Discovering MRA
(Moral Re-Armament)

1st Published 1995

Second Impression, November 1995

A Freeway Publication
12 Palace Street,
London
SW1E 5JF

ISBN 1 85239 023 9
Typesetting: A D Pidgeon, Glasgow
Printed and bound by Intype, London SW19 8DR
Hypertext Mark Up: Roger Spooner

Introduction

I was asked to write a regular feature in a magazine for students. My brief was to answer their questions: What is Moral Re-Armament? When did it start? What is the aim? What has it done? Can anyone be a part of it? The result was a collection of articles which make up this book.

Because Freeway in which they appeared came out every two months, each article had to be an entity in itself. Each episode runs concurrently in date order and in large measure consists of stories of people who applied the ideas and spirit of Moral Re-Armament to issues of conflict and change in national and international life.

In some cases these actions made a contribution to an on-going process with other participants, in others Moral Re-Armament was the catalyst. However, they all illustrate the moral and spiritual factors which underlie bringing about change and are the essential foundations for building a free society.

Acknowledgements

My grateful thanks are due to many who have assisted in the production of this book. In particular I would like to thank Andrew Pidgeon who spent many hours preparing the text for the printer and assisted in the editing with many valuable suggestions.

I would also like to thank Edward Peters for producing the cover design.

I am grateful too, to Patrick Spooner for preparing a print-out of the original articles from the Freeway disc.

Rex Dilly

See also: MRA home page , Grosvenor Books

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1 How it all began

Moral Re-Armament as it is known today started in 1921 with the decision of an American to resign from his secure university post.

Frank Buchman

Frank Buchman, founder of MRA

Frank Buchman was invited by a military member of the British delegation to meet delegates to the disarmament conference taking place in Washington. Hopes were high that conferences and pacts would outlaw war. Buchman was convinced that the changes in people and their motives, which he had seen happening in different parts of the world, must be brought to bear on vital issues of the day. 'Unless we deal with human nature thoroughly and drastically on a national scale', he said, 'nations will follow their historic road to violence and destruction. You can plan a new world on paper but you've got to build it out of people.'

See also: MRA home page , Grosvenor Books, Frank Buchman

2 Penn State College - 'The Laboratory'

The first night when Buchman arrived in State College there were nineteen drinking parties going on. The morale of the college was so low that they could seldom win at football and scholastic attainments were at a low ebb.

Buchman used to ask 'Now where do you begin? My job was to turn the college Godwards. This was the problem. The solution would have to be a miracle.'

There were three men who were the focal points of the university. The first was the janitor, Gilliland, popularly known as Bill Pickle. He supplied the liquor to the whole campus and was very popular with the students. He soon resented Buchman's intrusion and influence on the campus and was saying that he would like to stick a knife into him.

The second person was Blair Buck a graduate student, a charming young man from a cultured background. The third was the agnostic Dean of the college, Alva Agee.

Buchman got to know Blair and they became close friends. They would go riding together and on one occasion went on a long holiday. Buchman knew that Blair was not the kind of person to be rushed. Later he was to say 'a type of person with whom you used intelligent restraint and nonchalant reserve.' However Blair became more and more fascinated by the way Buchman was operating and eventually asked him about his faith. This led to Blair suggesting how they might help Bill Pickle.

The opportunity arose quicker than Buchman had bargained for. Buchman and Blair were walking together in the town when Blair spotted Bill Pickle. 'Let's go and talk to him,' he said. Buchman was nervous because he knew Bill's reputation as a fighter; but out of respect for Blair's conviction they approached Bill. He related later, 'When I walked up to Bill, I put my hand on his biceps so that if he did haul off, he wouldn't haul so hard. The thought flashed into my mind, "Give him your deepest message." "Bill", I said, "we've been praying for you." To my surprise all the fight went out of him. He pointed to a church tower. "See that church over there", he said, "I was there when the corner stone was laid. There's a penny of mine under it."'

The conversation ended with Buchman and Buck being invited to visit Bill, his wife and their twelve children in their unpainted house on what was popularly called Pickle Hill.

Their friendship developed and later Buchman persuaded Bill to accompany him to a student conference in Toronto. Bill said that he would go on one condition, that Buchman gave him his fashionable beaver hat - a price that Buchman paid with alacrity.

In Toronto, Bill made a decision which affected his whole life and which was to have repercussions throughout the college. After a meeting he had attended somewhat reluctantly he asked Buchman if he could speak at a small gathering in the sitting room where Buchman and the Penn State College students met. 'I have decided to change my life', he said, 'I've been disobedient to my Heavenly Father. Old Bill will be a different man.' Then he beckoned to Buchman to follow him. 'I want to write to the old woman' he said, and because he found writing difficult he outlined a letter apologising to his wife for the way he had treated her. In spite of attempts by some students to break his decision, he stopped liquor pushing and drinking.

