Moral Re-Armament
| Successor | Initiatives of Change |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1938 |
| Dissolved | 2001 |
|
Key people
|
Frank Buchman |
Moral Re-Armament (MRA) was an international moral and spiritual movement that, in 1938, developed from the American minister Frank Buchman's Oxford Group. Buchman headed MRA for 23 years until his death in 1961. In 2001 the movement was renamed Initiatives of Change.
In 1938 Europe was rearming militarily. Frank Buchman, who had been the driving force behind the Oxford Group, was convinced that military rearmament alone would not resolve the crisis. At a meeting of 3,000 in East Ham Town Hall, London, on 29 May 1938, he launched a campaign for Moral Re-Armament. "The crisis is fundamentally a moral one," he said. "The nations must re-arm morally. Moral recovery is essentially the forerunner of economic recovery. Moral recovery creates not crisis but confidence and unity in every phase of life."
The phrase caught the mood of the time, and many public figures in Britain spoke and wrote in support. British tennis star H. W. Austin edited the book Moral Rearmament (The Battle for Peace), which sold half a million copies.
There was a similar response in the United States. The Mayor of New York declared 7-14 May to be "MRA week', and 14,000 people came to Madison Square Garden on 14 May for the public launch. Three weeks later Constitution Hall in Washington was the site of another launch, to which 240 British Members of Parliament sent a message of support. And on 19 July 1939, 30,000 people attended the launch of Moral Re-Armament in the Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles.
Moral Re-Armament also became established in many countries of continental Europe, but was suppressed in all the countries occupied by Germany. In Norway and elsewhere MRA leaders were imprisoned. In 1945, during the Allied invasion of Europe a 126-page Gestapo report on Buchman, the Oxford Group and Moral Re-Armament was discovered. Die Oxfordgruppenbewegung denounces Dr Buchman and Moral Re-Armament for "uncompromisingly taking up a frontal position against National Socialism… It preaches revolution against the National State, and has quite evidently become its Christian opponent."
In 1940 the novelist Daphne du Maurier published Come Wind, Come Weather, stories of ordinary Britons who had found hope and new life through MRA. She dedicated it to "Frank Buchman, whose initial vision made possible the world of the living characters in these stories," and added, "What they are doing up and down the country in helping men and women solve their problems, and prepare them for whatever lies ahead, will prove to be of national importance in the days to come." The book sold 650,000 copies in Britain alone.
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