It featured surrender to Jesus Christ by sharing with others how lives had been changed in the pursuit of four moral absolutes: honesty, purity, unselfishness, and love.
Two years later, Archbishop of York William Temple paid tribute to The Oxford Groups "which are being used to demonstrate the power of God to change lives and give to personal witness its place in true discipleship".
[1] Frank Buchman, originally a Lutheran, was deeply influenced by the Higher Life movement whose strongest contribution to evangelism in Britain was the Keswick Convention.
Meyer was not present, and Frank Buchman chose to attend the sermon by Jessie Penn-Lewis instead, which became "a life-changing experience" for him[1]: 30 "I thought of those six men back in Philadelphia (the hospice's board) who I felt had wronged me.
It produced in me a vibrant feeling, as though a strong current of life had suddenly been poured into me and afterwards a dazed sense of a great spiritual shaking-up.
[8] Another assertion was "Absolute moral standards belong by Holiness", even though this formula used by Buchman had been formulated by the American Presbyterian missionary Robert Elliott Speer.
Buchman's devotion to "personal evangelism", and his skill at re-framing the Christian message in contemporary terms, were admired by campus ministry leaders.
[12] From February to August 1916 Buchman worked with the YMCA mission in China and eventually returned to Pennsylvania due to the increasing illness of his father.
Sam Shoemaker, a Princeton 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 in Cambridge, Buchman resigned his position at Hartford to live by faith and launch the First Century Christian Fellowship.
In addition, men trained by Buchman began holding regular lunchtime meetings in the study of Julian Thornton-Duesbery, then Chaplain of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
The group was more like a spiritual revolution, unhampered by institutional ties; it combined social activities with religion, it had no organized board of officers.
[19]: 141 In 1936, Good Housekeeping magazine described the group as having neither membership, nor dues, nor paid leaders, nor new theological creed, nor regular meetings; it was simply a fellowship of people who desire to follow a way of life, a determination, and not a denomination.
In 1909, Professor Henry Burt Wright of Yale, citing Speer's work, dug up many more Bible verses that set forth these same Principles in the YMCA book: The Will of God and a Man's Lifework.
At the end of that year the Oslo daily Tidens Tegn commented in its Christmas number, "A handful of foreigners who neither knew our language, nor understood our ways and customs, came to the country.
Buchman kept in close touch with his German colleagues, and felt compelled to attempt to reach the Nazi leaders in Germany, and win them to a new approach.
A first detailed secret Gestapo report about The Oxford Group or Movement was published in November 1936 warning that 'it had turned into a dangerous opponent of National Socialism'.
In Norway, Bishop Arne Fjellbu of Trondheim said in 1945: "I wish to state publicly that the foundations of the united resistance of Norwegian Churchmen to Nazism were laid by the Oxford Group work.
"[48] The same year the British tennis star H. W. Austin edited the book Moral Rearmament (The Battle for Peace), which sold half a million copies.
The novelist Daphne du Maurier published Come Wind, Come Weather, stories of ordinary Britons who had found hope and new life through the group.
She dedicated it to "Frank Buchman, whose initial vision made possible the world of the living characters in these stories", and added, "What they are doing up and down the country in helping men and women solve their problems, and prepare them for whatever lies ahead, will prove to be of national importance in the days to come."
In 1946, Moral Re-Armament bought and restored a large, derelict hotel at Caux, Switzerland, and this became a centre for reconciliation across Europe, bringing together thousands, including German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman.
[1]: 382 Its work was described by the historians Douglas Johnston and Cynthia Sampson as an "important contribution to one of the greatest achievements in the entire record of modern statecraft: the astonishingly rapid Franco-German reconciliation after 1945".
[50][page needed] In the following decades, Moral Re-Armament work expanded across the globe, particularly into the African and Asian countries moving towards independence from colonial rule.
[52] Evert Kupers, for 20 years President of the Dutch Confederation of Trades Unions, stated that "the thousands who have visited Caux have been deeply impressed by its message for our age and by the real comradeship they found there.
"[53] In France Maurice Mercier, Secretary-General of the textile workers within the Force Ouvriere, said: "Class war today means one half of humanity against the other half, each possessing a powerful arsenal of destruction... Not one cry of hatred, not one hour of work lost, not one drop of blood shed - that is the revolution to which Moral Re Armement calls bosses and workers.
"[54] In Akron, Ohio, Jim Newton, an Oxford Group member, knew that one of Harvey S. Firestone's sons, Russell, was a serious alcoholic.
They left behind them a strong functioning group which met each week in the house of T. Henry Williams, amongst whom were an Akron surgeon, Bob Smith, and his wife Anne.
Earlier Bill Wilson had been advised by Dr Silkworth to change his approach and tell the alcoholics they suffered from an illness, one that could kill them, and afterward apply the Oxford Practices.
[63]: 272 In 1934 Marjorie Harrison, an Episcopal Church member, published a book, Saints Run Mad, that challenged the group, its leader and their practices.