The Oxford Group and AA’s Origins — Jay Stennett — Tuesday Night History Workshop — July 3, 2020

Interactive Transcript

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Speaker Jay Stennett

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Date Recorded July 3, 2020

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Topic Oxford Group History

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Jay Tuesday Night History Workshop • July 3, 2020

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Jay Listen to Meeting Recording

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Jay ABOUT THIS MEETING

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Jay Jay Stennett of Initiatives of Change explains the Oxford Group, Frank Buchman, and the movement’s relationship to early AA.

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Jay Full Transcript

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Moderator All right. Hi, everyone. I'm Tim. I'm an alcoholic. And welcome to the Recovery- Hi, Tim ... History Meeting. And this week we are going to have Jay Stennett from the Oxford Group sharing, uh, a little bit about what happened to the Oxford Group. And also we are recording this meeting, and it will be shared, um, or be put on recoveryspeakers.com that you can share with any friends that might miss the meeting tonight. And, um, you can listen to it again if you want to. Um, at the end of the meeting, there may be some time for Jay to take some questions. Um, it depends how long his PowerPoint takes. And also, I'm going to close the chat in a moment. If there are any meetings or anything that people wanna share, I will open up the chat in the last few minutes and, uh, you guys can share any meeting info or anything that you guys wanna discuss.

1:36

Moderator And also, um, w- Recovery Speakers is sharing daily speaker talks, um, from early AA international conventions for the month of July in celebration of the eighty-fifth anniversary and, um, not holding the, uh, international in Detroit this year. Um, so if you do wanna receive those speaker talks, send me your email to tim@recoveryspeakers.com. And next I'm going to pass it off to Mike. Thanks, Tim. Welcome everybody. I'm so glad that we have so many people that consistently come on. I wanted to just give you a little quick info on Recovery Speakers, a little bit about the upcoming agenda, and introduce Jay, and I don't want to take much of his time. Um, as I've mentioned each week, recoveryspeakers.com is a website where we have been working to digitize old recordings that were started in the '50s with Bill and Arbutus O'Neill. They're all on, uh, reel-to-reel tapes and wire recordings. We've been digitizing them. We make those available for free through streaming audio. So we'd love for you to, to check out Recovery Speakers. As Tim mentioned, we're sending out a featured talk each day.

3:10

Moderator We decided that the entire month of July would be focused on early international conventions. This week we've been sharing some from the first convention of Cleveland. Actually, today we shared the traditions and, and the committee in Cleveland had, had elected six people, early AA members, and each of them talked about two traditions. And we've got those early recordings on, and you can check that out. And if you didn't receive it, shoot Tim an email or me an email, tim@recoveryspeakers.com or mike@recoveryspeakers.com. Uh, next week, uh, we're going to pull out just some clips, uh, of early international conventions, and I'm gonna kinda talk about what was going on at the time and why those clips are interesting. And some of them I know you've never heard. So you'll definitely wanna check that out. Going forward, we have on, uh, July twenty-fourth, Scott, uh, Jay is going to talk about the Washingtonians and the temperance movement and how that evolved and how it made an impact on Alcoholics Anonymous.

4:35

Moderator On, uh, on August seventh, we have Jonathan S., who's going to talk to us about the manual movement and contribution and the books that were, uh, the books that were used, uh, in the early writings of the Big Book. And, uh, then we've got Mitchell K. And Mitchell is going to speak on August the twenty-first, and he's going to do some PowerPoints and some conversation about his experience and relationship with Clarence Snyder, one of AA's pioneers and certainly the pioneer of sponsorship. So I hope that you'll all let your friends know. We try to send announcements out as often as we can without being, uh, too bothersome. So I appreciate you being here. Thank you for joining us. And without me going on anymore, I wanna, uh, present Jay S. from Sedona, Arizona, who's gonna talk about what ever happened to the Oxford Group. Hi, Jay. Unmute yourself, Jay. Tim? Let me find him. Hang on, Jay. Technical problems here. Unmute my audio. There you are. Hello. Hello. Hi, Jay. Anybody... Okay. Hi, Jay. Hi. Uh, hello everybody. My name is Jay Stennett, and I am a member of Initiatives of Change.

6:09

Jay Uh, and, uh, Initiatives of Change is the modern day, um, name of the, uh, of the Oxford Group. And, uh, many people believe that, uh, it passed off the scene in the, uh, '40s, and the fact is, is that it's still going today, and a wonderful, wonderful, uh, most amazing thing. And maybe I'll get into a little of my personal involvement with them a bit later. But first I wanted to just give you a little, uh, background. When I, uh, uh, in nineteen seventy-nine, when I started Spiritual Antecedents of Alcoholics Anonymous, there were still, uh, tens of thousands of people that knew Bob Smith and hundreds of thousands that had met Bill Wilson alive. And, uh, so when I was looking at, well, what can I do to take this historical weirdness and inflict it on others? Um, so what happened was is that I, uh, I started to investigate the Oxford Group. Why is this man smiling? This is Frank Buchman, and, uh, it's always fun.

7:30

Jay Uh, I was always calling him Frank Buckman, and, uh, when I first met the group, I had a few people take me aside and say, "If you're going to talk about our friend, why don't you say his name correctly?" So indeed, I, I, uh, I've been the stickler about, uh, Frank Buchman. And the rea-- a methodology for spiritual... Now, uh, Buchman was, uh, he's the most fascinating character that I've never heard of. Um, I was a, uh, a European, uh, history major in, in college, and I never heard anything about this man that was nominated twice for the Nobel Peace, Peace Prize and was decorated by the governments of France, Germany, Greece, Japan, and the Philippines for his work in reconciliation after the Second World War. Now, this is the Catholic, uh, England where, uh, Frank ended up, and he was, uh, he, he'd run out of options. He heard that his, uh, a man that he admired, Frank Meyer, was gonna be, uh, preaching at a, uh, at a big convention that was happening there in Keswick.

