frank [Buchman], but he historically personified that new beginning, ending a chapter of the purely rational and opening a new era when the emotional and irrational also were taken into account." Referring to Buchman's effect on the Church, Tournier observed: "Before Buchman the Church felt its job was to teach and preach, but not to find out what was happening in people's souls. The clergy never listened in church, they always talked. There is still too much talking, but silence has returned. Frank helped to show again that the power of silence is the power of God."
Yet, according to his biographer, Garth Lean, Buchman would always give those at his gatherings, whatever their faith or lack of it, "the deepest Christian truths he knew, often centred round the story of how he himself had been washed clean from his hatreds by his experience of the Cross at Keswick and how Christ had become his nearest friend. This was done with the utmost urgency - that everyone must face the reality of their own sin, and find change and forgiveness. But he never added that those in his audience must break with their traditions, or join this or that church."
and was militantly anti-God. A frequent theme was that the commitment and strategic ideology of communism must be matched by equally committed and strategic forces working for God. After visiting South America in the early 1930s he told some of the young people working with the Oxford Group: "In one country I was told two young Communists had made it their duty to attach themselves to each Cabinet Minister to win him to the Party line. Which of you will plan as thoroughly to bring a Christian revolution to your leaders?"
Buchman believed that both fascism and communism had their roots in materialism, which he called "the mother of all 'isms'" and, as such, materialism was democracy's greatest enemy: "People get confused as to whether it is a question of being Rightist or Leftist. But the one thing we really need is to be guided by God's Holy Spirit. That is the Force we ought to study.... The Holy Spirit will teach us how to think and live, and provide a working basis of our national service.... The true battle line in the world today is not between class and class, not between race and race. The battle is between Christ and anti-Christ."
After Nikita Khrushchev
's 1956 denouncement of Stalinism and the apparent thawing of relationships with the West, MRA produced a pamphlet Ideology and Co-Existence alerting the West to the strategies and tactics of Communism. It was translated into 24 languages and became the most widely distributed publication which MRA ever produced, giving rise to a popular perception of Buchman and MRA as being primarily anti-communist, and, therefore, right wing. However this was a gross oversimplification. In the 1950s he told a colleague: "If Britain and America were to defeat Communism today, the world would be in a worse state than it is. Because the other man is wrong doesn't make me right."
In the late 1940s the coal mines and factories of Germany's Ruhr Area
were an ideological battleground. Moscow-led communists expected to gain control of the workers' councils as part of their plan to turn Germany into a communist state. Many of these workers' leaders were among the 120,000 from the Ruhr who saw the MRA play The Forgotten Factor and heard from employers who had changed their attitudes from exploitation to cooperation. Some senior communist leaders from the area embraced MRA and were summoned to account for themselves at the Communist Party headquarters for North Rhine-Westphalia. There they recommended that the Party should make itself acquainted with MRA and "take the next step of its development by facing up to the moral standards of absolute honesty, purity, unselfishness and love", supporting their contention with quotations from Marx and Engels. Their approach was rejected and the men were expelled from the Party.
Buchman had accepted the invitation of Dr Heinrich Host, head of the German Coal Board, to send a team to the Ruhr. For two years, Buchman sustained over 100 MRA workers in the area. Before their arrival, 72% of the workers' council seats were held by communists. By 1950, the percentage had shrunk to 25%. According to Hubert Stein, an executive member of the German Miners Union, this decline was "to a great extent due to Moral Re-Armament". In 1950, Radio Berlin and other stations broadcast a speech by Buchman: "Marxists are finding a new thinking in a day of crisis. The class struggle is being superseded. Management and labour are beginning to live the positive alternative to the class war.... Can Marxists pave the way for a greater ideology? Why not? They have always been open to new things.... Why should they not be the ones to live for this superior thinking?"
From this time, Buchman and Moral Re-Armament were periodically attacked by Radio Moscow. In 1952, Georgi Arbatov described MRA as "a universal ideology" which "supplants the inevitable class war" with "the permanent struggle between good and evil."
, Bishop of Durham, and the Labour MP Tom Driberg who wrote an influential critique, The Mystery of Moral Re-Armament. On the other hand, Buchman was supported by figures such as Cosmo Lang
, the Archbishop of Canterbury
, and Gabriel Marcel
.
Malcolm Muggeridge
professed that for a long time he could not understand why Buchman caused such "extraordinary hostility", and later came to the conclusion that "in a libertine society any attack on libertinism is an anathema."
in the '20s. In fact, Buchman never held any position there, though following his success at Hartford Seminary
a group of Buchman's proteges were running the Philadelphian Society (the main Christian organisation at the university) along Buchman's principles. After a number of complaints, President Hibben set up a high level committee to investigate, saying to the press "there is no place for Buchmanism in Princeton". After some months the report appeared, saying that it had looked into the charges that members of the Society had practised an aggressive and offensive form of evangelism; that individual privacy had been invaded; that confessions of guilt had been required as a condition of Christian life; that meetings had been held where mutual confession of intimate sins had been encouraged; and that emphasis had been placed on confessions of sexual immorality. The authors concluded, "We have endeavored in every way to secure any evidence which would tend to substantiate or justify these charges... no evidence has been produced before us which substantiates or justifies them... Under these circumstances we feel that in justice we should state that in our opinion the charges are the result either of misapprehension or criticism without foundation." In fact, the report went further, praising the "signal success" of the Society's work. Despite this, Hibben demanded that the leadership of the Philadelphia Society sever their connections with Buchman or lose their positions. Rather than complying, they resigned.
And along the same lines:
Garrett Stearly, who was present when Buchman spoke to the journalist, was amazed at the story which was "so out of key with the interview.... He said that Germany needed a new Christian spirit, yet one had to face the fact that Hitler had been a bulwark against Communism there - and you could at least thank heaven for that. It was a throw-away line. No eulogy of Hitler at all." Buchman himself refused to be drawn into further public comment, which he believed could only lead to more public controversy and endanger his friends in the Oxford Group inside Germany who were already facing difficulties.
Gestapo documents released after the war showed that the Nazis believed that Buchman was working for British Intelligence, and referred to the Oxford Group as "a new and dangerous opponent of National Socialism". "The Group as a whole," says the 126-page report Die Oxfordgruppenbewegung, "constitutes an attack on the nationalism of the State and demands the utmost watchfulness on the part of the State. It preaches revolution against the National State, and has quite evidently become its Christian opponent."
