Buchman at Newport

To the Rev. Dr. Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman, onetime Y. M. C. A. worker who founded the Oxford Group, a First Century Christian Fellowship, "God is a millionaire." Missing from headlines since their vast house-party at socialite Stockbridge, Mass, last June, the popular evangelist's team of disciples recently has been touring fashionable eastern resorts preaching spiritual placidity and divine guidance. Simultaneously last week they arrived back in the headlines and at the summer headquarters of U. S. millionaires: Newport, R. I.

Newport's pious Mrs. Aymar Johnson, wife of a Manhattan broker, daughter of a Manhattan realtor, granddaughter of two Episcopal ministers, had worked mightily preparing the way for the Oxford Groupers. By the time they reached the resort, Mrs. Lawrence Lewis Gillespie, whose daughter Eileen came within an ace of marrying John Jacob Astor III, had arranged a large reception for them. The godmother of Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Mrs. Henry Parish, put up one team member. The wife of the head of the Allerton Hotels system, Mrs. James Stewart Cushman, vice president of the World Y. W. C. A., put up Dr. Buchman. Other hostesses to the visiting Groupers included Mrs. Edward V. Hartford, sister-in-law of the Great Atlantic & Pacific grocers; Mrs. Sheldon Whitehouse, wife of the onetime U. S. Minister to Guatemala and Colombia; Countess Laszlo Szechenyi, who was Gladys Vanderbilt.

After many small groups had met for "quiet times," some 400 Groupers and friends congregated in Newport's Casino Theatre. There they viewed the First Century Christian Fellowship cinema Bridge Builders, later enjoyed a buffet supper, beamed, chatted in the ballroom of the Casino. Practically all were oldsters. The younger set had had their shindig the night before at a "White Elephant Bal Masque" at the Newport Country Club.

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