What
Is Buchmanism?
© 1998 by Gaetano
Salomone, M.A./M.Div.
"Buchmanism"
is the name for a little known and long forgotten Christian nondenominational,
evangelical movement of the early part of the this century started
by an ex-Lutheran missionary preacher named Frank Nathan Daniel
Buchman (1878-1961). That particular name for the movement was
coined by outsiders who sought to describe Buchman's programme
for Christian renewal, which underwent a number of significant
name changes as it developed over time. Known initially as "The
First Century Christian Fellowship," or simply as "The
Fellowship," it later came to be known variously as "The
Oxford Group," "The Group Movement," or "Groupism,"
and ultimately "Moral Re-Armament" a name which
it retains to this day.
Few have heard of Buchmanism, but in its heyday it was a rather
well known revivalist phenomenon that grew over the years into
a large, international network similar to modern, televangelist
ministries. The historical importance of Buchman's movement is
its being the direct and immediate progenitor of the modern 12-Step
Recovery programs, which adapted most of Buchman's theology in
streamlined form. Both Bill Wilson and Bob Smith, the co-founders
of A.A., were bona-fide members of Groupism and actively incorporated
major elements of Buchman's thinking into the 12-Steps. A.A.'s
"Big Book" is, in fact, a perfect example of Buchmanite
devotional/testimonial literature.
Buchman had a German-pietist upbringing in Pennsylvania Dutch
Country during Victorian America. As a conservative Christian,
he was destined to unite a number of popular, mystical tendencies
in the Protestantism of his day. The turning point in his life
came after a 1908 trip to England where he attended the Keswich
Holiness Conferences, which were the Continental counterpart
to the American National Holiness Association; the direct
and immediate precursor of American Pentecostalism. Buchman had
a profound spiritual awakening in a local, Salvation Army chapel
while attending those meetings, where he had a mystical identification
with the crucified Christ, which he saw as a literal vision of
Jesus hanging on the cross.
Buchman's ministry thereafter became more global as he decided
to make the Christian message palatable to the modern mind by
softening the traditional emphasis on submission to Christ and
broadening the doctrinal requirements for salvation and sanctification.
Through what came to be known as "house parties," which
began as home-based gatherings and eventually expanded into mass-rallies,
Buchman invited individuals to publicly confess their sins and
submit their wills to God's "guidance," or "God-control."
This was an expression of the Protestant principle of "the
priesthood of all believers," where people would share their
misdeeds with one another in a group setting without priests
or ministers.
Participants in the Group were instructed in how to receive direct
messages from God and spiritual strength to live out the ethical
demands of Absolute Purity, Absolute Honesty, Absolute Unselfishness
and Absolute Love. These four attributes were Buchman's distillation
of the "Sermon on the Mount" (Matthew 5-7), which he adapted
from earlier evangelicals who wanted to get back to the original
teachings of Jesus. Buchman mixed these ideas along with those
of other progressive evangelicals who sought to reconcile spiritual
experience with the secular world and thereby lend fundamentalist
agendas an air of scientific authority.
Buchman's crusade was understood as a revitalization of essential
Christianity; his "Five C's" of "Confidence,
Conviction, Confession, Conversion and Continuance" representing
the stages individuals would undergo as they were inducted into
the Oxford Group. Through a process known as "personal evangelism,"
a so-called "life changer" would first win the confidence
of a potential convert, who was led to feel conviction,
or guilt, over sin and constrained to confess their wrongs
to the "soul-surgeon," or the Group. Christians and
non-Christians alike were thus coaxed into a moralistic conversion
to God and taught how to hear His will for their lives, being
admonished to continue in their newly found faith by sharing
it with others.
The Oxford Group underwent a major scandal when Buchman told
a reporter that, in his view, a "God-controlled" fascist
dictator like Hitler would be able to transform the world. The
name change to Moral Re-Armament was a damage control tactic
after the Group movement was discredited in the press and the
church world. Buchman's MRA became a Christian theocracy movement
based on absolutist thinking that has been filtered into American
society through the Anonymous movements which went their separate
way after Buchmanism became more politically-oriented and high-profile.
Many business leaders along with state and local officials have
been supporters of Moral Re-Armament. With international headquarters
near Geneva and domestic offices in Washington DC, the MRA still
exists as a right-wing nationalist organization which seeks to
instill its version of Christian values on a community, national
and international scale. While it is unknown what the MRA's current
association is with AA, the ideological similarity of the two
movements is historically undeniable, regardless of Steppism's
blatant lie that it is itself a "spirituality" rather
than a bona-fide religion with evangelical roots.
Similar ideas and practices as that of the Oxford Group/MRA came
to be embodied in 12-Step groups, where "sponsors"
tutor newcomers personally into the programs. What Bill Wilson
and Bob Smith did was further universalize Buchmanism while simultaneously
focusing its tenets and methods to help problem drinkers. Instead
of speaking about God directly, people were taught to develop
a trust in a general "Higher Power" of their own choosing,
which has come to be equated with the "group conscience"
of the gathered recoverees.
What is interesting about Wilson's innovation is that it still
retained the same pattern of sin and redemption found in Christian
holiness theology. The "moral inventories" of the Step
groups mimic the self-examination practices of the Oxford Group.
