The History of Faith at Work - Part 2

Frank Buchman, the Oxford Group and the Four Absolutes:

Honesty, Purity, Unselfishness and Love
by Karl Olsson
The life and work of Frank N. D. Buchman, the founder of the Oxford Group later to be known as MRA
(Moral Re-Armament), loom large in the history of Faith at Work. Even now, many years after all formal
ties between the Group and Calvary Episcopal Church in New York were severed, there live on among the
older members of the Faith at Work family some unmistakable signs of the life style which Buchman
embraced and furthered. The story deserves telling in some detail.
Frank Buchman was born in 1878 in Pennsylvania. His background was Lutheran and Evangelical.
Latourette speaks of him as a "pietist by early environment and conviction." After his training for the
Lutheran ministry, Buchman tried his hand at organizing a home for boys in Philadelphia. He remained
there for five years, then served for a year as a missionary in the Middle East. But he seems to have been
unhappy with himself, with his arrogance and hostility, and with his relationship to the Board of the
Children's Home.
In the summer of 1908 he went to a summer conference at Keswick in England and heard a young woman
preacher speak about the cross. The effect on him was almost instantaneous. He saw that his "I" was the
center of his life and if he wanted to become a new person, the big "I" had to be crucified. He wrote about
the experience:
"I learned at Keswick that I was just as wrong as everyone else. It was up to me to change. I had to begin."
Harold Begbie, the author of Twice-Born Men and Life Changers places Frank Buchman in the tradition of
historic mystics from Plotinus to Leo Tolstoy. Whatever the truth of that, Buchman seems to have sensed
the presence of God mystically. He described his Keswick experience for Begbie in the following words:
"I remember one feeling very vividly. It was a vibration along the spine as if a strong current of life had been
infused into me; it came at the same time as my complete submission, in fact, at that very moment. What
followed this sense of electric shock was a vertigo, as if I had been placed in the center of an earthquake."
Buchman continues that he sat for several minutes in complete confusion. His body did not tremble, but he
was aware of a continuing vibration in his soul which was still in a state of tremor from the shock of his new
experience. He did not feel any immediate release or any exalted sense of deliverance. But he was aware of a
mighty inner change. Nevertheless for the moment he was only aware of the physical effect of his
transformation.
The piety of conversion and submission no doubt underlay Buchman's Keswick experience, but the
development of his spiritual life was to take less conventional forms. His description of the psychic
symptoms in the Keswick conversion supports Begbie's conclusion that Buchman was a mystic. Later in his
life, news reporters and photographers were to notice that Buchman looked distrait in public situations as if
he were tuned in to something beyond the scene. One writer who observed him at a public gathering said:
"One notices the distraction and the intent listening. . . often he seems anxious, perplexed, not to say
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helpless, and he doesn't try to hide it."
Guidance
A special kind of mysticism is certainly present in his emphasis on "quiet time," which he himself observed
very early in the morning; on listening to God for specific directives, or "guidance;" on receiving help with
these directives by writing down the guidance which was perceived, and on being obedient to that guidance.
In the matter of writing down the guidance, Buchman seems to have been influenced by a French 19th
century mystic, Alphonse Gratry, who in his book Les Sources indicates that this is the way to concretize the
divine message in human experience. Buchman's oft repeated aphorism, "People who ignore God's plan are
slaves to themselves," underscores the importance of such concrete obedience.
For Buchman, the guidance was to be tested by reference to Scripture but also by reference to the guidance
which individual members of the group had received. Consensus was achieved by listening until the listening
of the group seemed to point in one direction. But, as one of the group members warned, "guidance should
not be thought of as something mechanical, but something which is clarified through the operation of
reason, evidence and clear thinking. God speaks to us through all of the operations of human reason. No
person and no group is infallible but a group of people where each one is seeking the will of God and where
all are intimately related to one another should be able to arrive at the clearest and most consistent
guidance."
Four Absolutes
For Buchman, the guidance was always perceived within the framework of a man's conscience or the moral
norms of his religious faith, or the universal maxims present in the "tao." During the time that Buchman still
worked entirely within the Christian framework he used Robert E. Speer's distillation of the Sermon on the
Mount into four absolutes:
ABSOLUTE HONESTY
ABSOLUTE PURITY
ABSOLUTE UNSELFISHNESS
ABSOLUTE LOVE
Buchman believed that when a person listens to God and is in submission to the absolutes, God speaks.
And when that person obeys the guidance he has been given, God acts.
