Moral Re-Armament

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Moral Re-Armament (MRA) was an international moral and spiritual movement that, in 1938, developed from American minister Frank Buchman's Oxford Group. Buchman headed MRA for 23 years until his death in 1961. In 2001, the movement was renamed Initiatives of Change.

History

Beginning

In 1922, Frank Buchman left his teaching position at the Hartford Seminary Foundation to pursue a ministry focused on individual spiritual transformation and global evangelism. His tenets focused on the 'Four Absolutes' which were absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love.<ref name="Time1">Template:Cite magazine</ref> This approach emphasized divine guidance, adherence to moral principles, and personal interaction as catalysts for change.

Buchman relocated his activities to Princeton University, where student discussions he organized included public confessions of sexual activities. The discussions generated controversy, resulting in university president John Hibben banning Buchman from campus.<ref name="Time1"/> He subsequently gained support at the University of Oxford in England, where the movement became known as the Oxford Group. The Oxford Group held increasingly popular conferences across multiple countries, attracting thousands of participants. These gatherings served as platforms to disseminate the group's philosophy.<ref name="Time1"/>

The Oxford Groupers or Buchmanites were rebranded in 1938 when Buchman launched Moral Re-Armament.<ref name="Time1"/> "The crisis is fundamentally a moral one," he said. "The nations must re-arm morally. Moral recovery is essentially the forerunner of economic recovery. Moral recovery creates not crisis but confidence and unity in every phase of life."<ref>Buchman, Frank N.D., Remaking the World (London, 1955), p. 46.</ref>

The phrase caught the mood of the time, and many public figures in Britain spoke and wrote in support. British tennis star H. W. Austin edited the book Moral Rearmament (The Battle for Peace), which sold half a million copies.<ref>Lean, Garth, Frank Buchman: A Life, p. 279.</ref> In 1940, the novelist Daphne du Maurier published Come Wind, Come Weather, stories of ordinary Britons who had found hope and new life through MRA. She dedicated it to "Frank Buchman, whose initial vision made possible the world of the living characters in these stories." The book sold 650,000 copies in Britain alone.<ref>Lean, p. 300.</ref>

World War II

When World War II started, many of those active in the campaign for Moral Re-Armament joined the Allied forces. MRA did try unsuccessfully to obtain exemptions from military service for its members.<ref name="MU">Template:Cite web</ref>

When MRA was established in the United States in 1941, it was considered by some to be an effective way to combat communism.<ref name="MU"/> Senator (later President) Harry Truman, Chair of the Senate's Truman Committee investigating war contracts, told a Washington press conference in 1943: "Suspicions, rivalries, apathy, greed lie behind most of the bottlenecks. This is where the Moral Re-Armament group comes in. Where others have stood back and criticized, they have rolled up their sleeves and gone to work."<ref>Lean, p. 324.</ref> Truman supported the work of the MRA throughout the war, with his longtime aid, John R. Steelman, stating the MRA "as the greatest single force in the nation for reconciliation."<ref name="columbia">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Truman supported the MRA-produced play "The Forgotten Factor", calling it "the most important play produced by the war."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Buchman and the MRA faced criticism for Buchman's pro-Nazism and antisemitic statement, "I thank heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler, who built a front-line of defense against the anti-Christ of Communism. My barber in London told me Hitler saved all 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."<ref name="Time2">Template:Cite news</ref> He continued, "But think what it would mean to the world if Hitler surrendered to God. Or Mussolini. Or any dictator. Through such a man God could control a nation overnight and solve every last, bewildering problem."<ref name="Time2"/> The quote caused the MRA to have problems recruiting members.<ref name="MU"/>

Buchman also supported a theocratic fascist state to defeat communism, "Spain has taught us what godless Communism will bring. 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."<ref name="Time2"/>

Post-war

When the war concluded, the MRA continued their mission on anti-communism and fighting moral evils in conjunction with their theological beliefs.<ref name="Time1"/><ref name="columbia"/>

In 1946, 50 Swiss families active in the work of MRA bought and restored a large, derelict hotel at Caux, Switzerland. This became a centre of European reconciliation, attended by thousands in the following years, including German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman.<ref>Lean, p. 382.</ref> Buchman was awarded the Croix de Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur by the French Government, and also the German Grand Cross of the Order of Merit.<ref>Edward Luttwak, "Franco-German Reconciliation: The Overlooked Role of the Moral Re-Armament Movement", in Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft, Douglas Johnston and Cynthia Sampson (editors), Oxford University Press, 1994.</ref> The historians Douglas Johnston and Cynthia Sampson described the work as an "important contribution to one of the greatest achievements in the entire record of modern statecraft: the astonishingly rapid Franco-German reconciliation after 1945."<ref>Johnston and Sampson, Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft, Oxford University Press, 1994.</ref>

In Britain, hundreds donated money for the purchase of the Westminster Theatre in London, as a living memorial to the men and women of Moral Re-Armament who had died in war service. Many servicemen gave their gratuities.<ref>Lean, p. 340.</ref> For the next 50 years, the theatre presented a host of plays and musicals. The theatre was successful, but the plays were biased toward the MRA's societal beliefs, which struggled to stay relevant through the decades.<ref>Template:Cite thesis</ref>

In France, the well-known existentialist Catholic philosopher Gabriel Marcel edited a book, Un Changement d'Espérance à la Rencontre du Réarmament Moral, which brings together the stories of a French socialist leader, a Brazilian docker, an African chief, a Buddhist abbot, a Canadian industrialist, and many others who found a new approach through MRA.<ref>Marcel, Gabriel ed. Un Changement d'Espérance à la Rencontre du Réarmament Moral, Librarie Plon, 1958.</ref> The English edition, published by Longman, was titled Fresh Hope for the World.

