'Apostle to the Twentieth Century' Frank N. D. Buchman: Founder of the Oxford Group Movement

VOLUME 154 NUMBER 1

JULY 1934

BY HENRY P. VAN DUSEN

ABOUT twenty years ago an unknown and rather unimpressive man, then secretary of the student Christian association in Pennsylvania State College, began to speak to his friends with confident certainty about the imperative urgency of worldwide religious revival, and about its imminent possibility. He pointed to progressive moral disintegration the world over; he predicted its continued steady advance. He dismissed the buoyant, breezy, expectant self-satisfaction, the jaunty well-being of the then prevailing outlook (all this, recall, was at the height of the pre-war optimism); he reported men’s poignant spiritual hunger, their readiness for radical conversion. He pronounced the futility of measures then universally trusted to assure human advance — education, scientific research, social reform, international sentiment and agreements. Nothing, he said, but religious revival of a most drastic and sweeping kind could possibly save the world from impending catastrophe.

Furthermore, he clearly envisioned how the revival would be brought to pass. The day of mass evangelism was over, he declared; the key to revival lay in work with individuals one by one within intimate fellowships. He drew a vivid picture of a world-wide movement of ‘peripatetic evangelism’ — small bands of completely committed, disciplined, carefully trained men and women of different nations moving continuously across the face of the world, touching with new life individuals here and there, binding them into close-knit fellowships, and then bearing the contagion from group to group. It must be a work directed primarily to wealth and position and privilege, to the ‘up-and-outs’; these, he felt, the churches were neglecting to reach with a message of radical transformation. The movement would begin in the universities; Oxford would kindle Yale; Princeton and Harvard men would be used to revive religion at Cambridge and Cape Town. From the great universities the influence would flow out into the newer and smaller colleges, thence on into communities and churches. From America and Britain the fire would spread throughout Europe, to the Orient, South America, South Africa, the ends of the earth. He reported that China, India, South Africa, the British universities, were as ripe for such revival as the American colleges. A radical regeneration of the entire church would be the final outcome.

Copyright 1934, by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston, Mass. All rights reserved.

His analyses and predictions were couched in an original and often mystifying vocabulary — as strange to the ear of that day as were the convictions themselves. He spoke constantly of ‘sin’ and ‘evil thoughts,’ of ‘absolute honesty, purity, unselfishness, love,’ of ‘confession’ and ‘surrender,’ of ‘witness’ and ‘sharing,’ of ‘propagating Christians,’ of ‘Bible Christianity,’ of a ‘movement of life within the churches,’ of ‘social transformation through individual conversion,’ of ‘quiet time’ and ‘listening’ and ‘hunches’ and ‘luminous thoughts,’ above everything else of ‘God-guidance.’ His habitual speech was studded with cryptic aphorisms repeated almost ad nauseam — ‘crows are black the world over’; ‘don’t throw eye medicine out of a second-story window’; ‘every man a force, not a field’; ‘revival which continues in survival’; ‘interesting sinners make compelling saints’; ‘hate, confess, forsake, restore’; ‘woo, win, warn’; ‘ J-E-S-U-S — just exactly suits us sinners, just exactly saves us sinners.’ When questioned about the financial undergirding of so gigantic a world strategy, he was certain that ‘where God guides, He provides.’

That was twenty years ago. How startling were such diagnoses and forecasts when they were first uttered can be appreciated only through a vivid recollection of the temper of the prewar decade. To recapture the prevailing atmosphere of those years is no easy task for the imagination. Those were the days of commercial expansion and technical prowess, of daily miracles in almost every aspect of man’s achievement, of peace conferences, peace treaties, peace pilgrimages, peace platitudes, of the unchallenged regnancy of the dogma of progress, of intense preoccupation with science, education, business, sport, of objective healthy-mindedness, of an exuberant and expansive self-confidence.

The transformation wrought by the intervening years is familiar enough. Not least striking have been the changes in the world’s religious climate. They have been mainly in two directions. Those features of the above conviction which were then least novel, indeed lip-serviced elements in the accepted Christian thought of the day,

— the emphasis upon sin, the insistence upon the surrender of each soul to God, the obligation to personal evangelism,

— have almost disappeared from the current Christian message. On the other hand, those aspects which then provoked incredulity, — the threat of world-wide moral collapse, the need of world-wide spiritual revival and its possibility, — these are to-day matters of common discussion in circles far removed from orthodox church loyalty. Through all the kaleidoscopic events of these two decades, not a day has passed when that strange man has failed to proclaim the same diagnosis and to declare the same predictions to anyone who would listen — always with unwearied repetition of the same words and phrases, always with deepening confirmation of his own certainty.

To-day there is a movement of contagious personal religion ceaselessly at work across the face of the world which is perhaps the most powerful as it is certainly the most striking spiritual phenomenon of our time. It has vigorous and rapidly expanding centres in England, Scotland, Holland, Scandinavia, Germany, Switzerland, Rumania, Egypt, South Africa, the Near East, South America, India, the Far East, as well as in every corner of the United States and Canada. Its professed adherents number thousands, its sympathetic inquirers many times as many. The inner circle of its leadership includes several of the ablest minds of the Christian world and a considerable sprinkling of church leaders of eminence and wisdom. The Right Reverend Logan H. Roots, one of the most revered and beloved missionary bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church, speaks of it as ‘the frontier movement of Christendom . . . the expression of the greatest movement of the spirit of Christ in our generation.’ And C. F. Andrews testifies that ‘a new spirit has come in South Africa. ... If the whole atmosphere of South Africa is different and full of promise, it is due in God’s good providence very greatly to the Oxford Groups.’ All over the world, sober men are querying whether the religious revival, which the churches have so long heralded and which they have so signally failed to bring to birth, may not really be upon us.

