I find myself writing this article surrounded by packing cases in a house devoid of books and looking strangely barren and uninviting. We are moving house, not knowing where our future home is to be. But we all live all the time in a rapidly changing scene, often uncertain of our goals and doubtful of our destination.
In such a world, I ask myself, what are the essentials for which Moral Re-Armament stands? Does it stand for something eternal and basic in a society so easily bewitched by fashion and appearance?
As one who has never been a 'member' of MRA, but has cause to be grateful for the friendship of some who are or have been, I discern three features of the movement which remain of permanent value both for the Church and for society.
First, it has always stood for moral guidelines in the conduct of human affairs.
MRA has at least this in common with three great religious traditions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam. At a time when throughout the western world we are beginning to suffer the consequences of a false idea of 'liberation', we may be grateful to Frank Buchman and his followers for this emphasis.
The fact seems to be that 'liberation' can only be enjoyed within certain limits prescribed by the Creator of a law-abiding universe and the Author of a moral framework within which individuals and societies must learn to operate.
Of course this does not mean that we can offer simple answers to every moral problem, individual and corporate. But it does mean that we are under obligation to learn and to apply certain underlying principles for human conduct which may safely be deduced from scripture and tradition. There are absolutes of right and wrong, however difficult it may sometimes be to apply them.
Secondly - and no feature of MRA has provoked more criticism than this - its emphasis on the reality of divine guidance. Of course there have been excesses which have seemed to discredit the movement, where strong personal inclinations have been mistaken for the voice of God. But no serious student of the Bible could ignore the prominence of 'guidance' in the life of Israel and the life of the early Church.
The history of the people of God actually began, so we are told, with a mysterious intimation to Abraham, the father of all the faithful. On the strength of this intimation he went out, not knowing where he was intended to go.
The conversion of Saul of Tarsus and the beginning of the Gentile mission was initiated by God in a wholly unreasonable command, it seemed, to a humble believer in Damascus. Philip abandoned a promising mission in Samaria at the command of God and went into the desert where he encountered the Ethiopian official and so, tradition holds, founded the Church in Africa. St Paul, thwarted in his own plans, heard a voice calling him to Greece, and became the instrument of mission to the western world.
There is nothing intrinsically unlikely about God's guiding hand in the history of the world and in the private lives of individual Christians. In this respect MRA has stood, however imperfectly, for an important principle of faith. I have no doubt of divine guidance in my own life. I see no reason to doubt it in the lives of others.
The third feature of the life of MRA has been its commitment to mission. As Bishop of Liverpool I had cause to be grateful to those of its company who took seriously their mission to sectors of society which had proved highly resistant to the ministry of the mainline Church, for example the docks, the motor industry and civic life. They had the advantage of being able to react swiftly to opportunities of witness whilst so often the Church struggled ineffectively with long-term strategies which were overtaken by events before they could be implemented.
If mission is the essence of the Church, as the New Testament suggests, then it has to be said that little groups of devoted people have historically proved more effective than the cumbersome machinery of the great ecclesiastical institutions. I honour this commitment, and I believe that my own Church has a lot to learn from it.
Any dynamic religious movement will generate opposition in the world. We can take that for granted. But it is more difficult to account for the opposition and suspicion MRA continues to generate in the Church.
The politically-minded cannot forget Frank Buchman's seeming dalliance with totalitarian regimes (though that will have to be reconsidered in the light of Garth Lean's recent biography of him). Conventional churchmen have been suspicious of the presence within the movement of Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims. But the practice of interfaith services at the highest level may perhaps make that matter less contentious than it was. Some expert observers of the 'human condition' (priests, psychiatrists, counsellors) reacted strongly against the practice of detailed public confession, which was more marked in the earlier stages of the movement than it appears to be today.
But the more serious criticism is the apparent lack of what we might call 'theological control'. Distinguished theologians were amongst the earliest partisans of the Oxford Group, but often they seemed to leave their theology behind them in their enthusiasm for the new cause which they had embraced. It is this lack which perhaps makes some of the claims and assumptions of the movement seem facile and unconvincing to the outsider.
God forbid that MRA should ever lose anything of its fervour and enthusiasm but perhaps it needs men and women within it who know how to apply a sound theological critique to what is being said and done and believed. Given that kind of theological rigour, I can see a creative future for the movement both in the Church and in the world. So it is 'back to basics and on to glory'.
by Lord Stuart Blanch, Archbishop of York from 1975 to 1983.
English