Buchman saw conflict arising between the human will and the application of one or more of the four
absolutes within a specific piece of guidance. For example, after 1921 he lived entirely by God's providence,
accepting no salary or other personal remuneration. He seems to have expected the same from the members
of his team. In this instance, his life style and his guidance demanded the application of the specific absolute
of unselfishness. In order to obey, Buchman maintained, it was necessary in the conflict between the
absolutes and the human will for a person to bring his ego into total captivity to the will of God.
The Oxford Group emphasized a form of group or team activity. Hence the name. What was the nature of
these groups? The evidence is not as clearly focused as might be desirable, but apparently the groups were
supportive and interacting teams in which any one of the following things might happen:
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1. the guidance received by one member in his quiet time for himself or the group would be submitted
to the whole group to be checked out, prayed about, and validated.
2. a need or program involving the whole team would be brought to the team for prayer and guidance in
order to determine God's plan in it.
3. an individual's desire or ambition (getting married, changing locations for ministry, etc.) would be
referred to the team and submitted to the same guidance process.
4. a failure, sin, or deviation from the adopted life style would be brought to the group in an act of
confession and restoration.
One of the leaders, probably Buchman, wrote, "In the Oxford Group there is true democracy. We do not
act in accordance with our own pleasure but in conformity with God's guidance. We follow God's plan."
Leadership Style
What was the leadership style developed by the Oxford Group and how did it relate to the team's activities?
This is a difficult question, for Buchman drew many strong and gifted people into his following and retained
the loyalty of many of them.
Let me venture a few suggested answers:
The Oxford Group was a theocracy, committed to finding God's guidance in every situation. The statement,
"We follow God's plan," was not arrogance, but faith, as the Oxford Group saw it. And when Buchman
said, "It is God who leads, not I," he believed that he spoke the whole truth about leadership.
Buchman also said that it should be a leader's ambition "to train others to do a job better than he could" and
that "the motivation for real leadership is to be led by God, to inspire others, and to seek to obey God's
guidance."
There is no need to question Buchman's sincerity in this matter or to doubt the integrity of the process
whereby decisions were made through the group. The fact is, nevertheless, that Buchman's personal
charisma and leadership were so strong that in their presence other assertions of leadership seemed to give
way. Members of the immediate circle witnessed to the fact that "people who accepted Buchman's goals
went on to accept his life style."
Sam Shoemaker's opinion of Buchman's leadership style deserves quoting in this connection:
"Frank Buchman was a strong authoritarian. He was clear headed and competent. He knew just where he
was going, and just where he wanted his movement to go. As his work grew, the element of
authoritarianism in his nature increased. He could no longer see all of the people personally who wanted to
see him, much more must be delegated. The movement which prided itself on little organization developed
a very complete organization."
When the activities of the Oxford Group first came to the attention of the press, the stress was on the
Group's black tie "house parties" in England, America and Scandinavia, at which people of some social
prominence publicly confessed their sins, or so it was reported. Inaccurate and lurid accounts of such
confessions encouraged wide public interest but also served to distort the image of the Group.
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The facts are that the Oxford Group did hold house parties which attracted prominent people; these
occasions did result in some honest confessions and resolves; there were, no doubt, some indiscreet
revelations which were not very helpful. The press nevertheless missed the point. The Oxford Group was
not interested in publicity, did not organize itself to attract headlines, and was frequently troubled and
embarrassed by its public image.
The first movement, originally called "A First Century Christian Fellowship," started with Frank Buchman's
arrival at Oxford University in 1921 to minister to the disillusioned and sophisticated post-World War I
generation. His ministry there was to encourage these young people to listen to the inner voice of God and
to accept His guidance for their lives. What began in 1921 as a ministry to a handful of students grew in
fifteen years to a world-wide movement which attracted the devotion of thousands of people in roles of
leadership. Buchman did not direct his activities to these people, but the students he ministered to on
university campuses came into prominent positions of leadership and in turn influenced others. By the mid-
thirties a host of clergy, bishops, statesmen, artists, authors, professors as well as business and other
professional leaders had rallied to the banners of the Oxford Group. In Scandinavia, which was second only
to America and England in its interest in the Group, the President of the Norwegian Storting, C. J. Hambro,
was an enthusiastic advocate of the spiritual renewal enabled by the Group. So were some prominent writers
like Ronald Fangen, Harry Blomberg (who coined the name "Moral Re-Armament"), Sven Stolpe, Hjalmar
Gullberg, Jarl Hammer, and many others.