For the propagation of its influence this movement relies entirely upon touching the lives of individual men and women, one by one, and then binding them into the intimate fellowship of closely knit groups. Its work increases and expands through teams of devoted, carefully trained men and women from various nations who travel from land to land to the far corners of the earth as peripatetic evangelists, carrying the contagion from one vital centre to another. It defines itself as a ‘movement of life within the churches’ for the enlistment and training of ‘propagating Christians.’ It promises a ‘new world order through changed lives.’ Its goal is the spiritual renewal of the entire church. Through its speech there echo and reëcho the words and phrases already mentioned which unfailingly identify its adherents, and which, when understood, furnish the key to its essential message. When inquiry is made about the financial support of so far-flung and prodigious an undertaking, members of the movement will invariably reply, ‘Where God guides, He provides.’

This, very briefly, is the story of the emergence of the Oxford Group Movement.

II

By any possible calculus, Dr. Frank N. D. Buchman is a man of very remarkable powers. Not a few people utterly fail to understand the Oxford Group Movement through ignorance of the personality, the background, and the convictions of its founder.

Mr. Buchman is a man just turned fifty-five years of age. By common consent, he has not been richly endowed with gifts of personality; very few people feel themselves drawn to him at first meeting. It is all the greater indication of the man’s power that the intense personal devotion which gathers to him from all of his following has arisen in spite of this seeming lack of personal charm. Harold Begbie’s description has become almost classic: —

In appearance he is a young-looking man of middle life . . . upright, stoutish, cleanshaven, spectacled, with that mien of scrupulous, shampooed, and almost medical cleanness, or freshness, which is so characteristic of the hygienic American.

His carriage and his gestures are distinguished by an invariable alertness. He never droops, he never slouches. You find him in the small hours of the morning with the same quickness of eye and the same athletic erectness of body which seem to bring a breeze into the breakfast room. . . . He strikes one on a first meeting as a warmhearted and very happy man, who can never know what it is to be physically tired or mentally bored.

Mr. Buchman was born and lived through youth and young manhood near the heart of the ’Pennsylvania Dutch’ district in Eastern Pennsylvania. It is from that simple, stolid, deeply religious German Lutheran stock that Mr. Buchman comes, — his paternal ancestry was German Swiss, — and to it he owes all the most formative influences upon his own inner life. In his home, English was spoken brokenly. Its atmosphere was Pennsylvania German through and through, of that very distinctive pietistic intensity made familiar to an earlier generation through the quaint and charming tales of Helen R. Martin. From the German Lutheran college of Muhlenberg, Mr. Buchman went to the conservative theological seminary of his church at Mount Airy, Philadelphia.

A few years later, while attending a conference at Keswick in England, a vivid and life-determining experience of conversion crystallized the dominant influences of youth and early training. By then, or very soon thereafter, all the basic certainties of his life and the directions for his life’s work were ‘given’ to him; they have suffered modification at no vital point since. Subsequently wide travel and varied contacts have given him knowledge of the world and familiarity with diverse movements of thought, but he has felt no necessity to alter the structure of his early conviction. In extraordinary measure, his personal religion to-day is that of his simple and beautiful pietistic Lutheran home, and his theology that which he was taught at Mount Airy Seminary thirty years ago.

This explains not a little in Mr. Buchman’s religion, and in the Oxford Group Movement, which otherwise must be mystifying. He springs from a type of Protestant belief and practice which to most Americans is strangely unfamiliar. No one can understand him or the movement which centres in him without a deep appreciation of conservative Lutheran pietism. This also accounts for much misrepresentation of features which are in no sense peculiar to his work, but are characteristic of the school of religion which has given it birth — its otherworldliness, its loyal acceptance of existing political and social authority, its pessimistic estimate of human nature, its stress on ‘sin’ and ‘faith’ and ‘rebirth’ and ‘regeneration,’ its uncritical use of the Bible, its intense mysticism, even its practice of Divine Guidance. The voice of Martin Luther himself echoes through not a little of Mr. Buchman’s personal teaching. To be sure, the Movement is committed to no distinctive theological position and embraces a considerable range of view. Moreover Mr. Buchman has usually rather disparaged stress on theology; among his favorite maxims are ‘Study men, not books,’ and ‘Why talk to men about the Second Coming of Christ when they have never experienced His first coming?’ Nevertheless his personal faith is exceedingly conservative, indeed premillennialist. And many of the features which so sharply distinguish this striking Movement, including some which are especially suspect, can be traced in the last analysis to the religious heritage of its founder. Far more than is recognized by its adherents, its presuppositions and its practices are colored if not determined by his personal faith.

