“All his life, Dr. Buchman has paid an uncritical, almost childish deference to people of birth or social position, especially royalty or titled nobility.”
– Henry P. Van Dusen, Union Theological Seminary
While Buchman yelled and screamed at his regular followers, he simply fawned over people of high status. He defended this behavior by arguing it was better to “change” (convert) a “big sinner” (a person of power and influence) than a small one. He promoted a top-down style of spiritual salvation, one that worked within existing systems of power, rather than seeking to dismantle them.
Wealthy Buchmanites were asked to contribute financially, either to Frank and the Group, or to the individual recruiter who secured their soul for Buchman. It was perfectly ordinary for an Oxford Groupist to wear fashionable clothing, dine in fine restaurants, stay at the finest hotel, and travel in first class accommodations, all without a traditional source of income. A supporter wrote the following about Buchman’s efforts to secure funding for his own lavish lifestyle.
One of the stiffest letters Frank permitted himself to write was to some persons who were refusing to support him in a certain courageous action for the help of someone in need. Frank said their refusal to extend the help where greatly needed might involve them in a crop of cares they did not foresee at the moment. But it was a friendly warning, nevertheless, free from pique and resentment. Never does Frank mince matters where his correspondents show blindness or compromise. If the man is living an undisciplined life, he tells him so in plain words. Fearless dealing with sin all the time. Honesty demands it. Spiritual growth is impossible without it.
Fifty or sixty letters a day are nothing to Frank. … After such a strenuous day, Frank admits to his mind being tired, … but he is still a human dynamo.
– For Sinners Only, A.J. Russell
“Where God guides, God provides!” Or so went the Group slogan. Indeed, as economies around the globe suffered from the New York Stock Market crash of 1929, and as a generation of European children were raised without fathers thanks to the death toll of the first world war, members of the Oxford Group led lives of refinement. Their opulence seemed incongruous with the teachings of Jesus, and the Group refused to donate any funds for charity. This led to objections from outsiders.
In her book Saints Run Mad, contemporary investigative journalist Marjorie Harrison detailed an example of Buchman’s defensive response to poverty.
At the last meeting of the House Party, held in the Grand Hotel at Eastbourne in December, 1933, a young girl stood up to testify to her surrender to God. She was an exceptional young woman, because she was one of the few people who did not use the opportunity to tell everyone about herself. She had the courage to beg a well-fed and well-dressed audience to consider the needs of the poor.
“When I see so many fur coats,” she said, “I cannot help thinking of all those who have no warm clothing in this bitter winter. I think we ought to consider whether we have the right to so many comforts when there are others who have so little.”
Up rose Dr. Buchman in his wrath. He seemed to resent the reminder. He appeared to take it as a personal affront. He valiantly defended his own fur coat.
“It was a hand-over,” he said. “Before you criticize, find out the history of these fur coats! There is no difference between the rich and the poor.”
– Marjorie Harrison, Saints Run Mad: A Criticism of the “Oxford” Group Movement
In a letter to a new Group recruit, one outsider cautioned him thus:
And if you talk about absolute love, do realise what it implies. Spell it out to the last letter. You see there’s no such thing as love in a vacuum, and you’ve always got to ask to whom the love is to be shown and how. … Now it’s there I’m afraid that there’s some unreality creeping into the Groups. I’m told that there’s a Group meets in the St. K.—– hotel in the West End — a rather “posh” sort of place. Well, every time I go up to town I have to go thro’ Bow and Bethnal Green, and some folk I know are doing a top-hole work down there, spending their time trying to get a little extra milk for tuberculous children, getting boots and shoes for them, trying to help folk to eke out their unemployment pay. Now when a Group leader in a boiled shirt starts talking in the hotel about absolute love, I can’t help thinking of it in the context of those other people and — God knows it’s not pernickety criticism — I can’t help wanting to know when he and the Groups are going to get busy on this business of absolute love. It’s sheer self-delusion to talk about absolute love when you spend as much on a dinner as would keep a child in Bethnal Green for a week, sometimes more.
– For Groupers Only; Being a Judgement concerning the Oxford Groups
Coming soon, a look at Buchman’s wealthy friends, particularly Nazis
Misandry Angie 