By the middle of the 1930's, Buchman's reputation was world-wide. It was a critical time. The western world
was working itself out of a crippling financial depression; the shadows of Stalinism, Italian Fascism, and
German Nazism were becoming more and more ominous with ideologies being translated into military
might. The western democracies were confused and unsure.
The Oxford Group, with its emphasis on the need for a moral revolution in which individual persons
assumed full responsibility for their sins, reached many of those world leaders who lived in fear of the
impending holocaust. On the eve of World War II, Buchman kept reiterating his central message: "the
blame for the war belongs to everyone. What is needed is a new life style in which we refuse to blame other
people for their sins." At a meeting held on the historic Swedish island of Gotland in August, 1938,
Buchman told the assembled crowd, "You have come to be converted, you have come to convert others,
but I am committed to save a culture in dissolution. I want to reach the world's masses."
At the Gotland meeting, Buchman sounded a note which, although always present in his message, was now
given a sharper focus: "It does not interest me, and I don't think it's enough to get a new revival going. Such
a revival is fundamental and essential. But revival only affects one plane of existence. To remain there is to
set too small a goal. If we do not put greater demands on ourselves, we are lost."
By revival, Buchman seems to have meant the establishment of a right relationship with God. But for
Buchman, revival was not enough because it did not provide a sufficiently radical change in behavior and
life style. What was needed, he felt, was to bring the human will in total conformity to the will of God. This
would result in a moral absolutism able to transform the world. In particular, this transformation would
serve:
1. to save the peace and make it enduring,
2. to make the wealth of the world and its labor available to all without exploitation,
3. to build a new world and create a new culture with peace and prosperity as servants, and not as lords.
It was Frank Buchman's conviction that he wanted to reach the world's masses with his moral revolution.
As early as 1915, he made personal contact with Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi's grandson, Rajmohan Gandhi,
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tells of the meeting:
"In the year 1915 on a beach in Madras, two men walked together. One was a westerner, the other a Hindu.
A lasting friendship developed between them based on mutual respect and a common love for mankind.
During the 30 years that followed, each of them would become world renowned. Both would become close
friends of statesmen and exert influence over millions of people. The Hindu was my grandfather, Mahatma
Gandhi. The westerner was Frank Buchman."
When Buchman first met Gandhi, the former was committed to an evangelical Christian stance. He was not
a theologian and seems not to have been interested in theological questions per se but he appears never to
have departed from his classical Christian position as far as he was personally concerned. When he spoke to
Christians, he spoke from those presuppositions. But his thought did undergo a change with respect to the
people he was trying to reach. In 1921 the movement which Buchman led was called "A First Century
Christian Fellowship," and the aim seems to have been to make Christian disciples. In 1938, at the
suggestion of the Swedish writer, Harry Blomberg, the name was changed to Moral Re- Armament. This
met a need which Buchman had felt increasingly: "a thought simple enough to be understood by the masses
and essential enough to be proclaimed by the leaders of the nations."
That this thought or ideology was not Christian in any commonly accepted sense is obvious. It was what it
said it was: a moral re-armament which built on the four absolutes of honesty, purity, unselfishness and
love, but found the energy to do so within the particular faith system which the individual embraced.
A French writer, Gabriel Marcel, wrote of this development in Buchman:
"He believes that every person, within the framework of the faith that is his, can make his contribution to
the rebuilding of the world, if he decides to live out his faith to the uttermost. "For us who belong to
Islam," said a Moslem from Pakistan, "Frank Buchman's work has been helpful in re-discovering and re-
applying the principles of our faith." Christians, Buddhists, and Shintoists confirm this. Marcel also adduces
the comment of a Burmese abbot, U. Rewata, after his encounter with Buchman. "Buddhism also has these
four principles. The essential thing is to translate them into practice."
After World War II Moral Re-Armament put its innovative program to work in a conference center at
Caux-sur-Montreux near Geneva in Switzerland. Political leaders from around the world were invited to
lecture, debate, and discuss in the atmosphere of the four absolutes in order to get fresh perspectives on
their roles in the rebuilding of the splintered world. Over and over again, the emphasis was made that only
people personally changed can change the world, and time at each conference was programmed in for
personal meditation and inventory. The impact of Caux and MRA on the international scene cannot be
accurately gauged, but there was widespread acceptance among leaders from America, Europe, and Asia.
Both Robert Schuman, the French Prime Minister, and Konrad Adenauer, German Chancellor (1949-63),
witnessed to the unseen but effective role of Moral Re-Armament in the work of reconciling the opponents.
(End of Part 2)
[TOC] [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6]
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