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Franklin Nathaniel Daniel Buchman (June 4, 1878 - 1961) was a protestant Christian evangelist who founded the Oxford Group (after 1938 known as Moral Re-Armament).
Early Life
Frank Buchman was born in in Pennsburg, Pennsylvania, 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’s career began with the creation of a new church in Overbrook. After a visit to Europe, he decided to establish a hostel (called a “hospice”) in a poor district of Philadelphia along the lines of Freidrich von Bodelschwing’s colony for the mentally ill in Bielefeld and inspired by Toynbee Hall. However, conflict with overseers of the hostel led to his resignation.
Buchman then took another trip to Europe, during which he was introduced to Princess Sophie of Greece, who was reportedly impressed with some assistance he had given to an elderly American couple in Greece. She asked him to send a message to Sultan Abdul Hamid of Turkey. Buchman also attended the Keswick Convention, during which he had a religious experience when listening to a sermon by Jessie Penn-Lewis.
At the YMCA
In 1909, Buchman became YMCA secretary at Penn State College. During this time he began the practice of a daily "quiet time", which may have come from a meeting with the Quaker-influenced Baptist, Frederick Brotherton Meyer (1847-1929), who was one of the leading lights of the Keswick Convention evangelical movement. The decisive influence, however, 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 Frederick Brotherton Meyer and Henry Drummond, among others.
Buchman’s YMCA work took him to India with evangelist Sherwood Eddy, where he met Mahatma Gandhi, and to China.
At Hartford and China
Buchman next took a post at Hartford Theological Seminary, where he gathered a group of students to assist in the conversion of China to Christianity. He believed that this could be achieved if he converted fifteen leaders. While in China, he was asked to lead missionary conferences at Kuling and Peitaiho, which he saw as an opportunity to train native Chinese leaders. However, he came into conflict with other missionaries, and he caused offence with the inference of homosexuality among the missionary fraternity. Bishop Logan Roots asked him to leave.
While still based at Hartford, Buchman spent much of his time travelling and forming groups of Christian students at Princeton and Yale, as well as Oxford. Eventually, Buchman resigned his position at Hartford, and thereafter relied on gifts from patrons such as Margaret Tjader. Buchman gathered a group of associates around him that included Sam Shoemaker.
The Oxford Group
Buchman designed a strategy of holding “house parties” at various locations, during which he hoped for Christian commitment among those attending. Between 1931 and 1935, around 150 Oxford undergraduates came to form what became known as the Oxford Group. The group was publicised by the support of Paul Hodder-Williams, of the publishing firm Hodder and Stoughton, and he arranged for a column to appear in the firm’s magazine, the British Weekly. Buchman saw his efforts as an alternative to the attractions of Communism to intellectuals. During this time Buchman became increasingly well-known and well-connected.
Buchman travelled widely in Europe during the 1930s, and sought unsuccessfully to meet with Hitler, whom he hoped to convert. His visits to Scandanavia were credited by some churchmen there as having had a profound influence on reconciliation between various individuals which were crucial for the war years.
Moral Re-Armament
In 1938 a Swedish socialist and Oxford Group member named Harry Blomberg, wrote of the need to rearm morally. Buchman liked the term, and launched MRA in east London. For a while, it was based at Mackinac Island, a location found by Mrs Henry Ford; later it was based at Caux, in Switzerland. MRA worked to decrease conflict between unions and management, and between various political forces, by inviting groups to the MRA base at Caux. It also developed a number of stage plays which demonstrated MRA principles. In London, the movement acquired the Westminster Theatre.
Following the Second World War, Buchman believed that MRA had a role to play in international reconciliation. Groups of Germans and Japanese were brought to Caux; Buchman also involved himself with the affairs of Morocco.
Psychology and Spirituality
Buchman’s spirituality included four main elements he believed necessary for a good life:
- a daily "quiet time" during which he claimed to receive the "divine guidance" by which he lived all aspects his life
- public and private confession of sin
- restitution for harm done to others in the past; and
- evangelism of these principles to those who were still "defeated by sin."
Buchman believed that his "quiet time" gave him a special insight into particular situations, and some of the anecdotes about this insight suggest that his followers believe him to have had paranormal abilities.
The founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, William "Bill W." Wilson and Robert "Dr. Bob" Smith were both active members in the Oxford Movement and believed that its principles of the Oxford Groups were the key to overcoming alcoholism. Psychologist Howard Clinebell called Buchman “one of the foremost pioneers of the modern mutual-assistance philosophy”, and Paul Tournier was also greatly impressed.
Private Life
Buchman never married. Despite failing health that eventually led to blindness and immobility, he maintained as active as possible until his death in 1961
Controversy
Buchman was a hugely controversial figure throughout his life, and critics dubbed his movement as "Buchmanism" from the 1920s. He was banned from Princeton, and in the UK his critics included Hensley Henson, who was the Bishop of Durham, and the left-wing MP Tom Driberg. On the other hand, Buchman was supported by figures such as Cosmo Lang, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Malcolm Muggeridge. One of Buchman’s close colleagues, Peter Howard, was a Daily Express journalist who came into his orbit after investigating him for his newspaper.
Political
One quote from the 1930s in particular always dogged Buchman:
- ''"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."
However, the Nazis believed that Buchman was working for British Intelligence.
Buchman’s anti-Communism is also used to place him on the far right, but he is also quoted as having said that
- ''“Marxism may capture the spirit of Christ.”
Buchman hated Communist materialism, but he was happy to work with socialists and union figures, bringing him under suspicion from the US right in the 1950s. However, he also maintained warm links with some rightists, such as Nobusuke Kishi of Japan.
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 in fact concentrated morbidly on sexual issues, particularly masturbation. Buchman’s colleagues also concentrated on homosexuality as a problem, as evidenced in this quote:
- ''There are many who wear suede shoes who are not homosexual, but in Europe and America the majority of homosexuals do. They favor green as a color in clothes and decorations. Men are given to an excessive display and use of the handkerchief. They tend to let the hair grow long, use scent and are frequently affected in speech, mincing in gait and feminine in mannerisms. They are often very gifted in the arts. They tend to exhibitionism. They can be cruel and vindictive, for sadism usually has a homosexual root. They are often given to moods....There is an unnecessary touching of hands, arms and shoulders. In the homosexual the elbow grip is a well-known sign.
Religious
In the USA, Buchman was strongly opposed by Reinhold Niebuhr, 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.
Buchman has also been viewed with suspicion by some contemporary Christian fundamentalists, who see his "quiet time" meditation as occultic and his enthusiasm for non-Christians such as Mahatma Gandhi as beyond the pale.
External links
- Frank Buchman - A Life (biography available online)
- The Initiatives of Change global website
- The Oxford Group Movement: The Forerunner of AA
- [http://www.orange-papers.org/menu1.html
"Frank N. D. Buchman"