During the war, there was also controversy over British members of Moral Re-Armament working in the USA when they would have been eligible for call-up in the UK.
. In response to these criticisms, Buchman said, "We do unhesitatingly meet sex problems in the same proportion as they are met and spoke of in that authoritarian record, the New Testament.... No one can read the New Testament without facing it, but never at the expense of what they consider more flagrant sins, such as dishonesty and selfishness." This was supported by Dr J.W.C. Wand, then Dean of Oriel College
and later Bishop of London
who wrote in the August 1930 issue of Theology that, "One hears more of selfishness, pride, ill-will than anything else, and the charge that "Buchmanism" is unduly concerned with sexual matters had better be dismissed as the merest nonsense."
, who charged that
(See Christianity and Power Politics, by Reinhold Niebuhr)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
also accused Buchman of naivety over his attempts to convert Hitler:
The Swiss theologian Emil Brunner
, who had frequently acknowledged his debt to Buchman, also tried to dissuade Buchman from his efforts to convert the Nazi leadership on the basis that he was endagering the reputation of himself and his work. Buchman replied to Brunner: "Your danger is that you are still the Professor thundering from the pulpit and want the theologically perfect. But the German Church crisis will never be solved this way. Just think of your sentence, 'Unfortunately this hopeless fellow Hossenfelder has damaged the reputation of the Groups.' It sounds to me like associating with 'publicans and sinners'. Just keep your sense of humour and read the New Testament. The Groups in that sense have no reputation, and for myself, I have nothing to lose."
As well as Brunner, several other theologians spoke highly of Buchman. Canon B.H. Streeter, Provost of The Queen's College, Oxford
and a highly respected New Testament scholar of the 1920s and 1930s, publicly associated himself with the Oxford School from 1934 until his death in a plane crash in 1937. Klaus Bockmuehl, Professor of Theology and Ethics, Regent College, Vancouver and author of Listening to the God Who Speaks, wrote: "The genius of Moral Re-Armament is to bring the central spiritual substance of Christianity (which it often demonstrates in a fresher and more powerful way than do the Churches) in a secular and accessible form. Hence the emphasis on absolute moral standards. But the direction of the Holy Spirit is just as essential.... The genius is in the balance of the two."
Cardinal Franz Konig
said that Buchman was "a turning point in the history of the modern world through his ideas" and Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople, called Buchman "a modern St Paul".
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
evangelist
Evangelism
Evangelism refers to the practice of relaying information about a particular set of beliefs to others who do not hold those beliefs. The term is often used in reference to Christianity....
who founded the Oxford Group
Oxford Group
The Oxford Group was a Christian movement that had a following in Europe, China, Africa, Australia, Scandinavia and America in the 1920s and 30s. It was initiated by an American Lutheran pastor, Frank Buchman, who was of Swiss descent...
(known as Moral Re-Armament
Moral Re-Armament
Moral Re-Armament was an international Christian moral and spiritual movement that, in 1938, developed from the American minister Frank Buchman's Oxford Group. Buchman, a Lutheran, headed MRA for 23 years, from 1938 until his death in 1961...
from 1938 until 2001, and as Initiatives of Change
Initiatives of Change
Initiatives of Change is a global organization dedicated to "building trust across the world's divides" of culture, nationality, belief, and background...
since then). He was decorated by the French and German governments for his contributions to Franco-German reconciliation after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Early life
Frank Buchman was born in Pennsburg, PennsylvaniaPennsburg, Pennsylvania
Pennsburg is a borough in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 3,843 at the 2010 census.It is part of the Upper Perkiomen School District....
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, the son of a wholesale liquor salesman and restaurateur and a pious Lutheran mother. When he was sixteen he moved with his parents to Allentown
Allentown, Pennsylvania
Allentown is a city located in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is Pennsylvania's third most populous city, after Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and the 215th largest city in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 118,032 and is currently...
. Buchman studied at Muhlenberg College
Muhlenberg College
Muhlenberg College is a private liberal arts college located in Allentown, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1848, Muhlenberg is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and is named for Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in America.- History...
and Mount Airy Seminary and was ordained a Lutheran minister in June 1902.
Buchman had hoped to be called to an important city church, but accepted a call to Overbrook
Overbrook
Overbrook is the name of several places:United States of America*Overbrook, Delaware*Overbrook Shores, Delaware*Overbrook, Georgia*Overbrook, Kansas*Overbrook, New Jersey*Overbrook, Oklahoma*Overbrook, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a neighborhood...
, a growing Philadelphia suburb, which did not yet have a Lutheran church building. He arranged the rental of an old storefront for worship space, and lived upstairs. After a visit to Europe, he decided to establish a hostel (called a “hospice”) in Overbrook, along the lines of Friedrich von Bodelschwingh
Friedrich von Bodelschwingh
Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, Junior was a German theologian and public health advocate. His father was Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, Senior , founder of the Bodelschwinghsche Anstalten Bethel charitable foundations.-Public health activities:Friedrich was the son of Reverend Friedrich von...
’s colony for the mentally ill in Bielefeld
Bielefeld
Bielefeld is an independent city in the Ostwestfalen-Lippe Region in the north-east of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population of 323,000, it is also the most populous city in the Regierungsbezirk Detmold...
and inspired by Toynbee Hall
Toynbee Hall
Toynbee Hall is a building in Tower Hamlets, East London which is the home of a charity working to bridge the gap between people of all social and financial backgrounds, with a focus on eradicating poverty and promoting social inclusion....
. However, conflict developed with the hostel's board. In Buchman's recollection the dispute was due to the board's unwillingness to fund the hospice adequately. However, the Finance Committee of the Ministerium of Pennsylvania, which oversaw the budget, had no funds with which to make up an ongoing deficit and wanted the hospice to be self-supporting. Buchman resigned.
Exhausted and depressed, Buchman took his doctor's advice of a long holiday abroad. Still in turmoil over his hospice resignation, Buchman attended the 1908 Keswick Convention
Keswick Convention
The Keswick Convention is an annual gathering of evangelical Christians in Keswick, in the English county of Cumbria.- History :The Keswick Convention began in 1875 as a catalyst and focal point for the emerging Higher Life movement in the United Kingdom. It was founded by an Anglican, Canon T. D....
hoping to meet the renowned Quaker-influenced, Baptist
Baptist
Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...
evangelist F. B. Meyer
Frederick Brotherton Meyer
Frederick Brotherton Meyer , a contemporary and friend of D. L. Moody and A. C. Dixon, was a Baptist pastor and evangelist in England involved in ministry and inner city mission work on both sides of the Atlantic...
