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Frank Buchman was born 58 years ago in Pennsburg of a Pennsylvania Dutch stilling family. He went to Muhlenberg College, Mt. Airy Theological Seminary, became a Lutheran pastor. Doing welfare work for Lutheran boys at Overbrook, Pa., he quarreled with trustees of his hospice, went to England with a bitter heart. In 1908 in a rural English chuch he says he had a stirring, heart-warming religious experience which set his life on a new course, revealed new spiritual powers to him. These new powers, enabling him to "probe souls" and "cleanse" by extracting confessions, earned him a shower undesirable publicity in the lively 1920's. It was then that Frank Buchman and his young co-workers invaded British and U. S. colleges, became famed as the religionists who held houseparties, consorted with the well-to-do, got people publicly to "share" their sins—misdeeds which turned out to be mostly sexual.
The Buchmanites also had a healthier side. They radiated good fellowship. The Founder laughed a great deal, sometimes signed his letters "Yours merrily, Frank," declared that the letters P-R-A-Y stood for Powerful Radiograms Always Yours. Without ever holding a salaried position, Frank Buchman all this time roamed the world sleeping in the homes of the rich or in luxury hotels. Said this Anglicized Pennsylvanian: "Why shouldn't we stay in 'posh' hotels? Isn't God a millionaire?''
At Home Abroad. Last autumn Frank Buchman held a swank revival meeting in Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House, featuring a prize European convert, President Carl J. Hambro of the Norwegian Storting (Parliament). Last winter he and some of his young men sunned themselves in Miami. An active Group headquarters is maintained at Manhattan's Calvary Episcopal Church (cable address: Apostolic). Not a few U. S. socialites have rallied to the faith of God the Millionaire to make the pleasurable discovery that if their servants were "changed," too, they became much more pleasant and effective. Nevertheless. Pennsylvania's Frank Buchman and his doctrine of Absolute Honesty, Purity, Unselfishness & Love seem to be more at home abroad.
Until a religion grows up, it is a cult. Buchmanism is about 20 years old, a mere infant in the range of religious history. It still rallies around one man and its methods are still highly unorthodox. For some reason, the Old World has so far been kinder than the New to the cultists of the Oxford Group. On the heels of the Ollerup meeting, a European author with a respectable following will publish next week the Group's first big literary apologia. Having tried smart fiction (Evensong), pacifism (Cry Havoc!) and horticulture (Down The Garden Path), elegant British Author Beverley Nichols has turned to the Oxford Group. "All I want," says he in his forthcoming The Fool Hath Said,* "is to get as many people as possible to share with me the excitement of living Christianity."