The Moral Re-Armer

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The M.R.A. technique for fighting the Reds is still that of changing the world by a "God-guided" elite—a program that has little endorsement these days from the clergy. Reinhold Niebuhr has called the movement "socially vicious" and "religiously vapid," and six years ago the Church of England's Social and Industrial Council condemned M.R.A.'s "hectic heartiness, its mass gaiety, and its reiterated slogans as a colossal drive of escapism from . . . responsible living." The movement has been repeatedly attacked by Roman Catholic leaders as a kind of fake religion.

Such attacks did not keep M.R.A. from prospering. For a U.S. headquarters, it built a multimillion-dollar establishment on Michigan's Mackinac Island, with room for 1,000 visitors. And from Caux to London's Berkeley Square to New York's Westchester County layouts, Buchman and his followers have always had nothing but the best. This luxury, too, brought criticism, but Frank Buchman had an answer. "Isn't God a millionaire?" he would ask.