8:58

Jay And, uh, he got up there and while he was sitting in this pew, there was a woman by the name of Jessie Penn-Lewis talking about the cross of Christ. And as, as Frank was listening to her talk, he saw the cross collapse into an eye. And the reason that he was ended up there in England was that he had, uh, been running a, uh, a home for boys in Philadelphia that had, uh, that had collapsed uh, over a funding row with the, uh, with the board. Frank had quit and gone off to, uh, to find a different way to go as a, uh, as a Lutheran minister. And, uh, anyway, when he saw that, he had these five guys he had a really big resentment against. And when he saw that eye, he went, "Oh my goodness, I'm the sixth wrong man." And so what he did was he went back to his room, and he wrote a quick, uh, he penned a quick note of apology and sent it off to each of the guys. That evening, he had something happen that he had not been able to have happen in over a year.

10:29

Jay He had a conversation with a person who wanted to give their life to Jesus. And, uh, he had been unable to convey that message of depth and weight to people. And so he, um, from that experience, what he spent the rest of his life preaching was that in order to be able to carry a message, one must have to be clean themselves. In a, a book that you guys may be familiar with, you know, they, they talk about, uh, but obviously you can't transmit something you haven't got. So the, the first, uh, moniker that, uh, when, when Frank got this rolling, uh, they called it the First Century Christian Fellowship because what they were attempting to do was mimic the, uh, the spiritual exercises that are in the Book of Acts in the New Testament. And they figured that if we could do what they did, we'd get what they got, and this indeed was, uh, was exactly what happened. They were referred to as the life changers. People would co-- they would come and, and, and share and, uh, very much absolutely everything...

11:57

Jay Well, not absolutely everything, but ninety-two point seven five five five percent of everything we do in AA is directly lifted from the OG. And, uh, the, uh, uh, so they'd have these house parties and what they'd at these house parties would attempt to do is to change a person. Because if you can change a person, the home changes. And if the home changes, community changes, then you change a nation. And this is how you change the world. You don't change the world by going out and telling people what they're supposed to do. You change the world from inside yourself. So this is a picture of Frank at, uh, at Oxford, uh, uh, University with B.H. Streeter. What happened was is that Frank had this methodology that he brought to post-First World War England, and it ignited a generation of people that had been devastated by the, uh, the war that they'd been in.

13:13

Moderator And, and you know, the First World War was so bad that everybody signed a document saying, "We're never gonna do this again." One of the interesting things about the steps and also the, uh, uh, the way that, uh, the Oxford Group, uh, approaches problems is, is that people that have trauma, PTSD and the like, that these, these steps, this methodology fits very well. Also, the structure of our meetings it, uh, fits, fits very, very well for them. Uh, here's a picture of, uh, Frank when he was in, in India with the Maha... Uh, Gandhi said about, uh, uh, he, Gandhi came to England a lot. Frank went to India a number of times. They got together in both places. He was the only person that when he sent... People say, well, Frank was only interested in the, in the very, very powerful.

14:21

Jay But the, the, the reality is, is that, uh, he always had a very, very soft heart for people that were in the service industry because his family, uh, had At a, uh, a little hotel next to a railway station, and he grew up, you know, working in the kitchen and doing all that, all that kind of stuff. Um, okay. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna switch screens for just a second here, and we're gonna drop in a little something different, um, 'cause I want literature. So what is this methodology that the, uh, that the O- that Buchman and the Oxford Group came up with? Um, uh, can everybody see the screen okay? Is it all good? Yeah? It's frozen. Okay. It's frozen? Yeah. Well, the scr- screen should be... But, uh, am I? No, you are not. Okay. So can you see the four absolutes? No. Okay. Uh, sharing is paused because you share, you shared... Bring your shared window. Okay. Um, let's do this. Let's do this. Sorry about that, folks. Okay, here we go. All right. Are we good? Yeah. Okay, cool.

15:52

Jay So The Four Absolutes, or as my Oxford Group mentor, uh, Willard Hunter, uh, said, he called them the, uh, he, he said they were the four opportunities. And, uh, he said that, with the... You know, they called them absolutes because they were, uh, they were called that in a book by Robert Spear. But these are all linked in order. So in other words, if you're going to... If someone's going to change, first and foremost, they have to become honest. So it's absolute honesty. And once I can be honest, then I have the opportunity to become pure in my intent, pure in the way I live my life, knowing why I'm operating, not just being run by my instincts. And once I get pure about my, my, my life, then I actually can elevate into a much higher state, which is living unselfishly, that it's no longer just about me. And that after a while of living in that fashion, what happens is one evolves into love. And, uh, so that's it. Honesty, purity, unselfishness, and, and love.

17:20

Jay And, uh, these are four targets, because as Willard taught me, if you don't have something to shoot at, you're never gonna hit anything. So there we go. So, all right. Now... Okay. Sorry. We gotta go back a little here. Now, people say, um, "Well, these Oxford Group people, they didn't have the steps and they didn't have this and they didn't have that." And it's really interesting. Um, if one gets the book, What Is The Oxford Group? And one turns... The Oxford Group was, uh, published in, what was it? '32? Yeah. And, uh, and it was written anonymously. But on page eight, this is what it says. Um, "To be spiritually reborn and to live in the state in which these four points, honesty, purity, unselfishness and love, are the guides to our life in God, the Oxford Group advocate for practical spiritual activities.

