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Social
Activism
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It was 1915, and a young American missionary named Frank N.D. Buchman
was setting British India afire for Christ. He so impressed his British
colleagues that one of them asked if the N.D. in his name stood for
''Never Despair.''
Buchman was starting on the road to an international and
controversial career. By the 1920s and '30s, his Oxford Group and
fourpoint doctrine of absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute
unselfishness and absolute love were household words.
In the late 1930s, he founded another movement called Moral
Re-Armament, based on his belief in the need for moral regeneration
during World War II and then the Cold War. And in the late 1940s and the
'50s, such was Buchman's moral authority that he brought together former
enemies Germany and France and helped found the Common Market.
Throughout his long life, some hated him, others loved him, but no
one could deny Buchman's ability to inspire others.
Franklin Nathaniel Daniel Buchman was born in Pennsburg on June 4,
1878, the son of a wholesale liquor dealer and restaurant owner and a
pious Lutheran mother.
About 1894 the family moved to 117 N. 11th St. in Allentown. Even
when he was known around the world, he would return to the house he
regarded as his home. Today the building is a house museum run by the
Lehigh County Historical Society.
After graduation from Muhlenberg College, Buchman became a Lutheran
minister. While attending a worship service in England, he became
convinced that God was calling him for something more. He returned to
America, became the YMCA secretary at Pennsylvania State University and
started converting campus hell-raisers left and right.
After his time in India, Buchman had a particular affection for
Britain and the British Empire. He made London his headquarters in the
early '20s. In the skeptical but confused Europe between the wars, he
offered hope of a middle Christian way between communism and fascism. By
the 1930s the Oxford Group, named for the many graduates of the British
university who were its members, held what were called ''house parties''
for several thousand people at country homes of the gentry.
To those who felt it was the duty of preachers of the Gospel ''to
comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,'' Buchman's attempt
to make ''spiritual live wires'' out of the titled upper class seemed
like a watering down of Christ's message. But he made no apology for
trying to lead nations to God by converting their leaders.
The low point for the Oxford Group came in 1936 when Buchman made
some favorable comments about Adolf Hitler, suggesting the German
dictator had done a service by stopping communism and that a man with
absolute power, if he became a Christian, could solve the world's
problems. Buchman's words were picked up by newspapers around the world,
making him sound as if he wanted Germans to goosestep to God. In fact,
Buchman probably had little understanding of Hitler or Nazism.
Suffering a stroke in 1942, Buchman returned to Allentown, where he
stayed until the end of the war. Later he established Moral
Re-Armament's headquarters in Switzerland.
Many, particularly those on the left, distrusted Buchman, accusing
him of being an agent for British Intelligence or the CIA. Others who
were attracted to Buchman's view of world unity were turned off by his
rigid views on sexual matters.
On Aug. 7, 1961, Buchman died at a Swiss country hotel. His body was
returned to Allentown, where he was buried surrounded by followers from
around the world.
-- FRANK WHELAN
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
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