(1847–1929) whom he believed might be able to help him. Meyer was not there, but in a small half-empty chapel he listened to Jessie Penn-Lewis
Jessie Penn-Lewis
Jessie Penn-Lewis was a Welsh evangelical speaker and author of a number of Christian evangelical works.-Early life:Penn-Lewis was born in Victoria Terrace, Neath in 1861. Her father was a Methodist minister...
preach on the Cross of Christ, which led to a religious experience.
Buchman wrote six letters of apology to the board members asking their forgiveness for harboring ill will. Buchman regarded this as a foundation experience and in later years frequently referred to it with his followers.
"I thought of those six men back in Philadelphia who I felt had wronged me. They probably had, but I'd got so mixed up in the wrong that I was the seventh wrong man.... I began to see myself as God saw me, which was a very different picture than the one I had of myself. I don't know how you explain it, I can only tell you I sat there and realized how my sin, my pride, my selfishness and my ill-will, had eclipsed me from God in Christ.... I was the centre of my own life. That big "I" had to be crossed out. I saw my resentments against those men standing out like tombstones in my heart. I asked God to change me and He told me to put things right with them. It produced in me a vibrant feeling, as though a strong current of life had suddenly been poured into me and afterwards a dazed sense of a great spiritual shaking-up."
YMCA work
From 1909 to 1915 Buchman was YMCAYMCA
The Young Men's Christian Association is a worldwide organization of more than 45 million members from 125 national federations affiliated through the World Alliance of YMCAs...
secretary at Penn State College
Pennsylvania State University
The Pennsylvania State University, commonly referred to as Penn State or PSU, is a public research university with campuses and facilities throughout the state of Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1855, the university has a threefold mission of teaching, research, and public service...
. Despite quickly more than doubling the YMCA membership to 75% of the student body he was dissatisfied, questioning how deep the changes went. Alcohol consumption in the college, for example, was unaffected. During this time he began the practice of a daily "quiet time
Quiet Time
Quiet Time is a regular individual session of Christian spiritual activities, most notably prayer and/or private study of the Bible. The term "Quiet Time" is used by 20th-century Protestants, mostly evangelical Christians. It is also called "personal Bible study" or "personal devotions"...
". Buchman finally got to meet F. B. Meyer, who when visiting the college asked Buchman, "Do you let the Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit is a term introduced in English translations of the Hebrew Bible, but understood differently in the main Abrahamic religions.While the general concept of a "Spirit" that permeates the cosmos has been used in various religions Holy Spirit is a term introduced in English translations of...
guide you in all you are doing? Buchman replied that he did indeed pray and read the Bible in the morning. "But", persisted Meyer, "do you give God enough uninterrupted time really to tell you what to do?" Another decisive influence appears to have been Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
theology professor Henry Burt Wright (1877–1923) and his 1909 book The Will of God and a Man's Lifework, which was itself influenced by F.B. Meyer
Frederick Brotherton Meyer
Frederick Brotherton Meyer , a contemporary and friend of D. L. Moody and A. C. Dixon, was a Baptist pastor and evangelist in England involved in ministry and inner city mission work on both sides of the Atlantic...
and Henry Drummond
Henry Drummond
Henry Drummond was a Scottish evangelist, writer and lecturer.- Life and work :Drummond was born in Stirling. He was educated at Edinburgh University, where he displayed a strong inclination for physical and mathematical science...
, among others.
Buchman's devotion to personal evangelism, and his skill at re-framing the Christian message in contemporary terms, were admired by other campus ministry leaders. Maxwell Chaplin, YMCA secretary at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
wrote: "In five years the permanent secretary at Penn State has entirely changed the tone of that one-time tough college," after attending one of the Buchman's annual "Y[MCA] Week" campaigns. Lloyd Douglas, author of The Robe
The Robe
The Robe is a 1942 historical novel about the Crucifixion written by Lloyd C. Douglas. The book was one of the best-selling titles of the 1940s. It entered the New York Times Best Seller list in October 1942, and four weeks later rose to No. 1. It held the position for nearly a year...
took part in the same campaign. "It was", he wrote afterwards, "the most remarkable event of its kind I ever witnessed.... One after another, prominent fraternity men ... stood up before their fellows and confessed that they had been living poor, low-grade lives and from henceforth meant to be good."
In 1915 Buchman's YMCA work took him to India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
with evangelist
Evangelism
Evangelism refers to the practice of relaying information about a particular set of beliefs to others who do not hold those beliefs. The term is often used in reference to Christianity....
Sherwood Eddy
Sherwood Eddy
Sherwood Eddy was an American Protestant missionary, author, administrator and educator. He was born George Sherwood Eddy on January 19, 1871 to George Alfred Eddy and Margaret Louise Nolan at Leavenworth, Kansas. He attended Phillips Andover Academy, graduated from Yale University in 1891 and...
. There he met, briefly, Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi , pronounced . 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the pre-eminent political and ideological leader of India during the Indian independence movement...
(the first of many meetings), and became friends with Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore , sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the 1913 Prize in Literature...
and Amy Carmichael
Amy Carmichael
Amy Wilson Carmichael was a Protestant Christian missionary in India, who opened an orphanage and founded a mission in Dohnavur...
, founder of the Dohnavur Fellowship. Despite speaking to audiences of up to 60,000, Buchman was critical of the large-scale approach, describing it as "like hunting rabbits with a brass band". From February to August 1916 Buchman worked with the YMCA mission in China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, returning to Pennsylvania due to the increasing illness of his father.
At Hartford and China
Buchman next took a part-time post at Hartford Theological Seminary. There he began to gather a group of men to assist in the conversion of China to Christianity. He was asked to lead missionary conferences at Kuling and Peitaiho, which he saw as an opportunity to train native Chinese leaders at a time when many missionaries held attitudes of white superiority. Through his friendship with Hsu Ch'ien (Xu Qian, Vice-Minister of Justice and later acting Prime Minister) he got to know Sun Yat-senSun Yat-sen
Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese doctor, revolutionary and political leader. As the foremost pioneer of Nationalist China, Sun is frequently referred to as the "Father of the Nation" , a view agreed upon by both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China...