The Dean had been cautiously watching from the side lines, and had been sufficiently intrigued to pay Bill's fare to Toronto. He was much impressed by the difference in him. Buck's faith was greatly extended through the miracle in which he had a part.

From then on the impact grew wider in the college. A contemporary of Buchman's was to say that in five years he had completely changed the tone of the one time tough college. Twelve hundred out of sixteen hundred students were voluntarily attending Bible study. People came from all over the country to see what had happened and similar things began to take place in other colleges. Buchman's own assessment was 'I hadn't any part in all this other than that I let God use me.'

As Penn State College enabled Buchman to evolve a strategy to meet the needs of a college, three visits to China enabled him to apply to a nation the same basic ideas he had learned.

See also: MRA home page , Grosvenor Books, Frank Buchman

3 Buchman in China

Frank Buchman arrived in China in 1917 at a decisive time in the country's history. Centuries-old traditions were breaking down. Western capitalism swept in. A new China was coming to birth.

A key figure was Sun Yat Sen. Through the revolution which he led, the ancient Manchu dynasty was forced to abdicate and Sun Yat Sen proclaimed the Republic of China. However there were still powerful disruptive factions in the country and the weak republic lay wide open to some idea which would fill the vacuum and bring cohesion.

Buchman, with two of his friends, was convinced that only a powerful change in people in leadership could provide the direction that was needed at that time. They drew up a list of fifteen of the most influential Chinese Christians in Peking. One of them was the Vice Minister of Justice, later acting Prime Minister Hsu Ch'ien, who believed passionately that Christianity alone could bring the unification of the country and 'national salvation'.

The strategy of reaching men who could quickly affect the nation began to unfold. Buchman met Chang Ling-Nan, a diplomat. The change in this man resulted in his inviting 80 of his friends to meet Buchman. What he said about his own change and about God's guidance deeply impressed all the guests among whom were several leading personalities.

Through Hsu, Buchman started a friendship with Sun who later said 'Buchman is the only man who tells me the truth about myself.'

Hsu gathered a group at Sun's headquarters - all revolutionary, mostly non-Christians, but all attracted to his conviction that 'the Christian faith will save China and the world.' Fearlessly he attacked the things that were undermining the nation morally - despotism, militarism, autocracy, opium, alcohol, concubinage and slavery.

Sherwood Eddy, a leading missionary, wrote, 'Buchman's work in China has developed by a growth of evolution into a movement of immense proportions, far more powerful and fruitful than any similar preparatory movement we have ever had in the past in any country.'

Buchman, who had gone to China to participate in a missionary conference was criticised by them for spending too much time with the Chinese. They began to spread malicious stories about him.

He however continued to develop the theme that Christianity has a moral backbone. 'If sin is the disease', he told an audience of missionaries, 'we must deal with sin. Sin first of all in ourselves, the "little sins" that rob us of power and keep us from being able to go out in deep sympathy to men in sin.' Personal work was the great need.

This bluntness did not make Buchman popular and he was forced to leave China. Six years later the truth came out. A prominent Christian leader who had been at the heart of the opposition to Buchman and who had cut off funds for his work had, although a married man, a weakness for Eurasian secretaries. One of them spoke publicly about their relationship. He was disgraced and left the Church to go into business. He admitted, 'Buchman faithfully warned me of my weakness.' In his trouble he turned to Buchman for help.

Meanwhile the situation had deteriorated in China. Hsu and his friends felt isolated from the man who had helped them so much. China's attitude to the Christian West began to change for the worse. Hsu however was one of those who stood fast. As a representative of the Canton Government he attended the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. He stated, 'I stand for the principle, "Christianity - the saving of the nation" and Sun Yat Sen is fully in agreement with me. I hope that the foreign powers will not support the militarists of the North too far. I pray that God may save China and change the wrong policy of the allied powers.'

Not long after the allies recognised the Northern government, a wave of hatred of the West rolled across the country. China fell again into the tragedy of a civil war.

By 1923, Sun Yat Sen felt abandoned and grasped the only hand held out to him, that of the Soviet Union.

Lenin sent two of his best men, Michael Borodin, and the German General Blucher who was better known as Galin. Sun Yat Sen sent Chiang Kai Shek to Moscow. Hsu, seeing himself passed by, withdrew from public life.

