.png)
Recent from talks
Moral Re-Armament
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Moral Re-Armament
Moral Re-Armament (MRA) was an international moral and spiritual movement that, in 1938, developed from 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 1922, Frank Buchman left his teaching position at the Hartford Seminary Foundation to pursue a ministry focused on individual spiritual transformation and global evangelism. His tenets focused on the 'Four Absolutes' which were absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love. This approach emphasized divine guidance, adherence to moral principles, and personal interaction as catalysts for change.
Buchman relocated his activities to Princeton University, where student discussions he organized included public confessions of sexual activities. The discussions generated controversy, resulting in university president John Hibben banning Buchman from campus. He subsequently gained support at the University of Oxford in England, where the movement became known as the Oxford Group. The Oxford Group held increasingly popular conferences across multiple countries, attracting thousands of participants. These gatherings served as platforms to disseminate the group's philosophy.
The Oxford Groupers or Buchmanites were rebranded in 1938 when Buchman launched 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 and abroad spoke and wrote in support, including ex-prime minister Stanley Baldwin, former US president Herbert Hoover, novelist Daphne du Maurier, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands and King Leopold III of Belgium. British tennis star H. W. Austin edited the book Moral Rearmament (The Battle for Peace), which sold half a million copies. In 1940, Daphne du Maurier, who despite her ambivalence about religion became attracted through Austin's influence to the movement's ideal of "unselfishness", published Come Wind, Come Weather, eleven "inspirational" tales of ordinary Britons who had found hope and new life through MRA. The booklet sold 650,000 copies in Britain alone (all 340,000 copies of the initial printing sold in two months during the Battle of Britain) and around one million copies are estimated to have been in circulation worldwide. Du Maurier dedicated it to "Frank Buchman, whose initial vision made possible the world of the living characters in these stories." She continued to campaign for MRA on radio broadcasts sent to America in 1941.
In June 1939, a national meeting for the launch of MRA in the United States was held at the Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. Its sponsors included Senator (later President) Harry Truman, Henry Ford, the mayor of New York City Fiorello La Guardia, Theodore Roosevelt Jr., Henry Morgenthau Sr., governor of New York Herbert H. Lehman, ex-governor of New York Al Smith, president of New York University Harry Woodburn Chase, soon-to-be Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, and five members of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's cabinet. The meeting received statements of support from ex-president Herbert Hoover, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, General John J. Pershing, French eugenicist Alexis Carrel, premier of New South Wales Bertram Stevens, future prime minister of South Africa D. F. Malan, the wife of the Dutch prime minister Hendrikus Colijn, and the parliamentary speakers from Bulgaria (Stoycho Moshanov), Estonia (Mihkel Pung), Norway (C. J. Hambro) and Switzerland (Henry Vallotton).
When World War II started, many of those active in the campaign for Moral Re-Armament joined the Allied forces. MRA did try unsuccessfully to obtain exemptions from military service for its members.
When MRA was established in the United States in 1941, it was considered by some to be an effective way to combat communism. Senator Harry Truman, Chair of the Senate's Truman Committee investigating war contracts, told a Washington press conference in 1943: "Suspicions, rivalries, apathy, greed lie behind most of the bottlenecks. This is where the Moral Re-Armament group comes in. Where others have stood back and criticized, they have rolled up their sleeves and gone to work." Truman supported the work of the MRA throughout the war, with his longtime aid, John R. Steelman, stating the MRA "as the greatest single force in the nation for reconciliation." Truman supported the MRA-produced play "The Forgotten Factor", calling it "the most important play produced by the war."
Hub AI
Moral Re-Armament AI simulator
(@Moral Re-Armament_simulator)
Moral Re-Armament
Moral Re-Armament (MRA) was an international moral and spiritual movement that, in 1938, developed from 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 1922, Frank Buchman left his teaching position at the Hartford Seminary Foundation to pursue a ministry focused on individual spiritual transformation and global evangelism. His tenets focused on the 'Four Absolutes' which were absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love. This approach emphasized divine guidance, adherence to moral principles, and personal interaction as catalysts for change.
Buchman relocated his activities to Princeton University, where student discussions he organized included public confessions of sexual activities. The discussions generated controversy, resulting in university president John Hibben banning Buchman from campus. He subsequently gained support at the University of Oxford in England, where the movement became known as the Oxford Group. The Oxford Group held increasingly popular conferences across multiple countries, attracting thousands of participants. These gatherings served as platforms to disseminate the group's philosophy.
The Oxford Groupers or Buchmanites were rebranded in 1938 when Buchman launched 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 and abroad spoke and wrote in support, including ex-prime minister Stanley Baldwin, former US president Herbert Hoover, novelist Daphne du Maurier, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands and King Leopold III of Belgium. British tennis star H. W. Austin edited the book Moral Rearmament (The Battle for Peace), which sold half a million copies. In 1940, Daphne du Maurier, who despite her ambivalence about religion became attracted through Austin's influence to the movement's ideal of "unselfishness", published Come Wind, Come Weather, eleven "inspirational" tales of ordinary Britons who had found hope and new life through MRA. The booklet sold 650,000 copies in Britain alone (all 340,000 copies of the initial printing sold in two months during the Battle of Britain) and around one million copies are estimated to have been in circulation worldwide. Du Maurier dedicated it to "Frank Buchman, whose initial vision made possible the world of the living characters in these stories." She continued to campaign for MRA on radio broadcasts sent to America in 1941.
In June 1939, a national meeting for the launch of MRA in the United States was held at the Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. Its sponsors included Senator (later President) Harry Truman, Henry Ford, the mayor of New York City Fiorello La Guardia, Theodore Roosevelt Jr., Henry Morgenthau Sr., governor of New York Herbert H. Lehman, ex-governor of New York Al Smith, president of New York University Harry Woodburn Chase, soon-to-be Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, and five members of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's cabinet. The meeting received statements of support from ex-president Herbert Hoover, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, General John J. Pershing, French eugenicist Alexis Carrel, premier of New South Wales Bertram Stevens, future prime minister of South Africa D. F. Malan, the wife of the Dutch prime minister Hendrikus Colijn, and the parliamentary speakers from Bulgaria (Stoycho Moshanov), Estonia (Mihkel Pung), Norway (C. J. Hambro) and Switzerland (Henry Vallotton).
When World War II started, many of those active in the campaign for Moral Re-Armament joined the Allied forces. MRA did try unsuccessfully to obtain exemptions from military service for its members.
When MRA was established in the United States in 1941, it was considered by some to be an effective way to combat communism. Senator Harry Truman, Chair of the Senate's Truman Committee investigating war contracts, told a Washington press conference in 1943: "Suspicions, rivalries, apathy, greed lie behind most of the bottlenecks. This is where the Moral Re-Armament group comes in. Where others have stood back and criticized, they have rolled up their sleeves and gone to work." Truman supported the work of the MRA throughout the war, with his longtime aid, John R. Steelman, stating the MRA "as the greatest single force in the nation for reconciliation." Truman supported the MRA-produced play "The Forgotten Factor", calling it "the most important play produced by the war."
Recent media