Author(s):
Nolte, Paul
|
Pierard, Richard
[German Version] I. Europe – II. North America
I. Europe Moral Re-Armament (MRA) emerged from an evangelistic movement founded in 1921 by F.N.D. Buchman (from 1929 known as the “Oxford Group”), that in 1938 renamed itself Moral Re-Armament. From England it spread in the 1920s and 1930s to the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland, Scandinavia (Den-¶ mark, Norway, Sweden), and to North America. It combined pietistic traditions with new fundamentalism (II, 2), and a striving for inner change of the human being through Christian resolve together with world-oriented political involvement in the crises of the 20th century. The ethical foundation of this “bridge” between inner experience of God and changing the world was formed by Buchman's four “absolutes”: honesty, purity, unselfishness, and love. MRA worked through personal networks, organized by so-called “teams” with their own plays, writings and seminars, operating from 1946 especially from its center in Caux (above Montreux, Switzerland, hence the alternative name “Caux Movement”). MRA flourished most of all in the cultural insecurity of the post-war years, the late 1940s and early 1950s. Ideologically it then stood in the area of tension between American influence in Western Europe, anti-Communism, and the fringe of cultural criticism, with its diagnosis of a general moral crisis. It influenced politicians such as Konrad Adenauer and Robert Schuman, and their project for Franco-German reconciliation; also, at times, the workers' movement (esp. in the Ruhr). From the late 1950s, particularly after Buchman's death in 1961 and that of his successor Peter Howard in 1965, MRA rapidly lost significance politically and within the church. This decline was accelerated by the formation of several break-away groups, including from 1957 that of the “Marburg Circle,” which with its evangelical return to inward-looking Christianity attempted to separate itself from MRA's outward-looking political program. However, since the 1950s MRA has extended its area of activity beyond Christian Europe and North America to other continents, cultures and religions (e.g. India, Japan, South Africa). The European movements main areas remain Western Europe and Scandinavia. In 2001, MRA changed its name to “Initiatives of Cha…