18:33

Jay Number one, sharing of our sins and temptations with another Christian life given to God and to you sharing his witness to help others still unchanged to recognize and acknowledge their sins." So the way that they did it was, say, um, say there was a guy who was having trouble getting thrown downstairs in bars in El Segundo, California, by the name of Bill C. And, uh, and somebody knew that I used to have a drinking problem and have similar challenges. Well, that person would say, "Hey, you know, this guy, Bill C., he's got, he's got a little bit of a problem. Why don't you see if you might be able to help him? Because I think your stories are similar." So what I'd do is I'd call this guy up and I'd say, "Hey, let's go to, let's go to lunch." And what I would do is I would share my sins and temptations, the stuff that I really wish wasn't true about myself, and I'd give him concrete examples of how I had destroyed my life.

20:05

Jay Now, if I was fortunate and if I was clean enough to be carrying a decent message, hopefully this guy would recognize and acknowledge his problem. Now, when you reach that point with somebody, you need some help. So they would do then what we call our, our, uh, our third step. Surrender of our life, past, present, and future into God's keeping. Now, it's always interesting how Wilson talks about, um, uh, trying to, uh, keep, uh, it so that alcoholics couldn't wiggle around the steps. But the third activity, or as I like to call it, the third step of the Oxford Group, restitution to all we have wronged directly or indirectly. What an order. I can't go through with it. And this is, this is, um, uh, so amends. And then the fourth step would be listening to, accepting, relying on God's guidance and carrying it out in everything we do or say, great or small. So there's our... what we might, might call our ten, 11, and 12. So those are the steps of the Oxford Group. Now are they steps? No, they're activities. But I mean, come on, they're numbered, they're in order. Do 'em.

21:42

Jay See what happens. Now, I, uh, am r- I'm the most fortunate male form you've ever met, and one of the reasons is, is that I get to be married to, uh, Adele Shea. And Adele was on a run to Akron, and sh- she brought me two books. I don't know why she thought that these books would be, uh, germane to me, called For Sinners Only, and the other is, I Was a Pagan. Great titles, right? And, uh, I Was a Pagan was written by Vic Kitchen, and this book was published in 1934. And, uh, it's just one of my, my absolute faves, and I highly recommend anybody. And, and, uh, uh, you can, you can find it online quite easily nowadays. It's been, it's been reprinted, or it may even be a PDF. But I want you to take a look at this. When I came across this, it floored me because if we t... You know, there's, there's only two columns, not three. But there's two columns. And the thing that got me wasn't so much the, the verbiage, and I'll, I'll go through that in a second, but the fonts.

23:21

Jay It's absolutely the same as another book that was published just, uh, five years later. So this is, uh, what was called the Oxford Group Game. Now, one of the things that I always wondered was why is it that these drunks were able to hang out with these, uh, these people? Now, Vic Kitchen is actually mentioned in, uh, in this book, uh, Bill W., My First Forty Years. And, uh, at the very end of the book, Bill's talking about, uh, getting sober in the Oxford Group at, uh, at Calvary and, uh, at the c- meetings at Calvary Church. Vic Kitchen was there. Vic Kitchen had written this book. Vic Kitchen came to the Oxford Group 'cause he was a very successful advertising man who happened to have an alcoholic seizure in the office of his largest client. So, I mean, he and, he, he and Bill, uh, spoke the same language. But, but so this is... In this, he talks about what, what they called the Oxford Group Game. And so what you do is you write down what you liked the most in your old life. And he says, "I liked... I most liked myself.

24:54

Moderator Liquor, tobacco, and every other stimulant, narcotic, and form of self-indulgence. Anything which gave me pleasure, possessions, power, position, and applause, or pumped up my self-esteem. To be left largely to myself. My wife, because of the comforting and complimentary way she treated me. I hated most poverty for myself, prohibition, work, people who disapproved or tried to interfere with me, and any betrayal of my inner thoughts or emotions." And then what you did is you'd, you'd write down the things that you, um, you liked most in your new life. And he talks about God, spending time alone with God in meditation, the fellowship, uh, the stimulation of the Holy Spirit, my wife, because of the things God now enables us to do for each other. Uh, and so, uh, anyway, I highly recommend this book. If it, it really, um... Especially if... One of the things that's kind of fun sometimes is to take another spiritual book that has some exercises in it and take a look at it, and this is, this is one that I think is great fun. Now, in this, uh, is Vic's third step prayer.

26:24

Jay I think this is highly superior to the one that's in the big book. Um, but anyway. Uh, he said, "Messed up at trying to run it. My supporting to your will and plan." And, uh, I just love that. Okay, now we're gonna jump back to another screen here. Don't say. Okay. Come on. Okay. Share screen. All right. Can you see that now? Is it in? No, I only see you. I'm not seeing the screen. Oh, I don't wanna see me. I'm just not that, I'm just not that cute. Okay. So what are we doing here? We are... Oh, share. New share. Okay, bingo. Yay. Oh, come on. Okay, do we got it now? Yeah, I can see it now. Okay, cool. All right. So, um, whatever happened to the- Oxford Group. Why, uh-- So in 1939, there was a switch, uh, from calling it the Oxford Group to calling the movement Moral Re-Armament.

