THE GROUP MOVEMENT : A VALUATION-I
By SIR MICHAEL SADLER
LAST Summer three thousand people attended a meeting of the Groups at Oxford. Just afterwards, nearly as 'many came to the same city for the synchronised conference of three International Educational Associa- tions. For the week of its sessions you could hardly take up a newspaper without seeing something about the congresS. on education. But hardly a word was Printed about ⢠the bigger, and not less international, gathering which had immediately preceded it. News- Value, in this case, was a faulty guide to the real signific- ance of contemporary events. I have heard no suggestion of Preo4-boycott. I have seen no sign of Groups being e°Y of publicity. But the fact that three thousand People. came to Oxford for a meeting of the Groups means that, for the time being, the movement has a strong hold on many disquieted minds. Not Great Britain only, or Canada or South Africa ' evince this interest nr, Groups. The photograph of this year's' crowded assembly in the court-yard of the castle at tlsinore ShOWs that many people in Denmark were Stirred by the Groups' propaganda. '⢠And, at the height of the Italo:Abyssinian dispute, we read in a despatch from Geneva of the influential meeting attended by many European' 'statesmen 'at the invitation of the President Of the Assembly of the League: The Editor thinks that some readers of The Spectator may be interested in hearing how 'the Oxford GrOups movement ⢠strikes a friendly outsider. I am friendly because I know what strength and joy membership has ,hronght to Many' of my acquaintance. Within my knowledge, which goes back to the inception of the movement, association with the Groups has meant new happiness in' life to some ' of my friendsâyoung and laiddle-agedâof unexpectedly diverse antecedents and callings. Of .a movement which has meant so much to them, I cannot think -but with gratitude and respect. tint I remain an outsider, because the Methods of the movement do not appeal, to my temperament or meet 4.13, individual needs. No more than this need be said of the reasons 'which have kept me aloof. But they cause me to ' write with misgiving, because an outsider's criticism of ' a contemporary religious movement often ' strikes us, who read it long afterwards, ag colour- blind. We feel this about Horace Walpole. And things are worse when the critic has got angry. Those of us who revere the memory of Charles Kingsley find no pleasure in reading what he wrote about .John Henry Newman. And our affectionate admiration for T. H.
luxley is , chilled by his articles on the Salvation Army.
Spiritually and emotionally, the whole world today is a seething pot. Europe, the pioneer of. Christian civilisation, is at a crisis in its belief in God. No, other issue is comparable in importance. Groups may not count for much numerically, but they represent a strong trend of theistic conviction. On the fundamental issue of our time, they range themselVes decisively on the side of Christian belief. They feel with the Lord's Prayer, not with Karl Marx.
Many people today feel lonely. In an age buzzing with communication this is a paradox.- But the patter of communications from far and near upon the windows of our 'mind has made us feel the need for more varieties of friendship. Sides of our nature--the artistic, for example, or the metaphysical or the psychologicalâ which in former days got numb' through disuse or were schooled into apathy .by unrespOnsive surroundings,' have been made sensitive by books, ⢠newspapers and the wireless and by watching the trend of great events at home and abroad. Thus the March of change, thrown by the lanterns of communication upon the screen of our mind, has made us more conscious than we used to be of our need for guidance and sympathy in the dilemmas of judgement: To satisfy this need, we are thirsty for guidance from those who knoW and fOr frank talk with people we are not shy of. Conferences and meetings like the Groups giye this opportunity of hearing those whom we wish to hear, and of making congenial acquaintance. For this reason, conferences of many kinds have becothe numerous and supply a present need. Many people are repressed. They want to talk freely about intimate thingsâquestions of day, questions of spending. questions of sex, questionS of personal beliefâabout which some people in their ordinary surroundings cannot be frank. But they long for the relief which' Comes from Open admission of failure in a company of peOple sympathetically inclined. What the class-meeting was to MethodiSts, " Waring " is to many men and women todtiy. , To say that Groups have no convincing message to the intellect, no thought-out philosophy of sacrament,' dogma and ethic, is, I think, a substantial criticism of much of their published work. But to lay stress on this characteristic is to underrate the significance Of the Group inovern ent as a symptom of one current in contemporary feeling. Groups are an instinctive reaction, on the part of many whose pOwers of mind are per- ceptive rather than analytical,' against the popularised intellectualism' which in effect denies that man can pray to God and that God hears his prayer. We live in an age of expectancy, like our forefathers in the days of Gilbert of Sempringharn and Joachim de Fiore. People feel that the great changes which they have witnessed portend changes greater still.. A chapter in history seems to them to be closing, and the next page is but half-turned. An age of expectancy is visited by strange kinds of emotional experience. The world in which we are now living is unexpectedly different from that with which we older people were familiar 50 years ago, much harsher in sonic things, much more sentimental in others. The Midlothian campaign was child's-play compared with one of Hitler's meetings at Nuremberg, or Mussolini's in Rome. In Europe and in Asia, not to speak of the United ,States, multitudes are sensitive to the. magnetism of a leader who has organising power. To ninny men and women, young and. middle-aged, Dr. Frank â˘Buchman's personality makes a powerful appeal.
A great virtue of the Group 'movements is also, from one point of view,' its weakness. Rightly as I believe, it refuses to detach any one from allegiance to his church. Like the League of Nations Union, it works with all churches and all parties. But there are some observers who predict that, if it does not organise itself as a church, it will be evanescent.
⢠The significance, however, of the Group movement as a symptom of the religious unsettlement of our time depends not on the likelihood of its permanence, but on the intensity of the influence which it now brings to bear upon individual lives. The chances of its survival as a permanent organisation are a trifling matter compared with the .penetrating power of its fellowship upon men and women at ⢠this critical juncture in human affairs..
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