Background
Frank Buchman was born on June 4, 1878, Pennsburg, Pennsylvania, United States; son of a wholesale liquor salesman and restaurateur and a pious Lutheran mother.
Frank Buchman was born on June 4, 1878, Pennsburg, Pennsylvania, United States; son of a wholesale liquor salesman and restaurateur and a pious Lutheran mother.
He graduated from Muhlenberg College in 1899 (M. A. 1902; Honorary D. D. 1926) and later studied at Cambridge University (1921 - 1922).
From 1909 to 1916 he was secretary of the Y. M. C. A. at Pennsylvania State College.
In 1915 Buchman's YMCA work took him to India with evangelist Sherwood Eddy. There he met, briefly, Mahatma Gandhi (the first of many meetings), and became friends with Rabindranath Tagore and Amy Carmichael, founder of the Dohnavur Fellowship. Despite speaking to audiences of up to 60, 000, Buchman was critical of the large-scale approach, describing it as "like hunting rabbits with a brass band. " From February to August 1916 Buchman worked with the YMCA mission in China, returning to Pennsylvania due to the increasing illness of his father.
Buchman next took a part-time post at Hartford Theological Seminary. There he began to gather a group of men to assist in the conversion of China to Christianity. He was asked to lead missionary conferences at Kuling and Peitaiho, which he saw as an opportunity to train native Chinese leaders at a time when many missionaries held attitudes of white superiority. While still based at Hartford, Buchman spent much of his time traveling and forming groups of Christian students at Princeton University and Yale University, as well as Oxford.
In 1938, as nations were rearming for war, a Swedish socialist and Oxford Group member named Harry Blomberg, wrote of the need to re-arm morally. Buchman liked the term, and launched a campaign for Moral and Spiritual Re-Armament in east London.
Moral Re-Armament has always been a controversial organization, resulting from its strident anti-Communist positions as well as from Buchman's open admiration of Adolf Hitler.
Buchman's willingness to work with people of different religions without demand that they convert to Christianity was often a source of confusion and conflict with other Christians. He had several meetings over the years with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, whom he greatly respected. He also expressed the hope that Muslim countries should become "a belt of sanity to bind East and West and bring moral rebirth. "
In his work in British and American universities, he found that communism was a potent and attractive force. Though he did admire the boldness, and the passion for change, of communists, he believed that communism was inadequate because he found it to be built on moral relativism and militantly anti-God. Buchman believed that both fascism and communism had their roots in materialism.
Drawing on his experiences in Penn State and China, Buchman advocated personal work with individuals that would go deep enough to deal with root motives and desires. Asked on a ship to China how he helped individuals, Buchman replied with the "five C's:"
Confidence, Confession, Conviction, Conversion, Continuance.
Nothing could be done unless the other person had confidence in you, and knew that you could keep confidences. Confession meant getting honest about the real state of affairs behind the public persona. This would lead to a Conviction of sin – a desire to change, leading in turn to Conversion – a decision of the will to live God's way. He felt that the most neglected "C" was Continuance, the ongoing support of people who had decided to change.
Buchman never married.