. However, his criticism of other missionaries in China, with an implication that sin, including homosexuality, was keeping some of them from being effective, led to conflict. Bishop Logan Roots was deluged with complaints, and in 1918 asked Buchman to leave China.
While still based at Hartford, Buchman spent much of his time travelling and forming groups of Christian students at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
and Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, as well as Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
. Sam Shoemaker
Sam Shoemaker
Sam Shoemaker, DD, STD , was an Episcopal priest who led the American branch of the Oxford Group and influenced the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. Samuel Moor Shoemaker, III was the rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in New York City, the United States headquarters of the Oxford Group during...
, a Princeton graduate and one-time Secretary of the Philadelphian Society who had met Buchman in China, became one of his leading American disciples. In 1922, after a prolonged spell with students in Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
, Buchman resigned his position at Hartford, and thereafter relied on gifts from patrons such as Margaret Tjader.
The Oxford Group
Buchman designed a strategy of holding “house parties” at various locations, during which he hoped for Christian commitment among those attending. In addition, men trained by Buchman began holding regular lunchtime meetings in the study of J Thornton-Duesbery, then Chaplain of Corpus Christi CollegeCorpus Christi College, Oxford
Corpus Christi College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom...
, Oxford. By 1928 numbers had grown so large that the meetings moved to the ballroom of the Randolph Hotel, before being invited to use the library of the Oxford University Church, St Mary's.
In response to criticism by Tom Driberg in his first scoop
Scoop (term)
Scoop is an informal term used in journalism. The word connotes originality, importance, surprise or excitement, secrecy and exclusivity.Stories likely considered to be scoops are important news, likely to interest or concern many people. A scoop is typically a new story, or a new aspect to an...
in the Daily Express
Daily Express
The Daily Express switched from broadsheet to tabloid in 1977 and was bought by the construction company Trafalgar House in the same year. Its publishing company, Beaverbrook Newspapers, was renamed Express Newspapers...
that this "strange new sect" involved members holding hands in a circle and publicly confessing their sins (a fabrication according to those who were there), the Express printed a statement by Canon L.W. Grensted, Chaplain and Fellow of University College
University College, Oxford
.University College , is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2009 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £110m...
and a university lecturer in psychology bearing "testimony not only to [their] general sanity... but also to [their] real effectiveness. Men whom I have known... have not only found a stronger faith and a new happiness, but have also made definite progress in the quality of their study, and in their athletics too."
In the summer of 1928 six of these Oxford men traveled, without Buchman, to South Africa where the press, at a loss how to describe this new religious movement, coined the term the "Oxford Group". Between 1931 and 1935, around 150 Oxford undergraduates were attending Oxford Group meetings every lunchtime. Paul Hodder-Williams, of the publishing firm Hodder and Stoughton, arranged for a regular column about the group to appear in the firm’s magazine, the British Weekly. In 1932 Hodder also published a book about the group: For Sinners Only by A.J. Russell, managing editor of the Sunday Express, which went through 17 editions in two years and was translated widely. During university vacations, teams from Oxford took part in campaigns in East London and other industrial areas. Meanwhile, the numbers attending "house parties" grew to several thousands.
Buchman traveled widely in Europe during the 1930s. With the rise of the Nazis he focused on Germany, holding house parties and meeting church leaders. In 1932 and again in 1933 he sought, unsuccessfully, to meet with Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
, whom he hoped to convert. By 1934 the Oxford Group's activities in Germany was being spied on and prominent members interrogated, making effective work there increasingly difficult. In response, Buchman focused efforts on Scandinavia, believing that demonstrating a Christian revolution there would have a great impact in Germany. Accepting an invitation from Carl Hambro, he led a team to Norway in 1934. The Oslo daily Tidens Tegn commented in its Christmas edition "A handful of foreigners who neither knew our language, nor understood our ways and customs came to the country. A few days later the whole country was talking about God, and two months after the thirty foreigners arrived, the mental outlook of the whole country was definitely changed." In 1935 Bishop Berggrav of Tromsø said "what is now happening in Norway is the biggest spiritual movement since the reformation." Major splits between conservative and liberal factions in the church were healed, paving the way for more effective church opposition to Nazi rule during the war. A campaign in Denmark a year later had a similar impact. Speaking to the World Council of Churches in Evanston, USA in 1954, the Bishop of Copenhagen, Fuglsang-Damgaard, reported: "The visit of Frank Buchman to Denmark in 1935 was an historic experience in the story of the Danish Church. It will be written in letters of gold in the history of the Church and the nation."
Buchman attended the 1935 Nuremburg rally.
In 1936 the Central Security Office of the Gestapo sent out a document warning that the Oxford Group was "a new and dangerous opponent of National Socialism". This was followed by a 126 page report in 1939 claiming that the Oxford Group was "the pacemaker of Anglo-American diplomacy" and that "the Group as a whole constitutes an attack upon the nationalism of the state.... It preaches revolution against the national state and has quite evidently become its Christian opponent."
Moral Re-Armament
In 1938, as nations were rearming for war, a Swedish socialist and Oxford Group member named Harry Blomberg, wrote of the need to re-arm morally. Buchman liked the term, and launched a campaign for Moral and Spiritual Re-Armament in east London. More than just a new name for the Oxford Group, Moral Re-Armament (or MRA) signalled a new commitment on Buchman's part to try to change the course of nations. In a speech to thousands on the Swedish island of Visby he said: "I am not interested, nor do I think it adequate, if we are going to begin just to start another revival. Whatever thoughtful statesman you talk to will tell you that every country needs a moral and spiritual awakening." Referring to the Spanish Civil WarSpanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
he continued: "I find here the same sort of inflammable matter that made Spain possible. Unless we and others see the bigger vision of spiritual revolution, the other may be possible." At this point, some who had been active with the Oxford Group ceased working with Buchman, uncomfortable with what they saw as a new "political" direction.
War work
During World War II MRA' s efforts were valued by U.S. President Franklin D. RooseveltFranklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
as a contribution to morale
Morale
Morale, also known as esprit de corps when discussing the morale of a group, is an intangible term used to describe the capacity of people to maintain belief in an institution or a goal, or even in oneself and others...