III

The most important stages in the development of Mr. Buchman’s career may be briefly reviewed. Fresh from the Seminary, he undertook to resuscitate a struggling parish on the outskirts of Philadelphia. With tireless energy and indomitable will he built a vigorous church and founded a settlement house and hospice, meantime sharing his pitiable resources with several destitute persons. But sharp differences with the governing board led to his resignation. He sought escape from this bitter experience in a trip to Europe, which had its climax in the profound awakening at Keswick; he has ever since regarded this as the starting point of his effective service. For seven years thereafter he was secretary of the undergraduate religious society at Pennsylvania State College; here many of his principles and methods were given their first thorough testing and confirmation. Two visits to the Orient furnished intimate acquaintance with the missionary enterprise, and especially with the personal inner struggles of individual missionaries, for it was to them that Mr. Buchman gave his special attention. In 1919 he returned to the United States to resume a lectureship on personal evangelism at Hartford Theological Seminary.

From this time his overmastering concern was given to initiating the movement of revival which should fulfill his vision — the vision which had gradually been growing upon him and now completely possessed him. True to the guidance of that vision, he began in the American universities. For several years his efforts achieved amazing influence. Something approaching revival began to stir the campuses of Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Williams, Smith, Vassar, Bryn Mawr — the most unlikely colleges in the land. Men flocked into the leadership of the church. Of the fifty ablest younger ministers on the Atlantic seaboard today, somewhere near half were directed into their vocation through his influence at that time. During the summer holidays Oxford and Cambridge were the centre of activity. There began the international visitations by teams of youthful converts which are so distinctive a feature of the work to-day. ‘ Buchmanism ’ was widely discussed on both sides of the Atlantic. On a very limited scale, some of his extraordinary predictions began to come true.

But about 1924 the tide suddenly turned. Criticism and opposition, hitherto largely latent and spasmodic, became vocal and rapidly increased in volume. The officers of Princeton University, where the work had established its strongest foothold, felt compelled to conduct an investigation and to request Mr. Buchman not to return to the campus; soon his followers there also withdrew. Many of the early adherents fell away or turned to more usual types of religious effort. The Movement had failed to gain significant strength at Oxford or Cambridge. By about 1925 it is probable that not over a half-dozen persons on both sides of the Atlantic would have acknowledged Mr. Buchman as their leader. Success had been meteoric but short-lived. Almost nothing remained of the revival which was to have regenerated the church and shaken the world.

Mr. Buchman was disappointed, but undismayed. With his small nucleus of loyal followers he started afresh. The base of operations was shifted to England, where it has remained. Slowly a new and more careful strategy was beaten out. Quieter and less spectacular growth, a new emphasis upon rigorous discipline, much greater attention to the training of leaders, far more exacting requirements for admission to the trusted circle, insistence upon unquestioning ‘loyalty’ to the Group and its leader, characterized the new phase. Gradually there began to take form much more cohesive and disciplined fellowships in local centres, each faithfully reproducing the same essential features, each captained by a leader who followed in minutest detail the tactics of Mr. Buchman.

After several years of unobtrusive consolidation, teams of trained and disciplined workers began once again to cross the ocean from continent to continent — this time to South Africa (where the name Oxford Group was first coined), later to America, to South America, to the Orient. To annual international house parties at Oxford, leaders and inquirers from widely scattered groups all over the world came on pilgrimage, first in dozens, then in hundreds, now in thousands. They give the Movement cohesion, furnish a focus for training, and demonstrate in impressive dramatization its ever-expanding outreach. In spite of its far-flung lines, the enterprise is thus held in a quite extraordinary unity and uniformity. Beginning cautiously, guarding its inner integrity jealously, the sweep of the Movement has acquired a steadily accelerated pace. No continent and hardly a nation is untouched. To-day at a dozen corners of the world something promising the possibility of national revival is suggested. Local groups are numbered by scores, their members by thousands. They boast as patrons and supporters not a few of the most distinguished statesmen, scholars, and churchmen of the world. To the house parties, not only at Oxford, but in New York or Quebec, come more enthusiasts than can easily be accommodated. And the end is not yet. For there is not the slightest indication that the zenith of expansion has been achieved.

From so tiny a nucleus the Oxford Group Movement of to-day has sprung in something less than eight years. It is the fruit of one man’s vision and indomitable determination. Without him it cannot be accounted for.

IV

As with all men of genius, the secret of Mr. Buchman’s influence is not easily defined. One thinks at once of obvious qualities which distinguish him and make their contributions to his effectiveness — a quite extraordinary skill in administration; personal attention to the importance of the minutest detail; intimate solicitude for each person’s needs and idiosyncrasies; tireless resilience of body and nerves; playful and unclouded gayety of spirit ; financial sagacity, not to say shrewdness; tenacious memory; a sense for strategy which might quicken jealousy in a Napoleon; exuberant and contagious optimism. But one is driven to conclude that none of these is the gift of inborn equipment; all are byproducts of some deeper secret. The ultimate sources of Mr. Buchman’s personal power are, I think, four: uncanny prevision of the future, expert understanding of the inmost problems of the human spirit, unclouded certainty in his own procedure, and the absolute deliverance of self— his hopes, his necessities, his reputation, his success — into the direction of a Divine Intention, clearly and commandingly made known to him. How far the first three are themselves the result of the last, no human analysis can reveal.