"Sinfulness" was reinterpreted as "powerlessness"
over various addictions, and confession of sin came to be known
as admitting to "defects of character." The evangelical
origins of the Steps is also discernible in the Eleventh and
Twelfth Steps where individuals pray for guidance and pledge
to spread the message of their spiritual renewal to others in
need.
If Buchmanism was something of a Christian heresy, A.A. was a
heresy of Buchmanism. Wilson's spiritual awakening was, in fact,
far more "psychedelic" than Buchman's in that Wilson
overcame his drinking after tripping out on belladonna. Wilson
thereafter had a voracious interest in all things spiritual
from seances and oija boards to Jungian psychology and
LSD. While the open-ended religious emphasis of the 12-Step groups
have drawn spiritual seekers from a variety of traditions, the
fundamentalist underpinnings of 12-Step philosophy have been
criticized by secular recovery programs like Rational Recovery.
The progression from classical, Christian evangelicalism to Buchmanism
to Steppism is probably one of the least known facts of American
religious history a curious phenomenon given the scope
and provenance of the Recovery movement. Because of A.A.'s roots
in the Oxford Group, it would not be an exaggeration to classify
all the 12-Step groups patterned after the original program as
various forms of neo-Buchmanism. As such, they are the
largest and most successful Christian/New-Age movements in the
U.S. today, but have no place in public rehabs without violating
the separation of church and state.
Sources
Dick B., Turning Point: A History of Early AA's Spiritual Roots and Successes (Maui, HI: Paradise Research Publications, 1997);
Frank Buchman, Remaking the World: The Speeches of Frank N. D. Buchman (London: Blandford Press, 1961);
Charles Bufe, Alcoholics Anonymous: Cult or Cure? (San Francisco: See Sharp Press, 1997);
Walter Houston Clark, The Oxford Group: Its History and Significance (New York: Bookman & Associates, 1951);
Tom Driberg, The Mystery of Moral Re-Armament: A Study of Frank Buchman and His Movement (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1964);
Allan W. Eister, Drawing Room Conversion: A Sociological Account of the Oxford Group Movement (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1950);
Irving Harris, The Breeze of the Spirit: Sam Shoemaker and the Story of Faith at Work (New York: Seabury Press, 1978);
Ernest Kurtz, Not God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous (Center City, Minnesota: Hazelden Educational Services, 1979);
Garth Lean, On the Tail of a Comet: The Life of Frank Buchman (Colorodo Springs, CO: Helmers & Howard, 1988);
Pass It On: The Story of Bill Wilson and How the A.A. Message Reached the World, (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, 1984;
Bill Pittmann, A.A. The Way it Began, (Seattle, WA: Glen Abby Books, 1988);
Ken Ragge, The Real AA (See Sharp Press, 1997);
Bill Wilson, Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism, 3rd ed. (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World services, 1976).
Gaetano Salomone, "The
Secular Holiness Revival: A New and Improved Fundamentalism,"
Journal of Rational Recovery 6:1 (1993): 17-19;
"The
Roots of the Modern Recovery Movement in Christian Holiness Revivalism,"
6:1 (1993): 20-2;
"The Fellowship of the Steps: The Recovery
Movement as a New World Religion," 6:2 (1993): 13-17;
"Calvinist
and Arminian Aspects of Recovery Theology: Further Notes on the
Holiness Revivalism of the 12-Steps," 6:4 (1994): 11-17;
"Corrections, Additions and Disclaimers," 6:5 (1994):
12, 14;
"Yogic Buchmanism and the 12-Step Revisionists,"
6:6 (1994): 17-19;
"12-Step Recovery and Evangelical Christianity:
An Historical and Theological Assessment (I/II)," 7:1 (1994):
24-7; 7:2 (1994): 23-27;
"The Varieties of Steppism: A Critical
Overview of the Recovery Movement (I/II)," 7:3 (1995): 21-3;
7:4 (1995): 24-7;
"The Mythology of Stepcraft: A History
of Religions Approach (I/II)," 8:4 (1996): 9-12; 8:5 (1996):
24-6;
"Truman, Nixon and the MRA: Forgotten Sources of Recovery
Ideology?" JRR 9:1 (Sep.-Oct. 1996): 19-23;
"'The
True Democracy': AA, God-Control and the Christian Theocracy
Movement," 9:5 (1997): 13-14;
"Surfing the Net on the
MRA: The Hidden Agendas Influencing 12-Step Politics," 9:6
(1997): 13-17;
"12-Step Meta-Theology Comes of Age: John
C. Mellon's Mark as Recovery Story and the Bastardization
of Biblical Exegesis (I/II)," 10:1(1997): 21-7;
10:2 (1997): 21-7;
Gaetano Salomone and Jack Trimpey, "
Five
Postulates of Pastoral Concern Regarding the 12-Step Recovery
Movement," 10:2 (November-December 1997): 20;
"
Is the 12-Step Movement a Cult?" 10:5 (May-June 1998): 28-31;
"
The Illegality of the 12-Step Religion: AA's Violations
of the First Amendment,"