. At this time MRA started what became an extensive use of theatrical reviews and plays to convey its message. A play, You Can Defend America, based on an MRA booklet of the same name which called for "sound homes – teamwork in industry – a united nation", toured through 21 states and performed before more than a quarter of a million people. In Britain, novelist Daphne du Maurier
Daphne du Maurier
Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning DBE was a British author and playwright.Many of her works have been adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca and Jamaica Inn and the short stories "The Birds" and "Don't Look Now". The first three were directed by Alfred Hitchcock.Her elder sister was...
wrote a best-selling book Come Wind, Come Weather dedicated to Buchman, telling stories of how ordinary people affected by MRA were facing up to wartime conditions.
Buchman and his team were in San Francisco at the time of the first United Nations conference in 1945. A dispute over the "Trusteeship Chapter" in the proposed UN Charter was averted by the change in General Romulo, attributed to MRA.
Centres
From 1942 to 1971 MRA had a base on Mackinac Island, Michigan. In 1946, Swiss supporters bought the derelict Caux Palace Hotel in the village of CauxCaux, Switzerland
Caux is a small village in the Canton of Vaud, Switzerland. It looks out over Lake Geneva from an altitude of 1000 meters.The former Caux-Palace Hotel in the village is the home of Initiatives of Change's conference centre, which can accommodate up to 450 people...
, above Lake Geneva for use as a conference centre. From 1946 to 1999 the Westminster Theatre
Westminster Theatre
The Westminster Theatre was a London theatre, on Palace Street in Westminster. It was originally built as the Charlotte Chapel in 1766, which was altered and given a new frontage for use as a cinema from 1924 onwards. It finally became a theatre in 1931 after radical alterations...
served as the London base for MRA, continuing the tradition of using plays and reviews to promote its message.
Post-war reconciliation
After the war, MRA played a significant role in enabling reconciliation between France and Germany, through its conferences in CauxCaux, Switzerland
Caux is a small village in the Canton of Vaud, Switzerland. It looks out over Lake Geneva from an altitude of 1000 meters.The former Caux-Palace Hotel in the village is the home of Initiatives of Change's conference centre, which can accommodate up to 450 people...
and its work in the coal and steel industries of both countries. German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer
Konrad Adenauer
Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer was a German statesman. He was the chancellor of the West Germany from 1949 to 1963. He is widely recognised as a person who led his country from the ruins of World War II to a powerful and prosperous nation that had forged close relations with old enemies France,...
was a regular visitor to the MRA conferences in Caux, and Buchman facilitated meetings between Robert Schuman
Robert Schuman
Robert Schuman was a noted Luxembourgish-born French statesman. Schuman was a Christian Democrat and an independent political thinker and activist...
, French Foreign Minister, and Adenauer. Buchman was awarded the Croix de Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur
Légion d'honneur
The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
by the French Government, and also the German Grand Cross of the Order of Merit
Bundesverdienstkreuz
The Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany is the only general state decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany. It has existed since 7 September 1951, and between 3,000 and 5,200 awards are given every year across all classes...
for this work. Buchman's contact with surviving anti-Nazi Germans, stemming from his pre-war work in Germany, was an important factor in facilitating this reconciliation.
Similarly, MRA facilitated some of the first large delegations of Japanese to travel abroad after the war. In 1950 a delegation of 76, including members of Parliament from all the main parties, seven Governors of Prefectures, the Mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and leaders of industry, finance and labour travelled to the MRA centre in Caux, and from there to America, where their senior representative, Chorijuo Kurijama, spoke in the Senate apologizing "for Japan's big mistake". In 1957 Prime Minister Kishi made historic apologies in nine of Japan's South-East Asian neighbours, significantly improving relationships. Returning to Tokyo he told the press: "I have been impressed by the effectiveness of Moral Re-Armament in creating unity between peoples who have been divided. I have myself experienced the power of honest apology in healing the hurts of the past."
Decolonization
MRA played an important role in the peaceful decolonization of Morocco and Tunisia. In 1956 King Mohammed V of MoroccoMohammed V of Morocco
Mohammed V was Sultan of Morocco from 1927–53, exiled from 1953–55, where he was again recognized as Sultan upon his return, and King from 1957 to 1961. His full name was Sidi Mohammed ben Yusef, or Son of Yusef, upon whose death he succeeded to the throne...
wrote to Buchman: "I thank you for all you have done for Morocco, the Moroccans and myself in the course of these last testing years. Moral Re-Armament must become for us Muslims just as much an incentive as it is for you Christians and for all nations." In December that year President Habib Bourguiba
Habib Bourguiba
Habib Bourguiba was a Tunisian statesman, the Founder and the first President of the Republic of Tunisia from July 25, 1957 until 7 November 1987...
of Tunisia declared: "The world must be told what Moral Re-Armament has done for our country." Attempts to provide similar mediation in Algeria failed.
In 1955, Buchman suggested to a group of African leaders from several countries meeting in Caux that they put what they had learned of MRA into a play. The play, Freedom, was written within 48 hours and first performed at the Westminster Theatre
Westminster Theatre
The Westminster Theatre was a London theatre, on Palace Street in Westminster. It was originally built as the Charlotte Chapel in 1766, which was altered and given a new frontage for use as a cinema from 1924 onwards. It finally became a theatre in 1931 after radical alterations...
a week later, before touring the world and being made into a full-length colour film. In Kenya the film was shown to the imprisoned Jomo Kenyatta
Jomo Kenyatta
Jomo Kenyattapron.] served as the first Prime Minister and President of Kenya. He is considered the founding father of the Kenyan nation....
who asked that it be dubbed into Swahili
Swahili language
Swahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...
. The film was shown to a million Kenyans in the months before the first election. In the spring of 1961 The Reporter of Nairobi wrote that: "MRA has done a great deal to stabilize our recent election campaign."
Psychology and spirituality
"Remaking the world", the title of Buchman's collected speeches, was central to Buchman's vision.
"The Oxford Group is a Christian revolution for remaking the world. The root problems in the world today are dishonesty, selfishness and fear – in men and, consequently, in nations. These evils multiplied result in divorce, crime, unemployment, recurrent depression and war. How can we hope for peace within a nation, or between nations, when we have conflict in countless homes? Spiritual recovery must precede economic recovery. Political or social solutions that do not deal with these root problems are inadequate."
