THE GROUP MOVEMENT : A VALUATION II
By EBENEZER CUNNINGHAM.
HE recent work of the Oxford Group in Geneva THE on September 0th in the Salle de la Re- formation, the original home of the Assembly of the League of Nations. On September 23rd, a luncheon was given by Dr. Benesh, the President of the Assembly, to delegates of that Assembly and others to meet members of the Group team. At this luncheon two world move- ments met—the powers of the League in session, facing a decisive moment in history, and a movement of the spirit which has likewiie encircled the world, drawing in representatives of as many nations as send delegates to the League. Two Prime Ministers, five Foreign Ministers, twelve Cabinet Ministers, thirty-two ministers pleni- potentiary and many other representatives of the political Wisdom of the world sat down with a band of volunteers who claim the wisdom that God supplies to those who will listen for it. On the one band was the wisdom of the world, trembling lest its counsels should have to end in the resort to war, on the other the faith that human nature can be changed, that the old doctrine that man is Capable of redemption is still true and is being demon- strated in practice before our eyes. Vi ho are these people who claim that God is still ready to guide in world affairs as He has done in their own fives ? tons and undergraduates from Oxford and Cambridge, two or three admirals and generals, a young man from the Air Force spending his leave, school teachers giving part of their vacations, business men and women on such terms of confidence with their staff that they can leave their businesses without fear, a Swiss doctor with his wife and two daughters, a Cambridge mathematician with his Wife and their maid, a Russian ex-princess, a Burmese school teacher, a bishop from China, a hotel-keeper, a labour candidate and a British peer and so on. Row can this varied crowd work together ? There is a Miracle, a sign. In weeks spent together, with days beginning for most at 6 a.m. and often going on till after Midnight, these people move together in unbroken fellow- ship. A meeting of the team is a revelation, a committee of three hundred arranging plans on the basis of listening to God's guidance. As a mere way of running a com- mittee it is a lesson ; free speech for everyone yet no argument, hard thinking with readiness to surrender points of view, spontaneous humour, prompt dispatch of business. The secret lies in men and women who seek first the kingdom of God and who witness one and all that life has been made sane and whole, free from strain and full of adventure. There is something significant for today that this team is gathered from all round the globe : Burma, Canada, the United States, China, India, South Africa, most of the countries of Europe furnish links in a chain that girdles the earth. In every case the explanation is the same ; the old Words sin and forgiveness have a modern application. There are things in human nature which divide man from Ina. and man from God ; dishonesties, impurities, resent- nlents, coupled with fear and pride. These people all declare that they have been set free from such things, and that there is no problem in their life, of which they know, to which God's guidance does not give the anSwer. That answer is radical ; it goes to the root of the mischief in man's heart whence the troubles in society and nations derive.
In Switzerland, as in other countries, there is evidence of a moral and spiritual awakening which, as well as bringing new life to the churches, is raising up leadership adequate to modern problems and lifting public opinion to a new level. In welcoming the team, the President of the Swiss Confederation said that the answer to the world's dilemma lies in " The changing of lives through new spiritual power so strong that it reconciles dangerous conflicting forces and produces brotherly love and solidarity." " It is in attaining this goal," he added, " that the Oxford Group sees its task. Their next advance will take place on Swiss soil and will make a real con- tribution in reconciling the nations." Later, with other members of the SwisS Federal Council, the President twice received leaders of the team, and talked with them about the relation of the work of the Group to the problems of his country. The Group also met with the different Parliamentary leaders as well as the chiefs of various Cantonal and civic goVernments. In Geneva, the city's doctors Were invited by the President of their Association to meet with Swiss and other medical men of the Inter- national Team at a dinner presided over by one of the country's principal psychiatrists, Dr. Alphonse Macdcr of Zurich. Three hundred hoteliers came together to hear especially some of their own number who had found for themselves and their employees the effect of a new quality of life on their work. Meetings of unemployed, of heads and professors of the University, invitations to homes throughout the city, were all indicative of the immense popular interest, as were the public meetings themselves, which in one night overflowed the Cathedral of John Calvin and one of the largest halls. At the height of the Italo-Abyssinian crisis the Journal de Geneve gave four pages of its evening and morning editions to a special supplement dealing exclusively with the work of the Oxford Group.
Behind these public manifestations lies the real, work of the Group. A visitor to a hotel will notice many pairs of people in conversation. " The best group is a group of two," it is often said. All day members of the team are sharing with individuals the inner victories that have been given to them. That is the genius of the Group, to make known from concrete and undeniable first-hand experience what willing acceptance of God's gift to man has done for him. Most of this experience is naturally shared in private. A man speaks honestly to another for the first time about some problem that has been poisoning life, and then learns that even that thing may be 'sur- rendered and transformed into an experience of God's forgiveness. Those who share in this fellowship know and bear common witness to the discovery of personal life and social relationships straightened out and vitalised. This has been attained, not through emotional excitement but by the courageous searching out of hidden dishonesty, impurity, selfishness and resentment, through the facing of fears arid the stripping off of masks, man facing himself as he is in the light of Christ and then surrendering as much of himself as he knows to as much of God as he knows.
To one who has been much concerned with the trend of modern physics and its result on scientific thought it has become quite natural to describe the life which he has found in association with the Oxford Group as scientific living. Like science, it is based on the three principles of experiment, reason and illumination. Like science, it has a daring faith that, facing truth and the unknown honestly, it will never be let down ; and it makes the same scientific demand that its truth be known through experiment before it can be evaluated or understood. As action, reason and God's guidance are woven into a vital unity conviction is established. Considering the revolution in science Bavink has said : " Only one view is compatible with the new physics, a view that takes seriously St. Paul's words, ' in Him we live and move and have our being:' " So from this way and quality of life comes a new and living faith that God is, and a greater God than we have yet known. And the revelation of God is still in Christ, for the life begins in accepting Him and passes on into the fellowship of His sufferings and of His victory.
Political science discusses the relative claims of man and the State upon one another. The solution of the paradoxes comes when recognition is made of the fact that they both alike lie within the purposes of God. Sue!' recognition must be made in fact and in action, not is theory only. There is a new note of evangelism beginning to be heard in these days proclaiming that the only•stable revolution is a spiritual revolution. But proclamation i5 not enough. Revolution comes when enough people dare to act unitedly upon a conviction. The spiritual revolution proclaimed by the Group is one already being realised in the lives of its members. The solution of the world's present troubles depends oft two main factors, public opinion and. leadership.; and for each of these a liberated and independent judgement and activity are needed, freed from fear and the effects of mass psychology. Nothing but a working conviction of eternal principles can carry statesmen over the stumbling-blocks of present political values, and such a conviction endures when it is based in an inner certainty of life rooted in God and subject without any reserved areas to God's control.
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