27:42

Jay What happened is, is Frank and the boys and girls saw that, uh, all of the nations were re-arming for the Second World War, and their strategy was to try and get the leaders of the largest nations in the world to work the steps, to do the activities so that they would have a change of heart and that we wouldn't have to go to war like they had just recently. And so Frank decided that what they were going to do was they were going to go away from being a personal, uh, spiritual movement, uh, one educated Christian working with another, to become people that were actually going to work at stopping the Second Worl-World War, uh, uh, the, as it ramped up and, uh, and to remake the world. This is Kronborg Castle in Denmark. It's the, uh, uh, the, uh, castle that, uh, Hamlet, uh, was written for. And, uh, this is a ra-- an Oxford Group rally. Um, during the, the mid to late thirties, all over Northern Europe, there were a lot of people that responded to the Oxford Group message of personal transformation. Now, why is that?

29:11

Jay Well, you know, a lot of people had lost all the material, uh, during the Depression that was worldwide. And so what the Oxford Group also did, and as it became Moral Re-Armament, was to give purpose to people that had lost their, uh, faith in things material. So there was some controversy. In 1936, um, during an interview, Frank said, "I thank God for a man like Adolf Hitler, who built a front line of defense against communism." Later on in that same interview, he said, "But think what it would mean to the world if Hitler surrendered to the control of God." Now, in 1936, a lot of people were saying very much the same thing, especially Winston Churchill, because the thing of stopping the onslaught of communism was much more dangerous to s- to the, uh, political structures than the fascists. Which is why they, um... Uh, here's w- uh, what Churchill said. He said, "One may dislike Hitler's system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as admirable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among nations.

30:42

Jay I have on more than one occasions made my appeal in public that the Führer of Germany should now become the Hitler of peace." So Frank, um, they had a, they had a strategy to work with all these different political le-leaders. And one of the ways that they wanted to stop the Second World War, what evolved into the Second World War, was this hundred million people listening. This is the most outlandish thing I've ever heard, and it just made me fall in love. This is a picture of the Hollywood Bowl, and they had an overflow crowd there. The idea was to get a hundred million people to meditate over the course of a weekend on being honest, being pure, being unselfish, and being loving to see if it couldn't motivate the populace to make some changes with their representation or, or with how things were evolving. So during this weekend, they literally had a rolling interview, and they would play these pre-recorded tapes all the-- all around the world. And, uh, this was, uh, in, uh, in 1939. This was a, a rally that was held in San Francisco.

32:11

Jay Now, once America engaged in the war, um, Frank had been identified. And you can understand now, the book Alcoholics Anonymous has just been published. It was just written, you know, in '39. So Wilson very... This whole political thing ain't that. Um, they didn't talk about the Oxford Group at all. But, uh, what did the Oxford Group do? Once the war started, they went up to Lake Tahoe. There was about two hundred of them. And they stayed there for six weeks trying to think about how it is that they could best help the United States in the war e-effort. And what they came up with was a, a set of plays called You Can Defend America. And there was a lot of labor strife. And so what the Oxford Group would do is they would go in, and they would work with the management and the labor to see if they couldn't get them to come up with some kind of a, um, a, some kind of a rapprochement, some kind of a- Uh, a way of, of agreeing so that, of course, there were folks that wanted to make sure that...

33:42

Jay So this is a Gestapo report on the enemy of the state, and the enemy of the state is the Oxford Group. When the Gestapo would come into a country, the first group that they would round up would be the Jews. The second were the homosexuals. And the third group that they would get were the Oxford Group people, because the Oxford Group had been identified as an enemy of the state. And, uh, and the main thing that the Nazis had against the Oxford Group was that they absolutely believed in the brotherhood of man and the equality of races. Now, Frank had a stroke in, in nineteen forty-one, and, uh, and he was never quite the same. He became dependent upon others, and, uh, uh, even though he lived for another twenty years almost, he, uh, he was, uh, he was, uh, challenged. So after the, after the war ends and there's victory, one of the things that Buchman saw was that the reason that the Second World War had happened was that the Germans had been completely ostracized after the First World War.

35:06

Jay And so there was the Marshall Plan, which was created to help invigorate the Japanese and the German economies. And many of the political leaders considered the i-- moral rearmament to be the social component of the Marshall Plan. And the idea was to come and work out some way to get, uh, folks engaged, uh, with the Germans again. This is a woman by the name of Irene Lore. And Irene Lore was a, a, uh, French communist. Um, she was a, uh, uh, a labor leader. Um, she was one of the first, uh, members of the, uh, of the, uh, representative group after the, the Second World War. And she was invited to go to Caux. Now, there was a, there was a, a, a center of peace and reconciliation that was built in, uh, Switzerland. Actually, it was an old Belle Époque, uh, uh, hotel. It was very much like the Titanic. It was built for those people. I mean, it was that completely over the top and wonderful, and it went to sea during the, during both the World Wars.

36:29

Jay And so at the end of the Second World War, the Oxford Group in, uh, Switzerland, in gratitude for their country being spared, uh, they bought this place that people could be brought together to have honest conversation. And, uh, Irene Lore, she came into a, uh, into a plenary session. It was a big meeting, uh, and, you know, they had different speakers speaking. The Germans had tortured her family, killed her friends. You know, she wanted nothing but the destruction of, of Germany. And she ended up, uh, going up to her room and, uh, about twenty minutes later, there's a knock at the door, and it's Buchman. And Frank looks at her and says, "You say that you're interested in rebuilding Europe. How can you do that without the Germans?" And he turned and left. And she spent three days in her room, and when she emerged, she emerged a different person. And she went into the, a plenary session that was going, and she got up, and she talked about, you know, her life.