In order to "remake the world", people had to change.
"Everybody wants to see the other fellow changed. Every nation wants to see the other nation changed. But everybody is waiting for the other fellow to begin. The Oxford Group is convinced that if you want an answer for the world today, the best place to start with is with yourself. This is the first and fundamental need."
Launching a campaign for "Moral Re-Armament" in East Ham Town Hall, 1938, Buchman said
"We need a power strong enough to change human nature and build bridges between man and man, faction and faction. This starts when everyone admits his own faults instead of spot-lighting the other fellow's. God alone can change human nature. The secret lies in that great forgotten truth, that when man listens, God speaks; when man obeys, God acts; when men change, nations change."
Drawing on his experiences in Penn State and China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, Buchman advocated personal work with individuals that would go deep enough to deal with root motives and desires. Asked on a ship to China how he helped individuals, Buchman replied with the "five C's": Confidence, Confession, Conviction, Conversion, Continuance. Nothing could be done unless the other person had confidence in you, and knew that you could keep confidences. Confession meant getting honest about the real state of affairs behind the public persona
Persona
A persona, in the word's everyday usage, is a social role or a character played by an actor. The word is derived from Latin, where it originally referred to a theatrical mask. The Latin word probably derived from the Etruscan word "phersu", with the same meaning, and that from the Greek πρόσωπον...
. This would lead to a Conviction of sin – a desire to change, leading in turn to Conversion – a decision of the will to live God's way. He felt that the most neglected "C" was Continuance, the ongoing support of people who had decided to change.
One further aspect of becoming a free person was the need to make restitution – to put right, as far as possible, any wrong done (e.g. returning stolen goods or money or admitting to having told lies). Sometimes, if the sin was a public one, restitution might involve making a public confession.
Buchman always stressed that 'life changing' was not a matter of technique so much as the natural result of asking God for direction. God alone could change a person and the role of the "life changer" was to listen in silence for the "still small voice" of God.
Foundational to Buchman's spirituality
Spirituality
Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...
was the practice of a daily "quiet time" during which, he claimed, anyone could search for, and receive, "divine guidance" on every aspect of their life. Because of the dangers of self-deception leading a person to mistake their own will, or shadow
Shadow (psychology)
In Jungian psychology, the shadow or "shadow aspect" is a part of the unconscious mind consisting of repressed weaknesses, shortcomings, and instincts. It is one of the three most recognizable archetypes, the others being the anima and animus and the persona...
, for the will of God, Buchman proposed a "six-fold test" of the thoughts which came in the quiet time:
1. Look for a willingness to obey, without self-interested editing.
2. Watch and see if circumstances intervene to make the thought impractical.
3. Compare the thoughts against the highest moral standards of absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness and absolute love.
4. Is the thought consistent with Holy Scripture?
5. Get the advice of trusted friends.
6. Draw on the experience and teaching of the Church.
The founders of Alcoholics Anonymous
Alcoholics Anonymous
Alcoholics Anonymous is an international mutual aid movement which says its "primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety." Now claiming more than 2 million members, AA was founded in 1935 by Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith in Akron, Ohio...
, William "Bill W." Wilson
Bill W.
William Griffith Wilson , also known as Bill Wilson or Bill W., was the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous , an international mutual aid fellowship with over two million members belonging to 100,800 groups of alcoholics helping other alcoholics achieve and maintain sobriety...
and Robert "Dr. Bob" Smith
Bob Smith (doctor)
Robert Holbrook Smith was an American physician and surgeon who co-founded Alcoholics Anonymous with Bill Wilson, more commonly known as Bill W. He was also known as Dr. Bob. He was born in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, where he was raised, to Susan A. Holbrook and Walter Perrin Smith...
were both active members in the Oxford Group and believed that the principles of the Oxford Group were the key to overcoming alcoholism
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
. Psychologist Howard Clinebell called Buchman “one of the foremost pioneers of the modern mutual-assistance philosophy”. Swiss psychologist and author Paul Tournier
Paul Tournier
Paul Tournier was a Swiss physician and author who had acquired a worldwide audience for his work in pastoral counseling...
said: "The whole development of group therapy in medicine cannot all be traced back to Frank [Buchman], but he historically personified that new beginning, ending a chapter of the purely rational and opening a new era when the emotional and irrational also were taken into account." Referring to Buchman's effect on the Church, Tournier observed: "Before Buchman the Church felt its job was to teach and preach, but not to find out what was happening in people's souls. The clergy never listened in church, they always talked. There is still too much talking, but silence has returned. Frank helped to show again that the power of silence is the power of God."
Attitude to other religions
Buchman's willingness to work with people of different religions without demand that they convert to Christianity was often a source of confusion and conflict with other Christians. In a speech in 1948 he said: "MRA is the good road of an ideology inspired by God upon which all can unite. Catholic, Jew and Protestant, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and Confucianist - all find they can change, where needed, and travel along this good road together." He had several meetings over the years with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, whom he greatly respected saying: "the sphere of his usefulness will be sainthood, and a compelling one at that." He also expressed the hope that Muslim countries should become "a belt of sanity to bind East and West and bring moral rebirth".Yet, according to his biographer, Garth Lean, Buchman would always give those at his gatherings, whatever their faith or lack of it, "the deepest Christian truths he knew, often centred round the story of how he himself had been washed clean from his hatreds by his experience of the Cross at Keswick and how Christ had become his nearest friend. This was done with the utmost urgency - that everyone must face the reality of their own sin, and find change and forgiveness. But he never added that those in his audience must break with their traditions, or join this or that church."
Buchman and communism
After his early experiences in China, Buchman was acutely aware that the failure of the vast Western missionary effort in China enabled an alternative set of beliefs, communism, to take root. In his subsequent work in British and American universities he found that communism was a potent and attractive force. Whilst admiring the boldness and passion for change of communists, he believed that communism was inadequate because it was built on moral relativismMoral relativism
Moral relativism may be any of several descriptive, meta-ethical, or normative positions. Each of them is concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different people and cultures:...
and was militantly anti-God. A frequent theme was that the commitment and strategic ideology of communism must be matched by equally committed and strategic forces working for God. After visiting South America in the early 1930s he told some of the young people working with the Oxford Group: "In one country I was told two young Communists had made it their duty to attach themselves to each Cabinet Minister to win him to the Party line. Which of you will plan as thoroughly to bring a Christian revolution to your leaders?"
