Frank Buchman - The Oxford Group

The Oxford Group

Buchman designed a strategy of holding “house parties” at various locations, during which he hoped for Christian commitment among those attending. In addition, men trained by Buchman began holding regular lunchtime meetings in the study of J Thornton-Duesbery, then Chaplain of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. By 1928 numbers had grown so large that the meetings moved to the ballroom of the Randolph Hotel, before being invited to use the library of the Oxford University Church, St Mary's.

In response to criticism by Tom Driberg in his first scoop in the Daily Express that this "strange new sect" involved members holding hands in a circle and publicly confessing their sins (a fabrication according to those who were there), the Express printed a statement by Canon L.W. Grensted, Chaplain and Fellow of University College and a university lecturer in psychology bearing "testimony not only to general sanity... but also to real effectiveness. Men whom I have known... have not only found a stronger faith and a new happiness, but have also made definite progress in the quality of their study, and in their athletics too."

In the summer of 1928 six of these Oxford men traveled, without Buchman, to South Africa where the press, at a loss how to describe this new religious movement, coined the term the "Oxford Group". Between 1931 and 1935, around 150 Oxford undergraduates were attending Oxford Group meetings every lunchtime. Paul Hodder-Williams, of the publishing firm Hodder and Stoughton, arranged for a regular column about the group to appear in the firm’s magazine, the British Weekly. In 1932 Hodder also published a book about the group: For Sinners Only by A.J. Russell, managing editor of the Sunday Express, which went through 17 editions in two years and was translated widely. During university vacations, teams from Oxford took part in campaigns in East London and other industrial areas. Meanwhile, the numbers attending "house parties" grew to several thousands.

Buchman traveled widely in Europe during the 1930s. With the rise of the Nazis he focused on Germany, holding house parties and meeting church leaders. In 1932 and again in 1933 he sought, unsuccessfully, to meet with Adolf Hitler, whom he hoped to convert. By 1934 the Oxford Group's activities in Germany was being spied on and prominent members interrogated, making effective work there increasingly difficult. In response, Buchman focused efforts on Scandinavia, believing that demonstrating a Christian revolution there would have a great impact in Germany. Accepting an invitation from Carl Hambro, he led a team to Norway in 1934. The Oslo daily Tidens Tegn commented in its Christmas edition "A handful of foreigners who neither knew our language, nor understood our ways and customs came to the country. A few days later the whole country was talking about God, and two months after the thirty foreigners arrived, the mental outlook of the whole country was definitely changed." In 1935 Bishop Berggrav of Tromsø said "what is now happening in Norway is the biggest spiritual movement since the reformation." Major splits between conservative and liberal factions in the church were healed, paving the way for more effective church opposition to Nazi rule during the war. A campaign in Denmark a year later had a similar impact. Speaking to the World Council of Churches in Evanston, USA in 1954, the Bishop of Copenhagen, Fuglsang-Damgaard, reported: "The visit of Frank Buchman to Denmark in 1935 was an historic experience in the story of the Danish Church. It will be written in letters of gold in the history of the Church and the nation."

Buchman attended the 1935 Nuremburg rally. In 1936 the Central Security Office of the Gestapo sent out a document warning that the Oxford Group was "a new and dangerous opponent of National Socialism". This was followed by a 126 page report in 1939 claiming that the Oxford Group was "the pacemaker of Anglo-American diplomacy" and that "the Group as a whole constitutes an attack upon the nationalism of the state.... It preaches revolution against the national state and has quite evidently become its Christian opponent."