37:53

Moderator And she talked about the hate that she had for the German people, and that she wanted nothing more than the destruction of them. And she looked across the, uh, the, uh, the audience, and she asked the Germans that were there, the first German delegation that had been let out of Germany after the end of hostilities, to forgive her for her hate. And from that, a whole engine started that, that, uh, had, you know, the ultimate fruit is, is that the Ge-Germans and the, the French have been... killed each other in a really, really long time. And that was impa-- after the Second World War was a, was a big part of that. Ready to open and to let folks in. After this experience, and she, uh, uh, the German women and, and, you know, they'd all been raped, and they were all pregnant, and they, they were just trying to rebuild the city, their cities, and it was just, it was just horrible. And she saw in her heart what it was that her hate had done.

39:15

Jay And so she went, and she asked those women for forgiveness, and she went all around Germany doing that. Um, here's Co-Konrad Adenauer, and here's, uh, Herr Schuman. And Adenauer and, and Schuman were the two central political figures after the Second World War. Frank was able to invite them to come to Caux, and for each of them to have their own experience with these four, four absolutes, with these steps, taking a look at, at... And encouraging them to get together and take care of a really important piece of business, which was the, uh, which was the coal and the steel industry in the Rhone Valley. Because things had worked so well in, uh, in Europe, and there we-there was actually movement going on with, uh, you know, reconstructing Germany, Frank- Then turned his attention to Japan and brought a delegation of Japanese to Keough and then to the United States. This is, uh, one of the ways that, uh, the Oxford Group carried their message was through stage plays and musicals. Beautiful, beautiful stuff. And then later on in films.

40:40

Jay And, uh, this, uh, this particular movie, The Crowning Experience, is the story of Mary Baker Bethune, who, uh, founded the first college for Negroes, and it was her personal story. And, uh, her story was that she had spent most of her life mobilizing act, uh, y- you know, being an activist, uh, you know, doing everything she could to provide education for people where they were kept in ignorance, you know, uh, intentionally. Um, she did all this great work, but she had a sadness that she had not been able to have an experience of real love with her daughter. And, uh, when she met Frank Buchman and they started working together and, uh, she was able to go and, uh, and make restitution to her daughter, she called that the crowning experience of her life. Little Rock, nineteen fifty-eight. Uh, most of us, uh, uh, remember Brown versus the Board of Education. Um, this is Governor Faubus on the right. This is Mrs. Daisy Bates on the left. She was the person that ran point for the integration of the schools in Little Rock.

42:04

Jay Um, she and Faubus were absolutely as far apart as two people can be. What the Moral Re-Armament people did is they got a hold of Faubus, and they got a hold of Ms. Bates separately, and they talked to them about, you know, the pr- the big problem, but also... Frank always said that there-- the problem is not what's on the table, the problem is who's at the table. And that if we address our, uh, individual challenges, then we have the opportunity to have a new way of addressing the problem that's on the table. And so anyway, they both, they both, uh, uh, did that, and this meeting was as a result of that. And, uh, uh, in nineteen fifty-eight, CBS News called this meeting the single most important, uh, news item of the year because it diffused this. Um, here, uh, Frank's getting a, uh, an award from the, uh, uh, the National Associa- N- NAACP. And, uh, one of the things, I mean, you know, you think about why didn't the Oxford Group really take off in the United States? Well, it believed in the equality of races.

43:36

Moderator And with this movie like, uh, the, uh, The Crowning Experience, um, when it premiered in Atlanta, it was the first time that there was ever a racially mixed audience. When the Oxford Group would come to these places like Washington, DC, that had never had a racially mixed audience, and they would bring these films or these plays, and they would insist that everyone got to sit wherever they were seated. And, you know, the place would be packed with, you know, police and undercover people waiting for problems to happen and all that. But these literally were those very, very important steps that happened to have transformation as a society. Um, this is Frank and Peter Howard. Peter Howard was a firebrand and an incredible, uh, uh, newspaper guy who got involved with the, uh, the Oxford Group, and he was, uh, chosen to be Frank's successor. Um, Frank ended up dying, uh, in nineteen sixty-one, and, uh, Peter Howard took over. Howard died eighteen months later, and the Oxford Group Moral Re-Armament never recovered from that. Uh, some of you may have ended up at some Up With People stuff.

45:03

Moderator Up With People was a spin-off from the, uh, from Moral Re-Armament. And here's a couple old school guys, Will- Willard Hunter and James Houck. Uh, we were there in Allentown, Pennsylvania. We got some folks from Allentown, uh, our friend Don Hunt's here, uh, who, uh, are... Yeah, anyway, from Allentown. And we were there, uh, when they closed Frank's house up and opened the, uh, Lehigh Valley, uh, Historical, uh, Society. And here is a famous, uh, uh, a famous fellowship member, uh, as a tourist at Keough. Uh, had the pleasure of going there four times now and being involved in all kinds of, uh, peace and reconciliation, um, conferences. Um, one of them was Good Governance for Africa. Uh, this guy on the right, if you're familiar with international, uh, the... That's, uh, Michael Brown and his, his wife, Jean. They're, uh- Uh, they're the people that initiated, uh, National Sorry Day in, uh, Australia and started the first substantive talk between the indigenous people and the Australian government. Um, one of the things that Initiatives of Change has found is, is that every place they go, they have the same challenges.

