Religion: Personal Work

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Significance. A very large proportion of Buchmanites pass without great harm through their "washing out" and forget the whole movement when—as in most cases—marriage removes the occasion for autoerotism. Buchmanism bursts in upon adolescent imaginations with the revelation that auto-sexualism is a deadly sin. The adolescent has not read Oskar Berger's Vorlesungen: "95% of young men and women occasionally practice auto-erotism"; or Havelock Ellis's Auto-Erotism: "There appears to be little reliable evidence to show that simple autoerotism in a well-born and healthy individual, can produce any evil results beyond slight functional disturbances, and these only when it is practiced in excess."

Naturally, the adolescent becomes pliant before the Buchmanite evangelist—perhaps the first person with whom the prospective convert has ever discussed his erotic life.

Of course, Buchmanites bring with them also the less corporeal aspects of the Christian message. In so far as they succeed—as often they do—in starting men on a spiritual life, other Christian workers praise Mr. Buchman and Buchmanites. But they are severely criticized by fellow-Christians in so far as they confuse Christianity with the treatment of one "sin" which, it is remarked, The Founder never mentioned.