1. Of Mr. Buchman’s premonition of coming tendencies something has already been said. I do not know whether he prophesied the Great War. But long before the war’s advent he clearly foresaw and foretold the moral and spiritual chaos which has dogged the post-war era and America’s wild orgy of prosperity. That is to say, he was acutely aware of underlying forces of which the war itself was only a first catastrophic expression. His understanding of history does not concern primarily political and economic events, but those profounder ethical and spiritual factors which, neglected by the shallow insight of statesmanship, fashion political and social destiny.

Even more striking has been his anticipation of the major spiritual trends of our time. Some indication of this foresight is suggested in the following fact. When Mr. Buchman began his public work twenty years ago, four of the features which most distinguished it then, and which have been central in its emphasis ever since, were widely regarded as just a little beyond the pale of respectability; in the intervening years, each of the four has established itself not only in the practice of the most respected Christian leaders, but also in circles far beyond orthodox religion. I refer to his emphasis upon problems of sex, his employment of private confession, the house-party technique, and his vivid mysticism.

Here, once more, only a deliberate effort of the imagination will succeed in recalling the atmosphere of those pre-war years. Then, Mr. Buchman’s frank insistence upon problems of sex as the most serious inner difficulty of many people was regarded as unhealthy, dangerous, a trifle morbid, perhaps slightly perverted. To the healthy-minded objectivity of those days, sex was almost a banned topic. It is just the two decades since which have witnessed the deluge of books on sex, the advent of psychoanalysis, public discussion of the most intimate issues of personal life, the morbid preoccupation of increasing numbers of people in this matter. Mr. Buchman’s emphasis long antedated the vogue of Freud and Jung and Adler, of sexsaturated literature and sex-perverted movies, of sex appeal and sex drama and Œdipus-complexes, of the expensive and dubious ministrations of private psychiatrists.

Similarly, twenty years ago, private confession of personal failure was regarded as a distinctive practice of the Roman Church — to most nonRomans an obsolete and rather revolting practice. To-day, confession is the basic technique of all types of mental healing; and it is a regular element in the practice of many foremost ministers.

For the propagation of his work, Mr. Buchman has always relied not only on personal conversations, but also upon informal intimate group gatherings, — ‘house parties,’ in his own original parlance, — where spontaneous disclosures of the most private experiences of the spiritual life could occur quite naturally. In the early days these were viewed askance. Today, retreats and informal intimate discussions for sharing personal discoveries are commonplace features of religious work.

Again, in its earliest expression Mr. Buchman’s message was marked by an intense and vivid mysticism. From the beginning he has taught that every person should expect direct suggestion of God’s guidance. In those hardheaded, preoccupied, blatant pre-war days he placed the very centre of his insistence upon this belief. Absurd nonsense it sounded to the ear of that time. His conception of ‘guidance’ is still one of the most serious stumblingblocks to many. But no one who has felt the spiritual pulse of recent decades can have failed to detect the returning tide of mysticism. Even to the most skeptical, this unusual practice appears far less unique and absurd than it then did. One can have no doubt that the currents of the time, outside formal church circles no less than within, have set strongly in the direction of Mr. Buchman’s teaching — and at a steadily heightened pace. Clearly this is no ordinary prophet with whom we have to deal.

2. When we turn to Mr. Buchman’s understanding of the ills of the human spirit, especially in its deeper reaches and secret struggles, we touch the gift which confounds most persons at first meeting and is the key to his magnetic power over them. I doubt if there is a psychiatrist in the world whose intuitive sensitiveness to spiritual disease can begin to compare with his in acuteness and accuracy. Years of unbroken concentration upon the inmost problems of personal life have furnished him with unique powers of instantaneous and piercing diagnosis.

But to equipment forged by experience is undoubtedly added remarkable inborn aptitude for character discernment. For Mr. Buchman is not only a mystic; he is a psychic as well. Not infrequently, after two sentences of casual conversation with a new acquaintance, he will suggest the presence of secret difficulties which the other has been hiding from his most intimate companions, or even from himself. When he enters a drawing-room, his rapier insight moves unnoticed from person to person. Within five minutes he has formed his estimate of every person in the room, fastening upon the inner keys to behavior in each person’s life — all the while taking his part fully in the inconsequential patter. No faintest outward hint of the struggle with secret impurity, of sensuality, of insecurity or inferiority, of pride, of selfishness, of solitariness or disheartenment or defeat, of the false bravado which masks inner uncertainty, of the cynicism which masks self-disgust or world-weariness, escapes him. Often, when outward sign is lacking, he recognizes their presence by some more immediate intuition.

No one who aims to take the measure of the man can afford to overlook this extraordinary power. Occasionally he badly misses his guess, sometimes with grossly impertinent accusations and unpardonable injustice to people’s character; but not often. And, when he feels confidence in his diagnosis, he does not hesitate to confront the person with his failing or need, be he peasant or prelate, statesman or archbishop or Pullman porter, chance traveling companion or one of his closest associates. But, his message does not stop with diagnosis. In every instance, with equal assurance he prescribes the needed remedy — however obscure or chronic the spiritual malady, however shackling the other’s defeat, however jaunty his self-confident exterior.