46:37

Jay Indigenous people are losing their languages, their homelands. Uh, they're, they're ostracized, uh, to the very worst of spots. And so they do what they can to try and, uh, help folks, uh, share their common problems so they can maybe find common solutions. And, uh, this is my fabulous wife, Adele, and a gentleman from, uh, um... He, uh... Joaquim, when he left home to go buy some groceries and he came back in the compound where eighty of his family members lived, he came back and they were all dead. And, uh, they'd been slaughtered. And, uh, he was there at CO to try and find some way to come to an answer of how he could move in the world without, uh, without hate. And of course, my fabulous wife, Adele. And, uh, another couple of our friends. Uh, Bill said in a letter that he wrote after he'd gotten a letter back from, uh, from Carl Jung, he said that, um, he was really sorry that he had not written a similar letter to Frank when, uh, uh, but Frank had already passed. And he said that, uh, that he had a choice to make.

48:10

Moderator That either he could give the Oxford Group the credit they deserved for the creation of Alcoholics Anonymous, or he could save lives. And he chose to save the lives. And so that's why he did his level best to keep all notice about the Oxford Group, Moral Re-Armament, from any of the stuff that, uh, you know, aside from a few mo- things in the, uh, forward to the, uh, second edition. But, uh, but anyway, so that's, uh, that's a picture of me in a, in an archive at CO, uh, many years ago. So that's, uh, that's what I got just for starters. And we got, uh, we got a little time, and I would love to, uh, share whatever, uh, I could, if you got any questions. All right, I'm gonna allow people to unmute in a second. If you are not asking a question, please don't unmute yourself. And I can prattle on forever, but Thanks for that. I'm calling from Boston. What was, uh, Shoemaker's role with the Oxford Group? Well, thank you very much. Um, aside from the fact that...

49:42

Jay So Samuel Moore Shoemaker, there's a, there's a marvelous book called The Life Changers, as a matter of fact. And, uh, in it, uh, Sam is referred to as the Virginian. Uh, and it's a description of the, it's, uh, a description of the personal stories of, uh, OG members. Uh, Sam Shoemaker was an Episcopalian from a wealthy family in, uh, Virginia. Uh, he went to do his missionary work in China. He discovered that he hated China, hated the Chinese. Didn't work really well. He's, uh, he's there. This guy Buchman comes through doing a set of talks for people about this whole thing about if I keep my own channel clean, then I have a message to share. And if we're here to share the message of Christ, if we're not living Christ-like lives, maybe we ought to reorganize things a little bit. And, um, uh, Sam got together with Frank after Frank gave this talk. And, uh, the next morning, uh, Frank pissed him off when, uh, when Sam invited him to come talk to a class. And, and, uh, uh, Frank said, "No, I'm, I'm not the guy to do that. What's wrong with you?

51:23

Jay Why do-- What's wrong with you that you can't carry the message?" He got all pissed off and he went home, and he stayed up all night grinding. And the next day he got up and he, he went to Frank and he says, "I've been a fraud for God." And, um, he said, "I wanna give my life." And, uh, and so he did. And then he, uh, his whole, uh, missionary work in China took off and ended up being, uh, called the Calvary Church in New York. And when he was asked to come there as the rector, he told the, um, that, that he was not going to have this be a pulpit-driven ministry. That what they were going to do was they were going to take the principles of the Oxford Group, and they were gonna motivate the, uh, uh, the, the parish, and they were gonna go out and get the job done. And they did. And that parish became the center of the Oxford Group, uh, for New York, clearing house for all their, uh, their information and the like.

52:52

Jay Uh, Frank and Sam had a falling out when Frank decided to make Moral Re-Arma-- transfer from Oxford Group to Moral Re-Armament. Sam was the rector of a very large church, and he was a very active and involved, um, in the Episcopal Church itself. And, uh, this idea of switching away from being a personal spiritual movement to working on politics didn't wash with Sam. And he and Frank had a very, uh, very messy split. My friend Willard Hunter, who knew them both, said that they were both so much more effective than anyone when, when they were working together than when they were separate. So, uh, there's a little background. There's a great book called, um, I Stand by the Door. And those of you who don't know that poem, it's, it's just, I Stand by the Door. If it's not a description of the fellowship, I don't know what is. And, uh, uh, but anyway, uh, and it's a, it's a, a biography that was written by his wife. And it's, it's lovely. It has a really nice part about Alcoholics Anonymous. So thank you.

54:28

Jay Jay, I just, I just wanna thank you very much for, uh- Great presentation. Uh, I had just one question. The, uh, uh, the name was changed from Moral Rearmament to, uh, Initiatives for Change. I believe it was in two thousand one or, uh, or so. Yeah. And they- Two thousand one, yeah. And then they, uh, uh, had headquartered in London, uh, rather than in Cr- Crow, I was think. I was in London. I tried to find the address that I had, and I just, uh- Oh, they're in Green Street. Wasn't, was- Yeah. Yeah, I wasn't able to find it. It's still there. It's, it's still there. What... D- do you know the reason that they changed the name? Well, yeah. Um, so branding is really important in this world, and Moral Rearmament, quote, "We're going to rearm morally," may have worked really good at the end of... During the '40s. Uh-huh. But come the '60s, it was a brand that didn't get a lot of traction in the West.

