[2][3] As a leader of the Moral Re-Armament, he was decorated by the French and German governments for his contributions to Franco-German reconciliation following the end of World War II.
On his return, he decided to establish a home for young people in need in Overbrook, along the lines of Friedrich von Bodelschwingh's colony of hospital farms and workshops for the mentally ill in Bielefeld and of Canon Barnett's Toynbee Hall.
Still in turmoil over his hospice resignation, Buchman attended the 1908 Keswick Convention in England hoping to meet the renowned Quaker-influenced, Baptist evangelist F. B. Meyer (1847–1929), who he believed might be able to help him.
Sam Shoemaker, a Princeton University graduate and one-time secretary of the Philadelphian Society who had met Buchman in China, became one of his leading American disciples.
In 1922, after a prolonged spell with students at the University of Cambridge, Buchman resigned his position at Hartford, and thereafter relied on gifts from patrons such as Margaret (née Thorne) Tjader.
In June 1924, shortly after arriving in Europe on the SS Paris, Buchman accepted an invitation to meet with King George II of Greece and his family in Italy.
In March 1926, American friends of Queen Marie living in Turkey suggested that Buchman should spend time with her at Cotroceni Palace, offering his services as both spiritual guide and confidant, and “spreading his kind, uniting atmosphere over us all”.
[15] Later in the year, as Buchman was preparing to return to the United States, he received a cable from Marie proposing that they travel to New York City together on the same boat, and on October 12, they set sail from France on the Leviathan.
During their time together on the voyage, Queen Marie expressed her wish to demonstrate publicly the debt she felt to Buchman, with Nicholas suggesting that a house party be arranged for that purpose.
A reception was organized to take place at the New York residence provided for Buchman’s stay, and he sent a cable stating, “Queen accepts tea twenty-fourth Ileana Nicholas accompany”.
[17] Queen Marie and her family were also facing challenges, pressured by their official host, William Nelson Cromwell, to cold shoulder Buchman, whom they considered a valued friend.
Part of Buchman’s reply stated, “What hope is there for royalty or anyone else but rebirth?… Can this 'still, small voice' be the deciding factor in political situations, such as face you in these days of crisis?… Let me say, with the utmost conviction, it is the only thing that will ….
By 1928, numbers had grown so large that the meetings moved to the ballroom of the Randolph Hotel, before being invited to use the library of the Oxford University church, St Mary's.
By 1934, the Oxford Group's activities in Germany were being spied on and prominent members interrogated, making effective work under Hitler's regime increasingly difficult.
The Oslo daily Tidens Tegn commented in its Christmas edition, "A handful of foreigners who neither knew our language, nor understood our ways and customs came to the country.
"[28] In 1938, as nations were rearming for World War II, a Swedish socialist and Oxford Group member named Harry Blomberg, wrote of the need to re-arm morally.
A play, You Can Defend America, based on an MRA booklet of the same name which called for "sound homes – teamwork in industry – a united nation", toured through 21 states and performed before more than a quarter of a million people.
[31] In Britain, novelist Daphne du Maurier wrote a best-selling book, which she titled Come Wind, Come Weather and dedicated to Buchman, telling stories of how ordinary people affected by MRA were facing up to wartime conditions.
After World War II, MRA played a significant role in enabling reconciliation between France and Germany, through its conferences in Caux and its work in the coal and steel industries of both countries.
Buchman was awarded the Croix de Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur by the French government, and also the German Grand Cross of the Order of Merit for this work.
The play, Freedom, was written within 48 hours and first performed at the Westminster Theatre a week later, before touring the world and being made into a full-length color film.
[41]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.
Swiss psychologist and author Paul Tournier said: "The whole development of group therapy in medicine cannot all be traced back to Frank [Buchman], but he historically personified that new beginning, ending a chapter of the purely rational and opening a new era when the emotional and irrational also were taken into account."
"[47] Yet according to his biographer, Garth Lean, Buchman would always give those at his gatherings, whatever their faith or lack of it, "the deepest Christian truths he knew, often centered round the story of how he himself had been washed clean from his hatreds by his experience of the Cross at Keswick and how Christ had become his nearest friend.
There, they recommended that the Party should make itself acquainted with MRA and "take the next step of its development by facing up to the moral standards of absolute honesty, purity, unselfishness, and love", supporting their contention with quotations from Marx and Engels.
In the UK, his critics included the Labour MP Tom Driberg, who wrote an influential critique, The Mystery of Moral Re-Armament, and the Bishop of Durham, Hensley Henson, who wrote of disgust at "the unscrupulous and even unwarrantable use made of well-known names, at the grotesque exaggeration of the advertisements, at the unseemly luxury and extravagance of the travelling teams, at the artificiality of the 'sharing', at the mystery of the finance, at the oracular despotism of 'Frank'. ...
[64] Gestapo documents released after the war showed that the Nazis believed that Buchman was working for British intelligence, and referred to the Oxford Group as "a new and dangerous opponent of National Socialism".
Critics charged that the "total honesty" encouraged at Oxford Group house parties really concentrated morbidly on sexual issues, particularly masturbation.
Wand, then dean of Oriel College and later Bishop of London who wrote, in the August 1930 issue of Theology: "One hears more of selfishness, pride, ill-will than anything else, and the charge that 'Buchmanism' is unduly concerned with sexual matters had better be dismissed as the merest nonsense.
[69] Klaus Bockmuehl, Professor of Theology and Ethics, Regent College, Vancouver and author of Listening to the God Who Speaks, wrote: "The genius of Moral Re-Armament is to bring the central spiritual substance of Christianity (which it often demonstrates in a fresher and more powerful way than do the Churches) in a secular and accessible form.