Moral Rearmament

Moral Rearmament was the last and largest of several religious movements founded by Frank Buchman (1878–1961), an American Lutheran minister and evangelist. Buchman began his career working with young people in the United States, Asia, and England, believing that he could change the world most effectively through converting influential college students. He organized his followers into small groups where participants could confess their sins and share their religious experiences in an intimate setting; members would then seek to convert others through one-onone evangelism. Buchman's followers listened for God's plans for their lives, and measured their behavior through a moral code centered on absolute honesty, purity, unselfishness, and love (the Four Absolutes). During the 1920s Buchman developed an international network of these small groups that became known as the Oxford Group Movement.

Starting in the 1930s, Buchman sought to apply this method to other relationships—within the family, between labor and management, and between countries. He believed that Western Christian democracies needed reinforcement in the face of materialism, communism, and unbelief. In 1938 he announced the campaign for Moral Rearmament (MRA), offering Christianity as an alternative to both communism and fascism. In the late 1930s MRA sought to prevent war by calling individuals on each side to confess their sins to the other and adhere to the Four Absolutes. During World War II it turned its energies to morale building, especially in industrial relations. MRA saw Christianity and communism as the world's two competing ideologies; during the Cold War it sought to defend the West, primarily by focusing on labor peace, strong families, and moral values. Through the 1950s the movement held international rallies and used the media skillfully; it achieved prominence by publicizing the involvement of world leaders, especially from the United States, the British Commonwealth, and Asia. Throughout its history MRA's critics accused it of being a cult or of ties to communist or fascist forces. Although they were groundless, these accusations limited MRA's world impact. The movement declined in the 1960s, partly because of a leadership vacuum after Buchman's death and partly because of the perceived irrelevance of its evangelical Christian worldview. The organization closed most of its offices in 1970, but the movement still has adherents.

Although little studied by scholars, the career of Moral Rearmament tells us a good deal about contemporary American religion. Buchman's small cell group, a departure from the large revival meetings characteristic of American evangelicalism, has become a model for evangelism, especially in the work of groups such as Campus Crusade for Christ. The model has also influenced modern popular psychology; Alcoholics Anonymous and other "twelve-step" recovery groups have their origin in this small-group work. MRA's involvement in world issues reflects the American Protestantism's tradition of looking to change the world. Unlike the social gospel movement of the early twentieth century, which focused on changing social and economic systems, however, MRA concentrated on changing the world through converting individuals. Its sophistication in using media and political contacts reveals the interconnections of religion and the social and political establishment.

See alsoCampus Crusade for Christ; Evangelical Christianity; Lutheranism; Twelve-Step Program.

Bibliography

Harris, Irving. The Breeze of the Spirit: Sam Shoemakerandthe Story of Faith-at-Work. 1978.

Lean, Garth. Frank Buchman: A Life. 1985.

Sack, Daniel. "Disastrous Disturbances: Buchmanism and Student Religious Life at Princeton, 1919–1935." Ph.D. diss., 1995.

Daniel Sack