55:55

Jay And, uh, and so they, they went along with it for as long as they could, and finally they, they, uh, you know, they went through a lot of different branding things and the like. And they came up with Initiatives of Change because any member could come up with an initiative and start it, and, uh, and then we could follow it, being with indigenous people, being it with banking, being it with, uh, you know, global warming, any, any number of things. Also, I'd like to thank you, uh, for mentioning, uh, Willard Hunter. I, I have his little booklet here. I don't know if you could see it there. Yeah, yeah. That he has with Moral Rearmament and AA. It's really a great little read. And that, uh- Yeah ... on the, on the, uh, the book, On the Tail of a Comet, I have that behind me also. Yeah. Yeah, it's a, it's a wonderful piece. Uh, which is great biography. Yeah. Oh, by the way, by the way, by the way, um- I'm like you. I got it all, all behind me.

57:23

Moderator We don't, we don't, we don't have, um, any real distribution of this, uh, DVD. Um, but if you'd like to, uh, um, contact me, I'll be happy to send this to you for national man, Frank Buchman. It's called The Man Who Built Peace, and it won a number of awards at some, uh, some film festivals and the like. It was a wonderful, wonderful experience. I'd love to have that. But we didn't have the money to really promote it. Yeah, so, uh, you can reach me. My, uh, my phone number is three one zero, eight seven four, two three four one. Two three four one. Or you can reach me at Jay Stennett. J-A-Y S-T-I-N-N-E-T-T at M-E, Mary Edward, me, me.com. Thank you very much. You did a great job. You're welcome. All right. Thank you. All right, we got Mac up next. Thanks. Um, hi, Jay. Mac Montgomery here. Good to see you. Nice to see you, man. Hey, buddy. Good to see you too. Thank you. Um, and thanks for all you do.

58:52

Moderator Uh, I've heard you speak a number of times now, and I wanted to ask a question which is really more specific to, uh, an Oxford Group process and, um, I think you... I might have even heard this from you. But that when Bill had his white light experience, that, um, they, that Ebby was meant as Bill's sponsor to, uh, determine whether the experience was, I think the term was called maximum, and I might have that term wrong. And it was then that, that Ebby brought- No, no, no, no. Okay, so... Okay, let me... Thanks, thanks for setting me up, Mac. And so... Or, or I'll go for as long as... But anyway, yeah, w- we're getting into it. Um, so, uh, so there's, there's the Calvary Church, and then there was the Calvary Mission, and the Calvary Mission was for indigent alcoholics, and it was set up by, um, the Calvary Church, and it was run by a guy named Harry Hadley Jr. And, uh, and Hadley, um, he had died just two years before, uh, Ebby came to live there.

60:21

Moderator That- that's where Rowland dropped Ebby off after he'd had him around for a, a couple, couple weeks. And so Ebby goes and sees Bill at the hospital. Bill reports to him that while... Ebby goes back to the gang, and he goes, "Hey, my pigeon's all lit up. What's the deal?" And they said, "Don't worry about it. It happens all the time." They said, "Take, take this book to him," The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. And, uh, in it, and, and so this, this book is actually a set of lectures. If you're gonna read the book, start at chapter nine, Conversion. It's easy read because it's all about people changing. And, uh, um, in that, there are a few stories of drunkards because drunkards', uh, stories are al- always remarkable. In that book is a thing called Down On, uh, is a thing from Down on Water Street by Samuel H. Hadley. S.H. Hadley was Harry Hadley's father, and this is the experience that, um- Uh, S.H. Hadley had at the Jerry McCauley Mission. And he's, uh, uh... Jerry put his hand on my head.

62:00

Moderator He came down on an altar call withdrawing these horrible, horrible alcohol. And he said, "Brother, pray." And Hadley says, "I can't pray. Won't you pray for me?" And, uh, McCauley says, "All the prayers in the world won't save you unless you pray for yourself." Sound familiar? Um, "I halted but a moment, and then with a breaking heart, I said, 'Dear Jesus, will you help me?' Dear reader, never with mortal tongue can I describe that moment. Although up to that time, my soul had been filmed with indescribable gloom. I felt the glorious brightness of the noonday sunshine in my heart. I felt there was a free man. Oh, the precious feeling of safety, of freedom, of resting on Jesus. I felt that Christ was with me with all His love and power, and they'd come into my life. And I have been shouting glory pretty much all the time since. From that moment to this, I have never seen enough money to make me take a drink of whiskey." Sound a little familiar? Mm-hmm. So what that did, Mac, was it confirmed Bill's experience.

63:33

Jay When he read that, he goes, "I'm not crazy." Now, everybody that was in a helping profession read this book. It was a classic. I mean, it was something that, that anybody that was in a helping profession had to read in college. And, um, so... Well, and... So Bill has this experience. Now, where the maximum comes from, Mac, is that later on when Bill started having meetings in his home, when he started having meetings down at Cl- uh, Clifton's Cafeteria, uh, they said that he wasn't being maximum, and they kind of chased him out. Maximum was the, uh, the highest compliment you could give anybody, that they were maximum for Christ. So thanks for that. All right. Thank you. Thanks. Now you cleared it up for me. Thank you. Well, we have Lynn next. Hey. Hey, Jay. Hey, Lynn. Um, hey. I wanted to say thank you so much. I really enjoyed that. Um, sorry, I'm looking. Um, and, um, several things. The, the, um, I mean, who knew that the Na- they were the Oxford group was like the third most persecuted by the Nazis or the ones that they arrested in the line? Yeah.

