Thursday, August 7, 2025

It is the 7th of August 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

In July of 1934, the August American journal, The Atlantic, ran an article with a title guaranteed to grab my attention: “Apostle to the 20th Century”.

1934? Maybe a premature call, it couldn’t be Billy Graham or Pope John Paul II… Also curious was the author of the article, Henry P. Van Dusen, later the president of Union Theological Seminary, who seemed to be both fawning and critical of this “Apostle to the 20th Century,” Frank Buchman.

The Atlantic article claims that 20 years ago, an “unimpressive man” began his jeremiads against the optimism and self-satisfaction of the Western world. He was dismissed, but this was before WWI and the subsequent depression would show Buchman to be something of a prophet.

But let’s jump backwards to get to that point, and beyond, as Buchman would have other fans and critics.

Frank Buchman was born in 1878 in Pennsburg, Pennsylvania, to Sarah and Frank Sr. The Buchman family came to America from Switzerland in 1750, and the family had Lutheran roots. Young Frank was sent to school with the Schwenkfelders- a kind of ersatz Lutheran offshoot that had similarities to the local Quakers.

After his initial schooling with them, the family moved to Allentown, PA, so that he could attend a local high school. He was determined to become a minister and wanted to attend Princeton, but his family, with Lutheran roots, had him go to Muhlenberg College and then Mt. Airy Seminary. He graduated in 1902 and accepted a call to a small church in Overbrook.

He had attempted to blend pulpit and table fellowship with hostels and work opportunities for those down on their luck. He tried offering carpentry and sewing classes alongside Bible classes but was soon burnt out—he left his ministry in 1907 and went to Europe, where a chance encounter at the Keswick conference in England led him to seek bigger opportunities.

Having met John Mott of YMCA fame, Buchman would work with the YMCA at Penn State. Convinced that a national revival would originate from colleges and college students, he continued campus ministry while also seeking an international audience —he traveled in India, China, and Japan in the year leading up to and into the First World War.

Like many of his ministries, we observe a pattern emerging —initial excitement and growth are followed by leadership struggles at the top and a split. The Atlantic article notes that Buchman was a man of remarkable abilities, but also had an ego, which would cause him some difficulties.

He would travel back home, take a job at Hartford Seminary before starting the “First Century Fellowship” in 1921 that sought to convert influential individuals at prestigious schools to begin a worldwide revival. A group of these students from Oxford, traveling to South America, would be dubbed by the press “the Oxford Group” and thus would Buchman’s followers, when not called “Buchmanites,” take this moniker. [This is NOT the Oxford movement; those were the 19th century. Anglo Catholic tractarians.]

The Oxford Group was famous for its “house parties” (not at all what it sounds like) that were times of personal sharing and confession- it is often noted that Alcoholics Anonymous would develop out of this, and the 12 Steps mirror some of Buchman’s methods.

He was lauded and criticized in the church- the Archbishop of Canterbury praised him for bringing many to Christ, while the man just under him, the Bishop of Durham, accused Buchman of “megalomaniacal self-confidence”. One minister of parliament called him a “canting cheat” and the Archbishop of Vienna called him a “turning point in the history of ideas”.

Hastened by criticism inside the church Buchman would rebrand the First Century Fellowship as the MRA or Moral Re-Armament in 1938 which was quite a year to talk about re-arming (!?) they would be praised for their ecumenical peace initiatives in the wake of World War II and Buchman would twice receive votes for a Nobel peace prize because of his work in post-war Europe.

He never married, never had any children, and was known for his lavish lifestyle- to criticism of this, he would state that he needed to convert the elites of society and thus needed to travel in their circles.

Buchman’s “Moral Rearmament” would be renamed the “Initiatives of Change” in 2001. It is today a non-religious nonprofit that has a complicated history with Buchman, something Van Dusen suggested might be the case with his 1934 article of the man in the middle of his life- “An Apostle to the 20th Century,” or maybe, a man very much a product of the tumultuous century. Frank Buchman died on this day, the 7th of August in 1961. Born in 1878, he was 83 years old.

The Last word for today comes from Romans 9:

6 It is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all those descended from Israel are Israelites, 7 and not all of Abraham’s children are his descendants, but “it is through Isaac that descendants shall be named for you.” 8 This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as descendants

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 7th of August 2025, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man whose favorite house parties have Kid N’ Play- he is Christopher Gillespie. 

The show is written and read by a man, reminding you “Kid’ was the one with the really big high top fade, and Play was the other one, and they did that kick-step dance… I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.