OXFORD GROUP MOVEMENT

Evening Star, Issue 21518, 16 September 1933, Page 3

OXFORD GROUP MOVEMENT

SPREADING INFLUENCE A former waster travelled 3,000 miles by cattle-boat and peeled half a ton of potatoes to pay his passage to attend a Group House Party at Oxford University. Another man gave up a sixty-guinea-a-week job in London, while still another worked his way 3,000 miles by tram and 3.000 by boat to attend the party. There, in tins ancient seat of learning, they met Oxford dons. , lthoc.es scholars, city councillors, doctors, professors, unemployed men. titled men and ladies, bishops and clergy, convicts, and generals—people Irom the four quarters of the globe, come to “ see and to bear ” the vital experiences which are said to have brought thousands out of the slough of despond or lives of wickedness into a vivid and compelling relationship with Christ. Nearly 300 of them were housed in and around Lady Margaret Hall, some in the mellowed old buildings of Wordsworth, Toynbee, and Lodge, surrounded by gardens carpeted with velvety grass, fragrant with roses and blazing flowerbeds. . ' Twelve years ago, when Dr Frank N D. Buchanan, who had founded the movement in a Pennsylvania college, visited Oxford, he was regarded with suspicion or open hostility, and his movement was looked upon as a “stunt” religion. The open confessions were bitterly criticised and ridiculed. Now his work is blessed by Church and University authorities, and from 4,000 to 5,000 people attended the several house parties. THE SPREAD OF THE MOVEMENT. The movement lias been carried back and forth across the United States, into Canada, into the British Isles, various European countries, and under the Southern Cross into Australia and South Africa. And everywhere, according to the reports of its cnthuiastic adherents, it has, resulted in a miraculous awakening. The ‘ British Weekly ’ gave the group parties at Oxford a" special supplement, in addition to much space in its regular columns, and they have received much studied attention from other newspapers, both secular and religious. In Canada bishops and clergy vied with each other to give their witness to the “ menu oi miracles “ served to them in the house parties and to the completeness of their thraldom to Christ. “ Perhaps not since Wesley has any now religious movement in this country caused more stir in all churches or aroused so many friends and enemies, supporters, and detractors, as this slid den spiritual phenomenon of the groups —this tremendously significant reaction of modern youth from the irreligion, sensualism and reckless abandon of the ‘ eat-drink-and-be-morry days ’ which succeeded the Armistice,” writes A. J. Russell in the London ' Methodist Recorder.’ Mr Russell is the author of ‘ For Sinners Only,’ the book of the Oxford groups, now in its fourteenth edition and being . translated into Chinese, Japanese, and many European languages. CHARACTER OF MEETINGS. The procedure at the meetings of these house parties includes “ quiet times,” during which members seek guidance from God; talks by the leaders and open confessions, in which the members empty their bosoms of the troubles and difficulties which have assailed them and the vices and sins which have held them in bondage. These open confessions have been criticised as pandering to vicious impulse and elemental weaknesses, but the contrary evidence of the groups is that complete candour unchains the confessor from his weakness and excites sympathetic aid from his follows. Morbidity and. introspection do not play much part, they say, in the confessions. Rather, it is a feeling of absolution tlinv follows. One of the visitors to the house party at Oxford was Donald Mackenzie, who had been sentenced to one to fourteen years in a California prison for using a worthless cheque. While in prison he read ‘ For Sinners Only,’ and was visited by members of the Buchmanite movement. Within a month lie is reported to have changed fifty lives, and he professed himself to lie sorry when he left prison. His place has been taken by a man serving a life term. Since his arrival in England Mackenzie is reported to have been instrumental in averting a divorce in a family of the English nobility. One of the house parties, wc read in the 1 Church of England Newspaper.' was attended by a Roman Catholic, an Anglo-Catholic priest, an unemployed man, a former suffragette, a Jewess, and an admiral, all bearing witness tithe power of the movement. The Jewess, “who bad recently found re lease in Christ.” said; “ When the Gen tiles become ’Christians, the Jews will follow.” Whole families, reports the ‘ British Weekly,’ came from California and Vancouver. Other's came from the Canadian prairie cities, from Eastern Canada and the United States. There, too. were a chaplain from Portugal, the head of the German Press in Geneva, and his wife, an official from the Socre tariat of the League of Nations, the joint proprietor of a leading daily newspaper in Denmark, the head of-a girls' school in Silesia, a general, .officers of the army and navy, all drawn together by the group's spirit of fellowship. TESTIMONY OF BENEFITS. The supplement to the ‘ British Weekly.’ is filled with recitals of the deep spiritual benefit received from the group movement. “Thousands of Canadians shared in the act of personal

international reconciliation last whiter following on a meeting between two Canadian airmen and a cousin of the German air aco who had wounded the one and had been finally brought down by the other during the Great War,” writes a witness. “ Communists and militant nationalists alike have testified to the release and increase of power which have followed from giving up hatred as a pjolitical motive. International idealists have found, in following the divine plan instead of their own, the solution of the doubts and discouragement caused by their previous failures. ’ Bishop J. I-i. Linton, of Persia, was “ struck with the way the Lord Jesus Christ was put right in the forefront. If sin was ruthlessly exposed, .it was exposed in the light of the Cross and in the presence of Jesus Christ.” Bishop Linton wrote down these words from one talk as an illustration: “It was only facing up to the Cross of Jesus Christ and what that Cross meant to Him and His precious Mood that life really began anew for me. and brought me to that point at which I began life anew.” From Professor L. W. Grenstcd. lecturer in psychology at Oxford, comes this testimony: “I have watched the movement closely. I have found that the quiet and unemotional openness of life which is lived by the members of the group gives them real stability.”