MRA began holding conferences on Mackinac Island, Michigan, in 1942, first at The Island House, rehabilitating it and much of the nearby grounds.<ref name="MU"/> They then purchased the abandoned Mission House hotel and adjacent property on the island's east end.<ref name="Time1"/><ref name="columbia"/> The lease was temporarily blocked by the Michigan Attorney General office, causing greater scrutiny of the organization before the deal was eventually passed.<ref name="MU"/> Between 1954 and 1960, they constructed an extensive training center there, including a theatre and a soundstage. The soundstage was used for the production of motion pictures, including The Crowning Experience, Voice of the Hurricane, and Decision at Midnight. In 1966, MRA deeded much of the property on the island to Mackinac College. The property later became Mission Point Resort, a summer resort hotel.<ref name="MU"/>

Global spread

In the 1950s and 1960s, MRA's work expanded across the globe. Buchman was a pioneer in multi-faith initiatives. As he said, "MRA is the good road of an ideology inspired by God upon which all can unite. Catholic, Jew and Protestant, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and Confucianist – all find they can change, where needed, and they can travel along this good road together."<ref>Buchman, Remaking the World, p. 166.</ref>

These ideas appealed to many in African and Asian countries, which were then moving towards independence from colonial rule. Leaders of these independence struggles have paid tribute to MRA for helping to bring about unity between groups in conflict, and for helping to ease the transition to independence. In 1956, King Mohammed V of Morocco sent a message to Buchman: "I thank you for all you have done for Morocco in the course of these last testing years. Moral Re-Armament must become for us Muslims as much an incentive as it is for you Christians and for all nations."<ref>Lean, p. 454.</ref> In 1960, Archbishop Makarios and Fazıl Küçük, President and vice-president of Cyprus, sent the first flag of Cyprus to Buchman, at Caux, in recognition of MRA's help in gaining the country independence.<ref>Lean, p. 524.</ref>

In 2001, the MRA movement changed its name to Initiatives of Change (IofC).<ref name="columbia"/>

Criticism

Buchman and the MRA faced criticism for his views on Hitler, Nazism, and fascism.<ref name="Time2"/><ref name="MU"/>

In 1951, the Catholic Church ordered its members not to join the MRA because it supported the heresy of illuminism.<ref name="MU"/> The organization was criticized by Radio Moscow Overseas Service for its anticommunist ideals, in November 1952 saying, "Moral Re-Armament supplants the inevitable class war by the 'permanent struggle between good and evil'," and "has the power to attract radical revolutionary minds."<ref>Lean, p. 418.</ref>

The MRA has been described as an "ineffective cult" with absolutes that were naïve, impossible to fulfill, and overly dependent on personal revelations.<ref name="MU"/><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Actress Glenn Close, whose parents were part of the movement, publicly called the organization a cult.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite AV media</ref>

In the media

The group is also mentioned in Raymond Chandler's book Farewell, My Lovely. A cop says to Philip Marlowe: "I think we gotta make this little world all over again. Now take Moral Rearmament. There you've got something. M. R. A. There you've got something, baby."<ref>Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely (Tower "Books in Wartime" Edition, 1944), p. 161</ref>

In the music video for Smile Empty Soul's 2003 single "Bottom of The Bottle," lead singer Sean Danielsen is seen wearing a T-shirt with the slogan "And God said unto thee, MRA."

In the 2006 Sue Grafton novel S is for Silence, one of the points of contention between two main characters is adherence to the principles of Moral Re-Armament. “I was the Moral Re-Armament princess,” Kathy says, reflecting on her teen years.

See also

References

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Further reading

  • Hofmann, Reto "The Conservative Imaginary: Moral Re-armament and the Internationalism of the Japanese Right, 1945–1962," Japan Forum, (1991) 33:1, 77–102, DOI:10.1080/09555803.2019.1646785
  • Lean, Garth. Frank Buchman - a life (Constable 1985) online
  • Mitcham, Chad J., 'Alan Thomas Griffith (1922–1998)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/griffith-allan-thomas-444
  • Whitley, Elizabeth, Wimbush, R.K. & Ross, Anthony, "Three Comments on Moral Re-armament in Scotland", in Thomson, David Cleghorn (ed.), Saltire Review, Vol. 6, No. 23, Winter 1961, The Saltire Society, Edinburgh, pp. 58 – 63.

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