Confessions at Caux

During the war, Dr. Frank ("Soul Surgeon") Buchman and his bright-eyed disciples of Moral Re-Armament concentrated on the U.S. Last spring they bounced back across the Atlantic, to set about "changing" Europe (TIME, May 13) with their "ABSOLUTE HONESTY, ABSOLUTE PURITY, ABSOLUTE UNSELFISHNESS AND ABSOLUTE LOVE."

As usual, there seemed to be no worry about paying the check. From anonymous sources came $528,000 to buy London's topnotch Westminster Theater for Buchmanite theatricals. And as a continental HQ, the Group acquired (for $250,000) the sumptuous, turreted Palace Hotel in the Swiss resort town of Caux, high above Lake Geneva. Renaming it "Mountain House," the Buchmanites moved in last summer and say they have kept it filled to its 700-person capacity ever since.

U.S. Journalist Robert Root recently visited Mountain House, wrote his impressions for last week's Christian Century. Excerpts:

"Entering the lobby I noticed displays of two books, That Man Frank Buchman and Ideas Have Legs, both by one Peter Howard. Near by were posted photographs of scenes from Oxford propaganda plays. One showed a merry group of people standing beside an immense cardboard barometer. They were registering CHANGE, the magic word of M.R.A. The head of the M.R.A. ten-man press corps came forward to meet me--a tall, eager, black-browed Englishman, Author Howard himself. . . .

"Howard proudly insisted that this movement stands 'above party, class, race, or viewpoint'. . . . He sounded the usual warning against Communism. The M.R.A. classless society is the answer to the class struggle, he said; Communists see this, and that is why they malign the movement. ... I asked whether Buchman hadn't endorsed Hitler. Howard admitted that he once, naively, had endorsed the German Fuehrer. But he emphasized M.R.A.'s record during the resistance and told me of a secret Gestapo document, 126 pages long, which condemns M.R.A. as being 'a Christian garment to world democratic aims. . . .' "*

No Letup. "I attended the afternoon program, which was conducted by people from the Welsh mining district. ... A department manager of a major English steel company confessed how he had decided he must change, and how the union men also changed when he told them he was sorry for his past dictatorial attitude. He was followed by a union organizer from the same department, who testified that he had been a militant Communist for 28 years and had thought it 'a capitalist, stunt' when the manager faced him with kindness, but had been changed by the power of the manager's spirit. . . . I noticed that none of them made mention of ... Christian doctrine.

"The program ended with the truly professional singing of a snappy M.R.A. international mixed chorus. All around me were people smiling pleasantly, and one thought of words like inspired, intent, open-faced, solid, energetic, enthusiastic.

". . . After dinner the house guests collected in the big baroque hall to see a very reasonable facsimile of professional theater. . . . Then came a pep talk in Howard's English accents. . . . He warned that M.R.A. is 'no rosy glow of cosy revival' but 'costly revolution and colossal renaissance,' and illustrated the point by saying that his own change had compelled him to apologize to his younger brother for past meannesses.

"On Sunday morning the religious service started with a Swiss hymn. Howard stepped things up with a nice little talk, full of comforting variations on themes now becoming familiar to me. Then the confessions were resumed where they had broken off the day before. . . .

Teamwork & Absolute Love. "This service pointed up some of the weaknesses in the postwar version of the Oxford movement.* The first public confession can be stirring, but the tenth is likely to strike one as the same old thing. And the fatal suspicion arises that confessions are made not through humility but to persuade. They sound a little too much coached, perfected to the point where they seem artificial. ... At the same time, I found more good at Caux than critics had led me to expect. M.R.A. has cut away the theological language which repels the layman. If it falls into the inanities and dangers of mass propaganda, it does appreciate the need of using words that people can understand and respect. . . ."

* Though Buchmanites claim that this document was picked up by the British Army, the War Office has no record of it. The Buchmanite rebuttal: it was sent to the U.S. shortly after its seizure, is now in the possession of the U.S. War Department and was made available to them by U.S. "officials."

*A slip of the pen made invitingly easy by the Buchmanites, who also call themselves the Oxford Group. The real Oxford Movement took place in the mid-19th Century in the Church of England, is associated with John Henry (later Cardinal) Newman, John Keble and Edward Pusey, whose Tracts for the Times urged return to Catholic teachings and practices.

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