3. Here we meet another of the most conspicuous marks of the man — his unshakable certitude in his own ‘leading.’ Never for a fleeting instant or in any possible circumstances is he unsure in speech or action. It makes no difference whether the matter concerns the strategy for winning a continent or the relief of an over-solemn meeting by an injection of humor, the right word to say to impress an official whose favor controls doors of opportunity or the right necktie to wear to win the confidence of a particularly fastidious Eton boy. As a matter of fact, in his view, each of these matters may be equally important; that is why God guides us in the selection of our haberdashery. Momentous decisions are formed instantly, and then pushed to fruition with zeal bred of certainty that the Weight of the Universe is behind them. Mr. Buchman’s assurance is not the ponderous, impressive dogmatism of selfconscious importance, but the quick, gay, rapier-like abandon of one whose wisdom proceeds from gushing springs inaccessible to the ordinary soul.

Hence, in part, springs Mr. Buchman’s extraordinary authority among his following, an authority not superimposed but gladly accorded. He is always quietly sure he is right; and he has been vindicated in the sequel too often to be lightly contradicted. Here, also, is the explanation of his imperviousness to criticism. Only from those who fully share his views and his technique of insight will he hear the slightest questioning. Even from them he is much more receptive to suggestions for improvement in his dress than for modifications in his theology or methods. Such certainty is possible because Mr. Buchman knows his every thought and action to be immediately determined by the Divine Mind; it is the direct corollary of his belief in Divine Guidance.

Eminent European leaders of the church who knew Mr. Buchman at student conferences twenty years ago are astounded when they confront him and his Movement to-day. The man is essentially unchanged. There is no novel note in his message, no modification in his methods. Their first impulse is to say that he has learned nothing from the years, or almost nothing. Then, they regarded him as a sincere but rather eccentric devotee of a particular technique of personal evangelism; above all, a very American American. To-day they find him one of the most powerful spiritual forces in the world, with influence far greater in aloof Britain and conservative Holland and insular South Africa than in his credulous homeland — a man who bids fair to bring to pass within their own country the religious revival for which through all these years they have been impotently longing. Small wonder there is a claim of ‘miracles.’

The critic may find an explanation in two facts. The tides of history have swung to Mr. Buchman. And through all those years he has never for one moment doubted God’s appointed task for him. To which the friend will retort with two questions: ‘How came the tides of history to turn in that direction? Why has such strange, almost fanatic, assurance borne such extraordinary fruit?’

4. But the central secret of the man’s power must be sought at a still deeper level. It is in the absolutely unqualified gift of himself to his God and that God’s intention for him.

A quarter century ago, there took form within him the inner certainty that God had a particular work — daring, difficult, momentous — for him to accomplish; and that, in the measure of his unquestioning fidelity, he would be supplied with explicit directions for his every act and adequate provision for his every need. From then until now he has lived from day to day and year after year in nearly unclouded trust — trust in the authenticity of his commission, trust in provision for his need. ‘Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel.’

To-day he is seldom seen except at the most fashionable hotels and on the most expensive liners, with apparently limitless financial resources flowing from mysterious reservoirs. But for years he existed precariously from hand to mouth, sharing his pittance prodigally with needier folk. More than once I have met him with fifty cents in his pocket and a bill many times that amount at his hotel. To-day he is the undisputed director of a powerful world-wide enterprise, reverenced almost to worship. But there were years of crying in the wilderness, of criticism and calumny and cutting disdain; not long ago he saw the hard-won accomplishments of a decade crumble and found himself with only a handful of scattered followers. Not once or twice, but repeatedly, he has broken with colleagues, surrendered position, income, security, and the certainty of influence, and thrust himself into solitary isolation because he could not endure the temporizing and cowardice and selfishness of conventional Christian leadership. To-day he and his Movement exude a buoyancy, an optimism, a light-hearted well-being, which many who take the tragedy of their world’s life seriously find almost repulsive. But behind the success of to-day lie periods of desolating loneliness and blank failure — failure of plans which were felt to be the dictation of God Himself.

Facile explanations of the Oxford Group Movement’s astounding growth are rife to-day. Most of them are patently superficial. Even many adherents who have joined in the floodtide of its importance fail utterly to comprehend the real key to its strength. No one can understand, or appreciate, the dogged resilience of this ‘Movement of Life’ who has not pierced through its obvious features and come face to face with the inner spring of all its energy — the rock-like consecration of its leader. Frank Buchman belongs in that tiny company of the centuries who have known themselves summoned to the surrender of all to the exacting demand of the Divine Will, and who, making the surrender, have pressed on through darkness and light in immovable confidence in the Divine Guardianship of their destiny. A like surrender he requires of every person who would share intimately in the leadership of his work. Dwight L. Moody was fond of saying that the world had yet to see what God could accomplish by, in, and through a man completely given to His Will. Frank Buchman has earnestly endeavored to be that man.

V

I would gladly leave the matter at this point. However, our objective is not merely an appreciation of Mr. Buchman’s sterling strength, but as impartial and complete a portrait of him as possible. If I am to be true to that aim, it is necessary to speak with equal frankness of his shortcomings. And all the more for this reason: I have urged that any adequate inquiry into the power of the Oxford Group Movement must find itself finally confronting a man; he is the answer to the inquiry. In precisely the same way, an attempt to account for what are widely regarded as serious dangers or weaknesses in the Movement will bring one face to face with him. Without exception they spring directly from the personality or conviction of its founder. This part of our task is especially delicate because the things most criticized are less matters of doctrine than of personal characteristic. I shall mention three.

