Buchmanism Time Magazine

Less Buchmanism

Buchmanism's recent disastrous decline in both Britain and America was highlighted this month when it lost both its U.S. headquarters and its chief U.S. exponent. Rector Samuel Moor Shoemaker of Manhattan's Calvary Episcopal Church did this double job by ousting the cult from his parish house and declaring that

after careful thought and prayer he himself had quit the movement because of his increasing misgivings.

Dr. Shoemaker's misgivings are not the first that have been felt about tony Evangelist Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman, who has led a series of hit-&-run house-party revivals, known successively as Buchmanism, A First Century Christian Fellowship, The Oxford Group and Moral Re-Armament (MRA). All have a free-&-easy panacea, best summed up in MRA's California drive last year: You don't join anything, you don't pay anything, the idea is that you begin living the MRA standards.

One of these standards, absolute honesty, British Humorist A. P. Herbert hoisted with devastating effect in the House of Commons last month by quoting Frank Buchman's varying entries in Who's Who between 1928 and 1939. Sample Buchman claim he riddled: studied at Cambridge University 1921-22. That debate was a Waterloo for Buchmanism. Its 172 followers in Parliament (the fruit of two years' intensive lobbying) were all set to protest Labor Minister Ernest Bevin's refusal to exempt the Group's lay evangelists from military service. When Herbert and Bevin got through, not one of the 172 cared to reply.

Since then, secessions from the Group have landslided in Britain. Example: Sir Patrick Joseph Henry Hannon, industrialist, member of Parliament, ardent Group sympathizer. Last week Sir Patrick derided Buchmanite claims to have settled three impending work stoppages in the Midlands by urging Buchmanite principles on management and labor. Sir Patrick investigated, decided that the trouble had been cured by sordid means like better pay and better hours.

In the U.S. Evangelist Buchman is losing followers not only through this recent setback in Britain but because many Buchmanites, including Dr. Shoemaker, now believe that he wants to form an independent sect. He has abandoned his onetime claim that Buchmanism simply makes Baptists better Baptists, Catholics better Catholics, etc. Result: he is rapidly losing the active churchmen he had in his ranks, recruiting few new members from the churches.

One tip-off on the Group's tobogganing is that publicity-wise Groupers, who for years not only welcomed but pursued the press, have lately avoided reporters like the plague both in Britain and the U.S. Evangelist Buchman, who is now trying to convert Maine to MRA, last week dodged correspondents everywhere he went. MRA has had little luck in Maine since its advent there last June. The general Down East reaction to its smooth, eupeptic preachers: What's the catch?

Monday, Jan. 04, 1943

Report on Buchmanism

For the first time in history, last week, a certain measure of clinical objectivity was brought to bear on the work of famed Evangelist Frank (Soul Surgeon) Buchman, founder of the movement variously known as The Oxford Group, A First Century Christian Fellowship and Moral Re-Armament (MRA).* An investigate tabulated the results of a questionnaire he had sent 92 men & women who had come into contact with Buchmanism an average of 18 years agowhose acquaintance with it is a little out of date but who have had the opportunity for a long-range view. The investigator: Walter H. Clark, a master at the Lenox School in Lenox, Mass., who is writing his Harvard Ph.D. thesis on Buchmanism. Findings:

¶Only 12% of those responding were still active in the movement.

¶The median family income of those questioned had been between $5-10,000, with 28% over $10,000. (Buchmanism aims at the up-&-outs.)

¶When asked Did the movement add anything to your intellectual equipment? 45% said no and only seven answered yes and at the same time supplied convincing illustration. One man declared that while he was a Buchmanite, thinking seemed to me atheism. Said another: I put my trust in guidance and failed my examinations.

¶Both those who had left Buchmanism and those who had stayed agreed that the chief benefit of their experience was an emotional release for the individual. Many, but not all, felt they had been on ah emotional spree which left them self-disgusted and often distrustful of all religion.

¶Opinion was divided as to the sexual effects of the experience. Of those answering, 59% said it had been beneficial.

²⁶⁶It is this heart-hunger for sympathy,for some one to take over our burdens, that has always made Romanism such a refuge (albeit a false one!); and is now making Buchmanism, commonly known as the “Oxford Movement,” such a deadly danger. The Romanist unloads the story of his sins and failures in the ready ear of his “father confessor”: while the Buckmanites gather in so-called “house parties,” and “share” their inner secrets with their deluded comrades. Both the Romanist and the Buchmanite feel a great sense of “relief,” after the confessions. Indeed, the Buchmanites make a great parade of testimonies of those whose lives have been “changed” through this process of “sharing.” Certainly! But John Bunyan, in the seventeenth century gave the right name to Buchmanism: “Changing Sins”;that is, exchanging one sin for another. It is not by unburdening my conscience to my fellow man, whether “priest” or friend, that peace with God, and eternal safety come; but by deep conviction of both my guilt and my helplessnessof my lost state; and revelation to me, by the Spirit, of the shed blood of Christ as my only refuge and hope,a Christ who bore God’s wrath against sin, and provided the only ground on which a holy God can deal with guilty man. Resting in God’s Word about His Son whom He raised from the dead, I have salvation. Salvation is not at all by “confession,”either to God or man; but by faith in the vicarious sacrifice of Christ. Even the thief on the cross made no “confession” of his sins, either to God or to Christ:for lo, Christ was just then bearing his guilt! and it was not by means of his confessing it that sin was put away, but by God’s placing it on Christ. Although this thief, in speaking to the impenitent one, recognizes his crimes in the words, “We suffer the due reward of our deeds”; yet he simply hands himself over to Christ as he is,“Lord, remember me”: and our Lord’s words are, “Today thou shalt be with Me in Paradise.” (By the way, friend, that thief not only did not “confess” his sins; but he never was baptized; he never “joined the church”; he never went to mass”; and he did not go to any “purgatory”; but he went straight to Paradise, that day! And, further, Mary the mother of Jesus was standing right there: but our Lord never mentions her to this thief! But says, “Today thou shalt be with Me.” What do you say to that! That thief is a perfect picture of you and me, as regards salvation!)