The Spiritual Vision of Frank Buchman

Preface and Acknowledgments

PrefaCe and aCknowledgments I have long been interested in Frank Buchman and the movement he founded, known successively as the Oxford Group, Moral Re-Armament, and more recently Initiatives of Change. The reasons for this are partly academic. Buchman’s outreach into ecclesiastical, political, and industrial circles was remarkable, and he merits attention from anyone who wishes to understand how religious leaders and movements responded to the ideological battles of the mid-twentieth century. Yet there is no book that offers a scholarly synthesis and exploration of his main ideas, which seemed to me an important gap to try to fill. At one level Buchman and Russian intellectual history— the focus of much of my work hitherto—have little in common. Yet writing this book has meant more an expansion of perspective than a new departure. Much of my research on Russia has centered on how religious thinkers responded to the challenge of Marxism and the Soviet experiment. Looking at Buchman has allowed me to gain an American perspective on some of the same questions—although Buchman’s thinking was in a larger sense a spiritual response to the emergence of a global society and not just a response to communism. Yet the interest is also personal: my parents knew and worked with Buchman , and I myself am a trustee of the Oxford Group, a charitable trust originally set up in the United Kingdom in 1938 that supports the work he started. Initiatives of Change—a registered NGO with special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations—grew from Christian origins but is now made up of people from different religious traditions and sometimes without a defined faith. This has led to much internal debate about Buchman’s religious ideas and how he managed to hold together people from very different cultures. In this sense the nature of Buchman’s thinking is still a live issue for some. In addition, I sense that the connection Buchman made between spirituality and social change remains relevant to our own world, half a century after his death, and I wanted to examine more deeply the thinking that underpinned it. xii Preface and Acknowledgments I am indebted to a number of people for the research and writing of the book. My university department gave me time to write it and financial support for some of the expenses arising from the research. Colleagues and friends have helped me in a variety of ways, for example by sending helpful references, passing on ideas, or commenting on drafts of the manuscript. In this connection , I would particularly like to thank Colin Armstrong, Mike Brown, Anthony Craig, Grayson Ditchfield, Peter Everington, Tyler Flynn, Stefan Goebel, Eva Gundersen, Fleur Houston, Brian Kelly, Stanley Kiaer, Mary Lean, Justin Lewis-Anthony, Kenneth Noble, Bhavesh Patel, Ian Randall, Richard Ruffin, Daniel Sack, Don da Silva, Margaret Smith, Andrew Stallybrass, Peter Thwaites, David Turley, and Peter Vickers. Among those who knew Buchman personally, Jim Baynard-Smith, Ailsa Hamilton, Michael Henderson, Archie Mackenzie, Geoffrey Pugh, Michel Sentis, Pierre Spoerri, Gordon Wise, John Wood, and David Young passed on suggestions or commented on drafts. The Penn State University Press’s peer review process gave me valuable insights. I am grateful, too, to Anne Evans, the archivist for the Oxford Group in the United Kingdom, for helping me locate relevant material. I would also like to thank my wife, Laura, for her constant support during the writing process. ...