1. It is reported that the first serious inner crisis in Mr. Buchman’s life occurred when a fellow seminary student accused him of ambition. The deliberate selection of a difficult and obscure post for his first ministry was his response to the charge. Apparently the suggestion touched a sensitive point of consciousness. In the years since, Mr. Buchman has often been accused of ambition, of unfairness, of intolerance, of hypersensitiveness to criticism, of self-righteousness, of courting opposition.

Now the line between personal ambition and passionate concern for God’s work may be a very narrow one. It is clear that from very early in his career Mr. Buchman has felt himself designated for important tasks, and equipped with gifts adequate to their importance. Moreover, he has been driven by an overmastering sense of urgency and a corresponding impatience with cowardly or half-hearted or conventional measures. He has known God’s Will for himself, for the church, and often for others. As a result, he has been unable to conceal his contempt for what he believes to be the incomplete dedication which characterizes most Christians, even those in responsible leadership. He has been unable to check a quick disdain for the lumbering and inept and ineffective efforts of most workers within the church. He has been unable to stifle sharp resentment at any who might raise questions as to the soundness of his own vision or the wisdom and effectiveness of his methods.

So certain is he of the indispensable importance of that which he knows himself called to do — winning individuals one by one to complete surrender of their lives, and then to the winning of others — that everyone else must be called to precisely the same task. In his view of the Christian enterprise, there is no division of responsibility in this matter; all are required to be ‘soul surgeons.’ This is the sine qua non of the Christian life. No one — statesman, physician, research scientist, bootblack, bishop — is excused from that primary responsibility. Nor is this all. No one is recognized as really winning souls effectively unless he is doing it in precisely the manner developed by Mr. Buchman.

This is one aspect of the picture. There is another. Not only is Mr. Buchman unsparingly rigorous in his estimate of the effectiveness of others; he will not abide the slightest questioning of his own work or that of his colleagues, except from those fully within the Movement. When queries are raised by outsiders, they are not met with reasoned rebuttal. ‘Win your argument and lose your man ’ is one of his favorite warnings. The best defense is a vigorous attack. The validity of the slightest question is emphatically denied. Moreover, even if it come from a person of wisdom and experience and, as far as the questioner can read his own conscience, it be sincere and sympathetic, it tends to be labeled ‘opposition.’ On the other hand, honest opposition is labeled ‘persecution.’ Almost always criticism or doubt or even indifference is attributed to ‘sin’ on the part of the questioner — perhaps the rationalization of some grave hidden weakness or the sin of jealousy or laziness or cowardice.

It is easy to understand why Mr. Buchman has always found it exceedingly difficult to work with others except those who fully share his convictions and acknowledge his leadership. There were sharp disagreement and clash in his first position; he resigned, harboring deep resentment against the committee which had vetoed his policies. There were acute difficulties at Hartford Seminary during his tenure there. At various times he has been intimately associated with important Christian leaders and movements as a colleague; almost always the connection has finally been severed when his associates did not completely accept his views or would not fully accede to his plans for their work. It is not clear that these sharp differences always centred on matters of fundamental principle. It is significant that Mr. Buchman’s career has left a trail of broken and raw relationships, of men and women branded as enemies because they ventured to raise doubt about some element in his programme or the infallibility of his judgment. Only in the past few years, when he has been surrounded by a widening circle of loyal followers, have Mr. Buchman’s personal relationships been unclouded.

Moreover, he has always found it difficult not only to understand but to forgive those who might differ from him. Here again he has been aware of his own temptation to harbor resentment. The experience which he speaks of as his ‘ conversion ’ and which determined the subsequent course of his life occurred as a climax to months of bitter rebellion against the committee which had blocked his plans; release and the gift of power came as he mastered ill will and bravely asked forgiveness from those who he felt had wronged him. It is possible that the weakness so courageously confronted on that occasion was rooted too deep within consciousness for complete exorcism. To sympathetic observers it has often seemed as though Mr. Buchman were deliberately inviting opposition, stirring criticism where none existed, discovering persecution in friendly but sincere query.

Now this marked characteristic is not to be put down as a serious failure of character without further comment. In greater or less measure it distinguishes most effective prophets with a vivid sense of personal mission. With them as with him, certainty of the rightness of one’s own ‘leading’ carries, as its corollary, a poor estimate of others, a quick intolerance of inquiry, a tendency to regard honest questioning as deliberate opposition. The line between personal ambition and passionate concern for God’s purposes is a narrow one. The same tremendous life energies flow out in two related channels. It is not easy to distinguish clearly between resentment at willful blocking of the Divine Cause and resentment at foiling of one’s own plans. And it is not easy to forgive criticism of self when one is so clearly the direct instrument of the Divine Purpose.

Moreover, as a practical tactic there is shrewd wisdom in never acknowledging weakness. So often, raising questions is a device for dodging the real issues. To consider criticism is to take up a defensive position and thus allow the critic to escape the positive truth of one’s own message. As a friendly but careful appraiser has wisely said, ‘Some antagonism comes from misunderstanding of and ignorance about the Movement; some opposition probably proceeds from jealousy that such vital results should be produced by a comparatively young group of workers; and much criticism undoubtedly comes from troubled consciences.’ Mr. Buchman’s sense for the failings of others is uniquely acute. Rare indeed is the honest soul who can face his exacting demands on life or the evident power of his influence for good without serious self-questioning. But there is a scriptural injunction about a ‘mote’ and a ‘beam.’ And the exigencies of ‘effective tactics’ may often furnish a subtle rationalization for personal pique or inner weakness.