Buchman believed that both fascism and communism had their roots in materialism, which he called "the mother of all 'isms'" and, as such, materialism was democracy's greatest enemy: "People get confused as to whether it is a question of being Rightist or Leftist. But the one thing we really need is to be guided by God's Holy Spirit. That is the Force we ought to study.... The Holy Spirit will teach us how to think and live, and provide a working basis of our national service.... The true battle line in the world today is not between class and class, not between race and race. The battle is between Christ and anti-Christ."
After Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
's 1956 denouncement of Stalinism and the apparent thawing of relationships with the West, MRA produced a pamphlet Ideology and Co-Existence alerting the West to the strategies and tactics of Communism. It was translated into 24 languages and became the most widely distributed publication which MRA ever produced, giving rise to a popular perception of Buchman and MRA as being primarily anti-communist, and, therefore, right wing. However this was a gross oversimplification. In the 1950s he told a colleague: "If Britain and America were to defeat Communism today, the world would be in a worse state than it is. Because the other man is wrong doesn't make me right."
In the late 1940s the coal mines and factories of Germany's Ruhr Area
Ruhr Area
The Ruhr, by German-speaking geographers and historians more accurately called Ruhr district or Ruhr region , is an urban area in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With 4435 km² and a population of some 5.2 million , it is the largest urban agglomeration in Germany...
were an ideological battleground. Moscow-led communists expected to gain control of the workers' councils as part of their plan to turn Germany into a communist state. Many of these workers' leaders were among the 120,000 from the Ruhr who saw the MRA play The Forgotten Factor and heard from employers who had changed their attitudes from exploitation to cooperation. Some senior communist leaders from the area embraced MRA and were summoned to account for themselves at the Communist Party headquarters for North Rhine-Westphalia. There they recommended that the Party should make itself acquainted with MRA and "take the next step of its development by facing up to the moral standards of absolute honesty, purity, unselfishness and love", supporting their contention with quotations from Marx and Engels. Their approach was rejected and the men were expelled from the Party.
Buchman had accepted the invitation of Dr Heinrich Host, head of the German Coal Board, to send a team to the Ruhr. For two years, Buchman sustained over 100 MRA workers in the area. Before their arrival, 72% of the workers' council seats were held by communists. By 1950, the percentage had shrunk to 25%. According to Hubert Stein, an executive member of the German Miners Union, this decline was "to a great extent due to Moral Re-Armament". In 1950, Radio Berlin and other stations broadcast a speech by Buchman: "Marxists are finding a new thinking in a day of crisis. The class struggle is being superseded. Management and labour are beginning to live the positive alternative to the class war.... Can Marxists pave the way for a greater ideology? Why not? They have always been open to new things.... Why should they not be the ones to live for this superior thinking?"
From this time, Buchman and Moral Re-Armament were periodically attacked by Radio Moscow. In 1952, Georgi Arbatov described MRA as "a universal ideology" which "supplants the inevitable class war" with "the permanent struggle between good and evil."
Private life
Buchman never married. Despite a stroke in 1942 and failing health that eventually led to blindness and immobility, he remained as active as possible until his death in 1961.Controversy
Buchman was a controversial figure throughout much of his adult life, and critics dubbed his movement as "Buchmanism" from the 1920s. In the UK his critics included Hensley HensonHerbert Hensley Henson
Herbert Hensley Henson was an Anglican priest, a controversialist and Bishop of Durham...
, Bishop of Durham, and the Labour MP Tom Driberg who wrote an influential critique, The Mystery of Moral Re-Armament. On the other hand, Buchman was supported by figures such as Cosmo Lang
Cosmo Lang
William Cosmo Gordon Lang, 1st Baron Lang of Lambeth GCVO PC was an Anglican prelate who served as Archbishop of York and Archbishop of Canterbury . His rapid elevation to Archbishop of York, within 18 years of his ordination, is unprecedented in modern Church of England history...
, the Archbishop of Canterbury
Archbishop of Canterbury
The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. In his role as head of the Anglican Communion, the archbishop leads the third largest group...
, and Gabriel Marcel
Gabriel Marcel
Gabriel Honoré Marcel was a French philosopher, a leading Christian existentialist, and author of about 30 plays.He focused on the modern individual's struggle in a technologically dehumanizing society...
.
Malcolm Muggeridge
Malcolm Muggeridge
Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge was an English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist. During World War II, he was a soldier and a spy...
professed that for a long time he could not understand why Buchman caused such "extraordinary hostility", and later came to the conclusion that "in a libertine society any attack on libertinism is an anathema."
Princeton
An early criticism centred on the accusation that Buchman had been thrown out of Princeton UniversityPrinceton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
in the '20s. In fact, Buchman never held any position there, though following his success at Hartford Seminary
Hartford Seminary
Hartford Seminary is a theological college in Hartford, Connecticut, USA.-History:Seminaries in the city of Hartford date back to 1833. In 1913, the current Hartford Seminary came into existence through the combination of three Hartford-based schools affiliated with the city's Congregationalist...
a group of Buchman's proteges were running the Philadelphian Society (the main Christian organisation at the university) along Buchman's principles. After a number of complaints, President Hibben set up a high level committee to investigate, saying to the press "there is no place for Buchmanism in Princeton". After some months the report appeared, saying that it had looked into the charges that members of the Society had practised an aggressive and offensive form of evangelism; that individual privacy had been invaded; that confessions of guilt had been required as a condition of Christian life; that meetings had been held where mutual confession of intimate sins had been encouraged; and that emphasis had been placed on confessions of sexual immorality. The authors concluded, "We have endeavored in every way to secure any evidence which would tend to substantiate or justify these charges... no evidence has been produced before us which substantiates or justifies them... Under these circumstances we feel that in justice we should state that in our opinion the charges are the result either of misapprehension or criticism without foundation." In fact, the report went further, praising the "signal success" of the Society's work. Despite this, Hibben demanded that the leadership of the Philadelphia Society sever their connections with Buchman or lose their positions. Rather than complying, they resigned.
Hitler quote
One quote in particular always dogged Buchman, from an interview in the New York World-Telegram, 25 August 1936:- "I thank heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler, who built a front line of defense against the anti-Christ of Communism."
