"Personal Work"

Of ways of winning men to God there is no end. The Church Spiritual has been content down the ages to minister to men's souls; but the Church Militant--and sometimes Rampant--has dealt and deals by preference with corporeal man. The great brass founding city of Waterbury, Conn., is at present counting the spiritual cost or gain to its citizens of an onslaught made upon them by 55 college men and 15 college women: The Student Christian Mission: "An organization to produce producing Christians."

These young exponents of the Church Rampant were directed in their activities at Waterbury by four undergraduates prominent at Yale, Harvard, Princeton. Before commencing their campaign the 70 student evangelists assembled at Camp Hazen, near Waterbury, for a "wash out" or mutual confession of sin. During this process "a condition bordering on emotional frenzy" was generated, in the opinion of so experienced an observer as Mr. Ernest W. Mandeville, who last week began a series of articles on the Waterbury phenomenon in The Churchman. Finally, having "received guidance," made "complete surrender," and "washed out," the students entered Waterbury for a ten-day campaign.

A succession of students spoke in relays on nine prominent street corners. Local ministers cooperated, and such powerful speakers as Sherwood Eddy and Dean Charles R. Brown of the Yale Divinity School addressed mass meetings every evening. By day the students spent a portion of their time in private converse with prospective converts. By "washing out" themselves they endeavored to draw a reciprocal confession of sin from the person interviewed. As one student evangelist described his technique: "The people of Waterbury are interested in us as rotters. They are not interested in us as saints."

Soon the effects of this technique were felt. Converts "washed out" by scores. One student evangelist was removed to a hospital suffering from epileptic fits. The Rev. Herbert D. Gallaudet, minister of the Congregational Church of Waterbury, testified that he had seen the Savior while motoring near Bethany, Conn., had stopped his car, and "walked in the woods with Jesus." Finally, the student evangelists began a series of visits to the clergy of Waterbury, urged them to abandon their present technique and go personally among their flocks, confessing their sins and drawing "wash outs" from penitents. When the campaign ended, some $4,500 having been raised and spent, the press of Waterbury was not unanimous in praising the results attained.

Buchmanism. Educators recognized at once that the Waterbury Student Mission was a manifestation of a sect that has rooted itself spasmodically in U. S. colleges --Buchmanism. Mr. Frank N. D. Buchman was not at Waterbury, but was represented by Samuel Shoemaker, zealous disciple. Mr. Buchman is smooth, with a long intelligent nose, a hungry eye. He is to be seen from time to time traveling first class on the principal transatlantic liners. When at New Haven, or Princeton, or Cambridge, Mass., or Cambridge, Eng., he is persona grata among a group of serious-minded young men distinguished by their piety and their wealth. Like young Buchmanites, Mr. Buchman is a bachelor, though past 40. In what does his influence over them reside?

Briefly, the Buchman cult is distinguished from other forms of personal evangelism by its preoccupation with "washing out" from its members, by mutual confession, the strain of autoerotism.

The Buchman handbook, Soul Surgery, keynotes the slogan, "Woo, Win, Warn." There, personal workers read:

"Take nothing for granted. No matter how respectable a man may seem, be he clergyman or vestryman or Y. M. C. A. secretary, he may still stand in need of your moral surgery. . . .

"First, learn what is wrong with your prospective convert--either from gossip or local suspicion. There is some sin which is obstructing his free communion with God. Accuse him of the sin of which you suspect him. Then by confessing to him (man to man) your own former weaknesses you will elicit a full confession from him. . . . This is often the kind of drastic, spiritual operation which alone can prevent a superficial repentance and unreal conversion. In New York City, last winter, a university student leader came to talk with Mr. Buchman about entering the Christian ministry. . . . Mr. Buchman answered his questions on the ministry to the best of his ability, but still the man seemed unsatisfied. They had finished dinner with little accomplished, and Mr. Buchman then invited him to his room for further conversation. In time the student opened up a little more, and said: 'I'll tell you why I couldn't enter the ministry. I want my own way too much.' 'Isn't there anything else?' Mr. Buchman asked, and the student said: 'No.' Then Mr. Buchman was 'told what he should speak,'* as suspicion became conviction; and leaning forward he said earnestly to the man: 'Isn't your trouble . . . ?' The barrier of pride crumbled away, the man burst into tears, and a new beginning was made on a sure foundation, which transformed the young man into a genuine personal worker and decided finally his problems concerning the ministry."

A futher manifestation of Buchmanism is the "Buchman house party," a week-end gathering of young people of both sexes in the home of some wealthy convert at which strenuous efforts are made to "wash out" all present.

Significance. A very large proportion of Buchmanites pass without great harm through their "washing out" and forget the whole movement when--as in most cases--marriage removes the occasion for autoerotism. Buchmanism bursts in upon adolescent imaginations with the revelation that auto-sexualism is a deadly sin. The adolescent has not read Oskar Berger's Vorlesungen: "95% of young men and women occasionally practice auto-erotism"; or Havelock Ellis's Auto-Erotism: "There appears to be little reliable evidence to show that simple autoerotism in a well-born and healthy individual, can produce any evil results beyond slight functional disturbances, and these only when it is practiced in excess."

Naturally, the adolescent becomes pliant before the Buchmanite evangelist--perhaps the first person with whom the prospective convert has ever discussed his erotic life.

Of course, Buchmanites bring with them also the less corporeal aspects of the Christian message. In so far as they succeed--as often they do--in starting men on a spiritual life, other Christian workers praise Mr. Buchman and Buchmanites. But they are severely criticized by fellow-Christians in so far as they confuse Christianity with the treatment of one "sin" which, it is remarked, The Founder never mentioned.

*Buchmanese for "received Divine inspiration."