In any event, the psychological factors at play are clear enough — a passionate, hypersensitive nature and an imperious will, with some native predisposition to suspicion, resentment, and self-pity, gifted far beyond the ordinary with insight, empowered far beyond the average by self-dedication, stirred to righteous impatience by evident half-heartedness and ineffectiveness, steeled in self-assurance by a mystic sanction of Divine Commission. ‘The marks of “Messianic-consciousness” and “martyr-complex,”’ a psychologist might suggest. ‘The inevitable weaknesses of a true prophet,’ supporters will affirm. In any event, here is the root of the self-righteousness, intolerance, ‘persecution-complex,’and spiritual pride of which the Oxford Group Movement is often accused.

2. No feature of the Oxford Group Movement so strikes the casual observer or furnishes such innocent merriment to friendly critics as its studious attention to position, title, and social prestige. No meeting is properly launched without its quota of patrons of rank and social standing. No reference to the work is typical without its listing of the important personages who have lately given their allegiance to it (or have expressed some friendly interest in it) — generals and bishops and M.P.’s and counts and baronets; or, failing these, sons and daughters, nephews and nieces, cousins and aunts, or friends of generals, bishops, M.P.’s, counts, and baronets. It is probable that no socially ambitious ecclesiastic of the most socially exclusive church ever made such habitual and unblushing employment of the names of the great, the near-great, the would-begreat, or the thought-to-be-great as the Oxford Group Movement.

Let it be said at once that this characteristic, likewise, proceeds directly from Mr. Buchman. All his life long he has paid an uncritical, almost childlike, deference to people of birth or social position, especially royalty or titled nobility. I suspect this is partly due to his own background; it is characteristic of many of humble but sterling birth to hold the socially élite in quite false reverence — a mistake not so easy for those more intimately acquainted with them. Partly it is the typical attitude of conservative German Lutheranism.

Closely related is the association of the work with comfortable, even luxurious living. It has long been Mr. Buchman’s principle to stop only at the most fashionable hotels, and usually to travel in first-cabin accommodations on the most expensive liners. He encourages the same practice in his associates. Some years ago several of them, heading for Europe for a summer of training with the Groups, had engaged second-class passage; they received peremptory instructions from Mr. Buchman himself to exchange for first-class tickets in order that they might be assured of significant contacts on shipboard! When, on the opening day of an important campaign in Aberdeen, Mr. Buchman suddenly received imperative ‘guidance’ to leave the mission and sail for South America, it was a matter of surprise to no one that the guidance had directed him to go and return on the ship by which the Prince of Wales happened to be traveling. Let it be added that, while it is not recorded what result was achieved with the Prince, the ship’s doctor was soundly converted and became one of the Movement’s most effective workers!

At first thought, one is inclined to dismiss all this as a very human weakness. It has exposed the work to not a little playful chiding, as in the case of an American, himself a man of great ability, who, when told of all the bigwigs who were to grace a certain meeting, inquired plaintively whether there was any possibility that he might find there one or two ordinary citizens like himself. Or in the gently barbed limerick: —

Sometimes it is difficult to take with seriousness a work which so completely falsifies the real values of life.

To be sure, all this is justified by Mr. Buchman in the certainty that his distinctive mission is to those of privilege and position, to the ‘up-and-outs.’ It is his deliberate strategy to reach ‘ key people,’ — those who set the pace and control the organization of our civilization, — in the faith that the influence will then filter down from the top until it touches the most obscure lives. But this raises serious doubts. For one thing, it suggests an employment of precisely the features of modern, high-pressure selling technique which are among the most repellent and unchristian features of our age. Again, it may open the door to very serious rationalization. It tempts, as we shall note in a moment, to a use of names and reputations which is not completely warranted by the facts. It tempts to a superficial analysis of the problems of poverty, injustice, and social struggle, a sentimental confidence in good intentions and personal holiness. It may tempt to a somewhat more lenient standard of devotion for those whose support is of strategic value.

Most of all, it is a little difficult to reconcile such philosophy and practice with the religion of One who came among men as a child of the peasantry and whose passionate solicitude was ever for the poor and the outcast. Nothing could be farther removed from the strategy and the faith of the Christian movement in its early outreach, which for its world-transforming influence trusted to ‘not many wise, not many mighty, not many noble.’ It invites the almost irresistible suspicion of rationalization. And that suspicion gains strength when we learn that, long before Mr. Buchman interpreted his mission as directed so exclusively to the top of the social scale, one of his favorite and oftrepeated epigrams was ‘ Good food and good Christianity go together.’ That, too, is a principle not easily adjusted to the genius and practice of the firstcentury Christianity which he was claiming to reproduce. In any event, here is the source of the social exclusiveness, the preoccupation with the externals of position, the indifference to social injustice, the blindness to the distinctive sins of privilege, which many find insuperable stumblingblocks in the Oxford Group Movement.

3. We come finally to a most sensitive point of inmost character which has been involved in the others. One of the four fundamental and inexorable ‘tests of Christian character’ demanded by Mr. Buchman is that of ‘absolute honesty.’ Many people question whether his work fully meets that exacting test.