Sun Yat Sen was stricken with cancer. As the illness developed he worked against time on a series of lectures which were to be his spiritual legacy. When he died his widow asked that he be given a Christian burial. Hsu gave the address and the press published a picture which carried the caption, 'The speaker showed Dr Sun was a follower, a revolutionary follower of Jesus Christ.'

Borodin was now free to pursue his plan. The revolution which Sun had launched took it's course. But the impulse behind it was Communism not Christianity.

4 Raising leadership in Oxford

The Provost of Worcester College, Oxford, took aside one of his students who was leaving and said, 'I want you to know that I think you have changed, for the better, the atmosphere of the college.'

This man was Kit Prescott, an audacious character. 'Beware of that man', one student warned a newly-arrived undergraduate, 'don't you go pious.' To which came the ready reply, 'Don't worry, nothing is less likely.' But try as he did to avoid him, he could not escape hearing of him.

Prescott was one of those, in the thirties, at the heart of a lively yet deeply penetrating awakening which was transforming the lives of students and faculty alike. It was the focus of national attention and had world-wide repercussions.

Around 80 met daily during the lunch break to exchange their latest discoveries in living under God's direction, to share news of its impact in their different colleges and make plans for extending its effect in all areas of university life.

Alan Thornhill, then Chaplain of Hertford College, says of these meetings, 'There was complete informality and you could say what you liked. People were blunt with themselves and each other. Absolute standards of honesty and unselfishness were applied not to some pleasant pipe-dream of the sweet by-and-by, but to details of the nasty now-and-now. What time do you get up these days? How about your times of prayer and listening? Are you winning your friends to this new way of life? Which comes first - ambition or God? These were the kind of questions flung out and fought out in these daily meetings.

Oxford of those days lived in the atmosphere of world crisis. Economic depression stalked the land, over three million were unemployed, with little social relief. Oxford, far from being immune to the ferment of revolutionary ideas - communism and fascism - became the battleground for them.

Garth Lean in his book Good God, It Works tells how the challenge of the Scottish Hunger Marchers camping in Oxford on the road to Westminster, 'powerfully focused our guilt at our own purposelessness.'

It was a picture that was to live with him, which added to a deep personal dissatisfaction in his own life. It made him realise that what he needed was an answer to both personal and social problems.

After some hesitation he followed the thought that he should meet Prescott who was in his own college.

Prescott told him in a simple and natural way how he found a faith that worked. It encouraged Lean to talk of his hopes and fears and failures.

Because Prescott spoke from experience, Lean tried the experiment of giving 'the little I knew of myself, to the near nothing I knew of God,' and at the same time adding, 'If You tell me what to do, I'll do it.'

Two thoughts came which involved honesty. He apologised to his two older brothers, for stealing a pound from one and reading the other's private letters.

Lean writes, 'That encounter was the beginning of my journey into faith. They have been years of adventure and still are, for the faith I seek - and in some measure attain - is not just a comfort, still less a refuge. It more often takes you into the eye of the storm than out of the swing of the sea.'

'It is a two-edged sword for the changing of world conditions, two-edged because that change must start with oneself.'

The hallmark of these days in Oxford was the growing number of men and women whose lives changed - sometimes the most unexpected, and took up the impossible task of changing the world.

There was the high-spirited trio who founded a University Motor Cycle Club. Their pastime was organising totally illegal races through Oxford roads in the early hours of the morning. They tended to live by the philosophy that 'a temptation resisted is a temptation wasted.' Their change was a sensation. They lost none of their dynamic.

A number of senior members of the University were greatly inspired by what was taking place and some completely identified themselves with it. Such a person was the Provost of Queen's College, Dr. B. H. Streeter, an outstanding New Testament scholar with a wide knowledge of world affairs.

Professor and Mrs BH Streeter (left) at an Oxford Group conference, Oxford 1937. Dr Buchman is on the right.

In 1934, at a meeting in Oxford Town Hall he declared, 'The reason that I have come tonight is to say publicly that I ought now to cease from an attitude of benevolent neutrality towards what I have come to believe is the most important religious movement today.'

'May I add', he concluded, 'that I come to the Oxford Group [later to become known as Moral Re-Armament], not as a person with some little reputation, in his own sphere of study, or as the head of an Oxford college; I come as one who has already learned something from the Group and hopes to learn more.'

Frank Buchman Man of the Century Mcall Magazine

Frank Buchman The Revolutionary Path Grosvenor Books April 1975

Frank Buchman Founder of Oxford Group Now Known as Moral Re Armament

Discovering Moral Re-Armament Rex Dilly 1995 digital version