65:07

Jay That, that's crazy. Um, but also, I was curious, was it because of the Nazi comments or, or is it just one of those things- Right, right, right. Well, the, the, your, your- Was it lost? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, why was it lost in history? Yeah. So, so what happened was once, once Frank said that, that's what was tied to him for the rest of his life. Okay? So that's why we don't hear about him? Yeah. Well, that's, yeah, that's number one. Number two is, is that he was a pariah in the political and religious hierarchy of the United States. Um, Reinhold Niebuhr, who was, uh, part of Roosevelt's, uh, kitchen cabinet, uh, thought that he was just, uh, naive. Um, he couldn't be controlled. He truly believed that he was being, um, guided by God. And, uh, you know, uh, uh, somebody just mentioned on, uh, the, uh, um... Dave just mentioned the, uh, the book, uh, Tale of a Comet by Garth Lean, or if you get this film and watch it, I mean, the stuff that, that he was led to do was absolutely amazing. But because he was not part of any...

66:44

Moderator Even though he was a Lutheran minister, he wasn't involved in the Lutheran, uh, movement. Uh, he went off on his own way. And so basically, people didn't-- he wasn't engaged in any of the normal, the, the normal stuff. Um, and, uh- So he didn't practice politics per se? Is that what you mean? Well, he practiced- Bond with- He practiced a lot of politics, but it's what they call fifth track diplomacy. Okay. And it's where citizens get together. That's what happens at Co. And so, uh, yeah. So that's the short, kind of short and sweet answer. Okay. And, and does he... I'm sorry, last thing. Was he the one that really didn't have a gra-- a headstone or a grave to speak of? Or was that... Um, no, he's got one. In fact, uh, our buddy, uh, Don here's got a, got a pal who's, uh, uh, keeping everything, uh- Good ... keeping everything trimmed and everything, and, uh, uh- Yeah ... uh, it's gonna be fun to-- I, I'm gonna have a great time with you, Don. Thank you. Thank you. All right.

68:21

Moderator We're gonna try to wrap up the meeting, but we'll still hang out and, uh, if anyone still has a question, they can ask Jay. Um, right now I'm gonna turn the meeting over to Mike to wrap it up for us. Perfect. Hey, thanks again. Jay, thank you for sharing with us this evening. I know we had some audio issues. I know that some of you were frustrated. Um, Jay lives out in the, in the mountains in, uh, in Sedona. So I think sometimes it cut out there. But, uh, for the most part, it was great. Thank you, Jay. We appreciated it. Um, we're probably gonna, uh, be inviting Jay back in September to see if he can do a little bit more because this was just one of the presentations that Jay gives, and we certainly love having him, uh, share with us. I want to thank everybody for joining us tonight. I'd like to welcome you to come back next week. We're gonna share some rare recordings from the early AA International Conventions in celebration of Alcoholics Anonymous eighty-five years. The following week, we're gonna dedicate to Anne Smith, Dr.

69:55

Moderator Bob's wife, and the work that Anne did in Akron with the families of alcoholics. You're not gonna want to miss that. And then the week after that, we have, um, Scott Jay gonna speak about Washingtonians and the temperance movement. So please stay with us. Uh, tonight it's open now. We're gonna just end the meeting and, and tell you all thank you. And Jay, if you'd like to stay on and converse with us- Sure ... love to have you do that. Thank you again. Thank you very much, Jay Okay. And it's where citizens get together. That's what happens at Co. And so, uh, yeah. So that's the short, kind of short and sweet answer. Okay. And, and does he... I'm sorry, last thing. Was he the one that really didn't have a gra-- a headstone or a grave to speak of? Or was that... Um, no, he's got one. In fact, uh, our buddy, uh, Don here's got a, got a pal who's, uh, uh, keeping everything, uh- Good ... keeping everything trimmed and everything, and, uh, uh- Yeah ... uh, it's gonna be fun to-- I, I'm gonna have a great time with you, Don.

71:37

Moderator Thank you. Thank you. All right. We're gonna try to wrap up the meeting, but we'll still hang out and, uh, if anyone still has a question, they can ask Jay. Um, right now I'm gonna turn the meeting over to Mike to wrap it up for us. Perfect. Hey, thanks again. Jay, thank you for sharing with us this evening. I know we had some audio issues. I know that some of you were frustrated. Um, Jay lives out in the, in the mountains in, uh, in Sedona. So I think sometimes it cut out there. But, uh, for the most part, it was great. Thank you, Jay. We appreciated it. Um, we're probably gonna, uh, be inviting Jay back in September to see if he can do a little bit more because this was just one of the presentations that Jay gives, and we certainly love having him, uh, share with us. I want to thank everybody for joining us tonight. I'd like to welcome you to come back next week. We're gonna share some rare recordings from the early AA International Conventions in celebration of Alcoholics Anonymous eighty-five years.

73:09

Jay The following week, we're gonna dedicate to Anne Smith, Dr. Bob's wife, and the work that Anne did in Akron with the families of alcoholics. You're not gonna want to miss that. And then the week after that, we have, um, Scott Jay gonna speak about Washingtonians and the temperance movement. So please stay with us. Uh, tonight it's open now. We're gonna just end the meeting and, and tell you all thank you. And Jay, if you'd like to stay on and converse with us- Sure ... love to have you do that. Thank you again. Thank you very much, Jay

The following is an AI-generated transcript. Minor errors may occur. The audio is the authoritative source.

The Oxford Group and AA’s Origins — Jay Stennett — Tuesday Night History Workshop — July 3, 2020

The Oxford Group and AA’s Origins — Jay Stennett — Tuesday Night History Workshop — July 3, 2020

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