Here again criticism must not permit itself to be unreasonable. It is a familiar trait of a consciousness convinced of the superlative importance of its own mission to see its accomplishments and those of its following through roseate glasses, and to undervalue the labor of others. Of Mr. Buchman’s disparagement of outsiders we have already spoken. There is a corresponding tendency, almost juvenile in its naivete, to see the virtues of his associates, the quality of their performance, and the significance of their achievements somewhat out of true perspective. This tendency pervades the entire Movement, but it is a contagion caught from Mr. Buchman’s own habitual attitude. It is clearly marked in the literary apologists, especially those with a natural bent for the inveterate exaggerations of journalism. (It is noteworthy that the Movement’s most striking expositions have come from the pens of professional journalists or advertising men.) Several of the characters in Harold Begbie’s Life Changers {More Twice-Born Men) would hardly be recognized by their own families, so heroic have become their proportions in his portraiture. A critical eye will catch a dozen misrepresentations or serious overstatements in a single chapter of For Sinners Only.

It is difficult to place the limit of excusable false impression. For example, the Movement still makes use of stories of ’changed lives ’ which long since severed active connection with its work, and in at least one instance of a remarkable life conversion whose final state was very close to its first. In the recountal of personal narratives which make up the great bulk of the spoken and written evangel, there is frequently heightened painting both of the gravity of pre-conversion vices and of the measure of post-conversion transformation. The same blindness obtains in the use of ‘guidance.’ In the course of a day I have heard Mr. Buchman report twenty or twenty-five instances of direct ‘guidance’ — predictions of definite events which God had told him were surely to occur. Perhaps a fourth or a fifth of them actually came to pass. They were triumphantly cited as vindications of the practice. The great bulk which at the end of the day remained unfulfilled were blithely ignored.

Generous allowance must be made for the very human exaggeration of a great enthusiasm. But exaggeration is a subtle and dangerous foe of the honest spirit. It is infectious and its contagion spreads rapidly through other chambers of the mind. All too readily imagination displaces fact; one believes true what one wants to believe. To exaggerate one’s own experiences is natural, if unfortunate. But to misrepresent the attitude of others touches more profound issues. Two instances will serve as illustration.

When in Oxford three years ago, I stopped in at a training house party of the Movement then in session and chanced to meet Mr. Buchman. ‘I

hear you are going to F—,’I said, mentioning a city where the Groups were soon to conduct a large mission. ‘Oh yes,’he said, ‘So-and-so [naming one of the most distinguished Christian leaders in Great Britain] wants us to bring a team there, so we’re going.’ Some months later, while visiting F—, I mentioned the conversation to Dr. So-and-so. I learned that, far from urging the Groups to come, he had been quite unfavorable to their plans; but, informed that they were coming willy-nilly, he had, with true Christian grace, urged his fellow clergy to lend sympathetic interest and had consented to chair an opening meeting.

Some years ago, when the work at Oxford was libeled by a college lampoon, several of the strongest college officials, moved by a sense of fair play, issued a public statement giving the true facts and exonerating the Movement from the more serious imputations. It was immediately heralded abroad that these officials were now active supporters when they had been at particular pains to make clear to the leaders of the Movement that such was not their attitude and that their statement must not be so interpreted.

These are illustrations which could be duplicated many times over.

In brief, a good word for the work, in the face of cruel slander, is represented as convinced support. Attendance at a meeting as a curious inquirer may forthwith be widely circulated so as to convey the impression of full membership. The vaguest expression of sympathy with the general objectives is quoted as though it were a declaration of complete approval.

Forthright and determined honesty of mind is one of the most difficult virtues. It is perhaps especially difficult for the religious spirit, always tempted to confuse dreams with realities, to mistake its intentions for achievements. Like all consummate qualities of character, it comes only ‘with prayer and fasting.’ It is born of a reverent passion for truth, and the exacting self-discipline which only that passion can beget. And it is sustained only in those souls whose central certainty is that, in the end of the day, truth alone prevails and endures — that is, in those who believe that God is Truth, as well as Love and Power. That certainty is a foundation stone of all true and profound and enduring religion.

VI

Many who are eager to understand the Oxford Group Movement might think we have drawn too great attention to Mr. Buchman. They are mistaken. It is his Movement. Quite naturally he dislikes the title ‘Buchmanism,’ partly because it is ugly, partly because it has become a nickname of derision. But there never was an initiator of a great religious awakening — Francis, Swedenborg, Wesley — who more deserved to have the movement take its name from him. There is not one single feature of this Movement by which it may be distinguished from conventional current Christianity which is not derived directly and wholly from the thought and practice of Mr. Buchman. There is not one feature of it to which men bring violent objection which is not part and parcel of the life and conviction of Mr. Buchman. Many men of maturity and eminence and force of character have joined themselves to the work with the frank purpose of modifying certain of its attitudes and methods which they regarded as unsound. They themselves have changed, always much more than they would have believed possible, often very much more than they themselves realize. The Movement has not changed an appreciable iota in any one of its fundamental characteristics.

Quietly, unobtrusively, without the slightest overt dictation or domination, Mr. Buchman continues to be the determinative focus of the Movement — one of the most extraordinary men in a period which may be distinguished in the annals of history as the Begetter of Great Leaders.¹

(The Atlantic will publish a second article by Professor Van Dusen appraising the Oxford Group Movement itself)