And along the same lines:
- "My barber in London told me Hitler saved Europe from Communism. That's how he felt. Of course, I don't condone everything the Nazis do. Anti-Semitism? Bad, naturally. I suppose Hitler sees a Karl Marx in every Jew."
- "…Human problems aren't economic. They're moral and they can't be solved by immoral measures. They could be solved within a God-controlled democracy, or perhaps I should say a theocracy, and they could be solved through a God-controlled Fascist dictatorship."
Garrett Stearly, who was present when Buchman spoke to the journalist, was amazed at the story which was "so out of key with the interview.... He said that Germany needed a new Christian spirit, yet one had to face the fact that Hitler had been a bulwark against Communism there - and you could at least thank heaven for that. It was a throw-away line. No eulogy of Hitler at all." Buchman himself refused to be drawn into further public comment, which he believed could only lead to more public controversy and endanger his friends in the Oxford Group inside Germany who were already facing difficulties.
Gestapo documents released after the war showed that the Nazis believed that Buchman was working for British Intelligence, and referred to the Oxford Group as "a new and dangerous opponent of National Socialism". "The Group as a whole," says the 126-page report Die Oxfordgruppenbewegung, "constitutes an attack on the nationalism of the State and demands the utmost watchfulness on the part of the State. It preaches revolution against the National State, and has quite evidently become its Christian opponent."
During the war, there was also controversy over British members of Moral Re-Armament working in the USA when they would have been eligible for call-up in the UK.
Sexual
Critics charged that the "total honesty" encouraged at Oxford Group house parties really concentrated morbidly on sexual issues, particularly masturbationMasturbation
Masturbation refers to sexual stimulation of a person's own genitals, usually to the point of orgasm. The stimulation can be performed manually, by use of objects or tools, or by some combination of these methods. Masturbation is a common form of autoeroticism...
. In response to these criticisms, Buchman said, "We do unhesitatingly meet sex problems in the same proportion as they are met and spoke of in that authoritarian record, the New Testament.... No one can read the New Testament without facing it, but never at the expense of what they consider more flagrant sins, such as dishonesty and selfishness." This was supported by Dr J.W.C. Wand, then Dean of Oriel College
Oriel College
Oriel College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in Oxford, England. Located in Oriel Square, the college has the distinction of being the oldest royal foundation in Oxford...
and later Bishop of London
Bishop of London
The Bishop of London is the ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of London in the Province of Canterbury.The diocese covers 458 km² of 17 boroughs of Greater London north of the River Thames and a small part of the County of Surrey...
who wrote in the August 1930 issue of Theology that, "One hears more of selfishness, pride, ill-will than anything else, and the charge that "Buchmanism" is unduly concerned with sexual matters had better be dismissed as the merest nonsense."
Religious
In the U.S., Buchman was strongly opposed by Reinhold NiebuhrReinhold Niebuhr
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr was an American theologian and commentator on public affairs. Starting as a leftist minister in the 1920s indebted to theological liberalism, he shifted to the new Neo-Orthodox theology in the 1930s, explaining how the sin of pride created evil in the world...
, who charged that
- "In other words, a Nazi social philosophy has been a covert presumption of the whole Oxford group enterprise from the very beginning. We may be grateful to the leader for revealing so clearly what has been slightly hidden. Now we can see how unbelievably naïve this movement is in its efforts to save the world. If it would content itself with preaching repentance to drunkards and adulterers one might be willing to respect it as a religious revival method which knows how to confront the sinner with God. But when it runs to Geneva, the seat of the League of Nations, or to Prince Starhemberg or Hitler, or to any seat of power, always with the idea that it is on the verge of saving the world by bringing the people who control the world under God-control, it is difficult to restrain the contempt which one feels for this dangerous childishness."
(See Christianity and Power Politics, by Reinhold Niebuhr)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian and martyr. He was a participant in the German resistance movement against Nazism and a founding member of the Confessing Church. He was involved in plans by members of the Abwehr to assassinate Adolf Hitler...
also accused Buchman of naivety over his attempts to convert Hitler:
- "The Oxford Group has been naïve enough to try to convert Hitler - a ridiculous failure to understand what is going on - it is we who are to be converted, not Hitler."
The Swiss theologian Emil Brunner
Emil Brunner
Heinrich Emil Brunner was a Swiss Protestant theologian. Along with Karl Barth , he is commonly associated with neo-orthodoxy or the dialectical theology movement....
, who had frequently acknowledged his debt to Buchman, also tried to dissuade Buchman from his efforts to convert the Nazi leadership on the basis that he was endagering the reputation of himself and his work. Buchman replied to Brunner: "Your danger is that you are still the Professor thundering from the pulpit and want the theologically perfect. But the German Church crisis will never be solved this way. Just think of your sentence, 'Unfortunately this hopeless fellow Hossenfelder has damaged the reputation of the Groups.' It sounds to me like associating with 'publicans and sinners'. Just keep your sense of humour and read the New Testament. The Groups in that sense have no reputation, and for myself, I have nothing to lose."
As well as Brunner, several other theologians spoke highly of Buchman. Canon B.H. Streeter, Provost of The Queen's College, Oxford
The Queen's College, Oxford
The Queen's College, founded 1341, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Queen's is centrally situated on the High Street, and is renowned for its 18th-century architecture...
and a highly respected New Testament scholar of the 1920s and 1930s, publicly associated himself with the Oxford School from 1934 until his death in a plane crash in 1937. Klaus Bockmuehl, Professor of Theology and Ethics, Regent College, Vancouver and author of Listening to the God Who Speaks, wrote: "The genius of Moral Re-Armament is to bring the central spiritual substance of Christianity (which it often demonstrates in a fresher and more powerful way than do the Churches) in a secular and accessible form. Hence the emphasis on absolute moral standards. But the direction of the Holy Spirit is just as essential.... The genius is in the balance of the two."
Cardinal Franz Konig
Franz König
Franz König was an Austrian Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Vienna from 1956 to 1985, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1958...
said that Buchman was "a turning point in the history of the modern world through his ideas" and Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople, called Buchman "a modern St Paul".
External links
- Frank Buchman - A Life (biography available online)
- Frank N.D. Buchman at "An Illustrated Alcoholics Anonymous Bibliography"