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Inside Buchmanism by Geoffrey Williamson (Watts & Co.)

This book claims to be “an independent inquiry into the Oxford Group Movement and Moral Rearmament.” A reading of the book discloses that the author has done the job with detachment and sincerity of purpose. Receiving an assignment to make a “report on Buchmanism,” Mr. Williamson, a London journalist, went off by plane to Caux, Switzerland, stayed at the magnificent “Mountain House,” formerly luxury hotel and now European headquarters of Moral Rearmament. Here he met the leader, Mr. Buchman, and others of the M.R.A. hierarchy and mixed freely with the Caux conventionalists.

The author of Inside Buchmanism certainly DOES give readers the “inside story”; he has probed diligently into the early history of the Oxford Group; he tells us how it was started by Frank Buchman (an American); the slogans he invented, (When man listens, God speaks, is one of them); of the “personal evangelism” at house parties in country homes; of the discussion groups (separate for men and women) on sex problems; the “informal talks” on sin. All this formed part and parcel of the Oxford Movement ‑the “Groupers” ‑ the parent body of M.R.A. Only after seventeen years does the name Moral Re‑Armament appear. This was during the war, when Buchman was in America.  Buchman obviously saw the publicity value of the new name and he addressed many large gatherings; he saw his movement receive the blessing of a number of persons holding high positions in public life. As a matter of fact M.R.A. constantly followed a policy of cultivating the “best people” and of courting those with the “money bags.” It also embarked on a policy of inviting Trade Union delegates to the conventions held at Caux.

The author informs us that in the £80,000 hotel (M.R.A. Swiss headquarters) those attending received an abundance of good food, but that wines and the soothing weed were refrained from.

In a book rich in story interest and packed with information none is more interesting than the chapter, “Where Does the Money Come From?” One or two quotations must suffice. “The begging is lifted at once onto an international plane. All countries are invited to contribute, and if they can’t send cash, then goods will do.” “For over 30 years the Buchmanites have been liberally supported with money ‑ money to spread the Christian religion; money to “remake the world, money to foster patriotism, money to buy hotels, money to buy a theatre, money to finance stage productions, money to combat Communism.”

Altogether, Inside Buchmanism is a very interesting book. It has a number of illustrations, a chronology of Buchmanism, and an index.

Arthur O’Halloran

Originally published in The New Zealand Rationalist (Vol 16, No 1), September 1954.

This article may be reprinted provided that the acknowledgement is made.

 Also controversial was Frank Buchman, the former Lutheran minister whose Oxford Group (founded in 1909) tried to convert influential followers through high-pressure gatherings which culminated in intense outpourings of communal confession. These intrusive tactics foreshadowed the psychological methods for which cults and therapy sects would become notorious in the 1970s. As most of the material confessed tended to be sexual in nature, critics were horrified at the image of the young and well-to-do women publicly parading their most intimate secrets and fantasies. The Oxford Group had often been denounced as cultish, and in 1924, it was banned from operating at Princeton University after Buchman declared that 85 percent of the students there were sexual perverts. In the 1930s, Buchman aroused political alarm by his advocacy of "a God-controlled fascist dictatorship." He would long be haunted by his cry that "I thank heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler who built a first line of defense against the Antichrist of Communism! ... Think what it would mean to the world if he surrendered to the control of God. Or Mussolini. Or any dictator. Through such a man God could control a nation overnight and solve every last bewildering problem." [24] In 1938-39, Buchman launched an international revival campaign demanding Moral Rearmament, amidst rallies and pageantry of a kind that had acquired extremist political connotations. Though Buchman was not in the same flagrantly political category as Bell or the Ballards, his high-profile activities did tend to attach a political label to the cults.