THE name and face of Frank Buchman are not widely known. About 25 years ago, while on holiday in Switzerland, I came across a grand building on a hilltop at Caux, overlooking Lac Leman (Lake Geneva). It was a conference centre, with a museum open to the public. This was the base of Moral Re-Armament, an organisation with a well-intended but grandiose plan to remould humanity. I had not heard of it, but for interest I bought a postcard with a photographic portrait of the bald, bespectacled Buchman, the founder. Back home I put this away in a drawer and forgot about it.
Two decades later, after I began writing about globalist organisations, I discovered that my friend and fellow scholar Roger Watson had been a member of Moral Re-Armament in the past. Roger told me of an experience during his membership in the 1970s.
In Paris on other business, Roger decided to visit the Moral Re-Armament office, in the suburb of Bois du Boulogne. As he arrived a man was leaving in a hurry. Roger learned that this was Fritz Philips, head of the Dutch business empire, and that he had been meeting representatives of Mossad and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. Philips was also involved in the Bilderberg Group, and this led Roger down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theory, from which he emerged with the conclusion that rather than wild conjecture, the conspirators were very real.
‘A globalist odyssey: the makings of world government from Moral Re-Armament to the World Economic Forum’ was written by Roger and me for the New Conservative website, in two parts, the first of which is reproduced below. It’s a long read, but I’m sure you will find it rewarding.
MORAL RE-ARMAMENT AND THE ROOTS OF GLOBALISM
Roger Watson and Niall McCrae
In 1908 a disillusioned Lutheran pastor left Pennsylvania to begin a new journey in life. Soon after arriving in England, the young man attended a religious revivalist meeting in Keswick, Westmorland. There he had a profound experience of the presence of Christ, which he immediately shared with a fellow attendee on a lakeside walk. On this windswept road to Damascus began the mission of Doctor Frank Buchman (1878-1961) to ‘remake the world’.
Buchman returned to America and established the First Century Christian Fellowship in 1921. Engaging students in American universities, the organisation grew and had considerable success on Ivy League campuses and at the University of Oxford. When a team of Buchman’s pilgrims arrived in South Africa in 1928, they were dubbed the ‘Oxford Group’, and this name was generalised for everyone involved in Buchman’s work for the next 10 years.
Arms of morality
Buchman was very ideological and strategic in his approach. He was also very ambitious in his aims. He was avidly opposed to the Soviet system and Marxism, and his movement at times proclaimed and took an avowedly and actively anti-communist stance. Naively, Buchman attended the Nuremberg Rally in 1935, which led to him thanking God for Adolf Hitler, because the Nazi dictator was standing up to communism. That infamous gaffe plagued the rest of his career. However, it should be noted that, at the time of his comments British and American foreign policy was not implacably averse to Nazi Germany, and there are indications that Hitler had support in high places.
The imminence of another world war, and with memories of the 1914-18 carnage still fresh in people’s minds, Buchman believed that morality was the key to locking the door on the military momentum. In 1938 he founded Moral Re-Armament (MRA) in East Ham, Essex. With darkening clouds over Europe, Buchman tuned into the zeitgeist of a prevailing fear of devastation, of which ample evidence was provided by the deadly machinery in the Spanish Civil War. In 1939 Buchman filled the Hollywood Bowl in the United States in a Billy Graham-style evangelistic drive. A notable feature of this event was the four giant spotlights projecting into the night sky, representing the four pillars of MRA: absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love.
MRA did not step off-stage in the Second World War. To obviate any perceived pacifism, Buchman encouraged his followers to sign up with the allied forces. The contribution of MRA to the war effort was praised by Senator Harry Truman, who said that ‘there is not a single industrial bottleneck I can think of which could not be broken in a matter of weeks if this crowd were given the green lights to go full steam ahead’.
After the war, MRA sent ‘task forces’ around the world to continue its programme, which emphasised ‘cooperation, honesty and mutual respect between opposing groups’. Meanwhile Buchman recruited famous figures to the MRA cause including author Daphne du Maurier, and the celebrity couple of tennis player HW ‘Bunny’ Austin and actress Phyllis Konstam. Such prominent membership boosted the profile of MRA, thereby gaining the attention of world leaders.
MRA was no obscure talking shop; it had seminal impact on the shaping of the post-war world. Earlier in his career, Buchman had remarkable success at cultivating universal harmony with political leaders such as Carl J Hambro, president of Norway. Alongside Hambro, Buchman was involved in the launch of the League of Nations (predecessor of the United Nations) in 1920. He and Hambro were keen participants in the creation of a united Europe. Buchman worked behind the scenes to encourage the post-war leaders of France, Germany and Italy to cooperate on this venture. MRA had close links to the Bilderberg Group, a secretive globalist organisation founded at the eponymous hotel in 1954, and later with the powerful Trilateral Commission.
Magnates and musicals
Buchman, to all intents and purposes, founded his own religion. In its heyday of the late 1940s and 1950s, MRA remained true to its Christian inspiration. Buchman distilled the Sermon on the Mount — itself a distillation of the teaching of Jesus — into the aforementioned absolutes of honesty, purity, unselfishness and love. These four standards were deployed to challenge and change young men, who were expected thereafter to exercise these standards in perpetuity and to instil them in the lives of others. MRA worked at various levels from individual evangelism to cultural exploits in theatre and literature.
However, by the 1960s MRA had evolved from practical philanthropy into a rigid hierarchy, topped by men in suits engaging in international diplomacy, as described in co-author RW’s 1987 pamphlet The Salvation Army in Dinner Jackets. A notable feature of MRA was its ownership of prestigious properties in the major cities of the world. For example, in London it owned a property in Berkeley Square and afterwards, in addition to the Westminster Theatre, it bought palatial townhouses in Catherine Place and Buckingham Place. The latter was once the London home of John and Jackie Kennedy. In addition, they owned a Cheshire estate, Tirley Garth, which housed many activists and was used as a country retreat and conference centre. A prime example of the property portfolio of MRA was Mackinac Island, Michigan, where major international meetings were held. This impressive estate was meant to appeal to the class of people on whom MRA focused their efforts, including industry leaders and politicians.
MRA survived in name until 2001. Throughout its 63 years there were remarkably few splits or splinter groups, with two notable exceptions. In 1935 a close colleague of Buchman, Bill Wilson, founded Alcoholics Anonymous. This parting of ways was not acrimonious; Buchman wished Wilson well but regarded this work as too narrow in aims and scope. Ironically, AA continues to thrive while MRA has folded.
The other separation was far from cordial. It involved a singing troupe within MRA, Sing Out, who performed a musical Up With People. On Buchman’s death in 1961, American member J Blanton Belk spied an opportunity. Instead of seeking leadership of MRA, he led many young members of the Sing Out group away from MRA to tour the world with Up With People the Sing Out Musical. Among the venues were the White House, Indianapolis 500, the Cotton Bowl, Super Bowl X, Belfast during the Troubles and the People’s Republic of China. In 1970 the renamed Up With People officially cut ties with MRA. Around this time, all real estate in the USA was sold off, including the jewel in the crown, Mackinac Island. Up With People continues touring, although the religious element of MRA is no longer evident. It runs programmes of performances, volunteering, and workshops to achieve their ‘vision of an inclusive and sustainable world where people are equal in dignity and rights’.
While Belk and others took to choreography, the more serious work of MRA was continued by British journalist Peter Howard. The reign of Buchman’s successor, however, was short-lived. In 1965 Howard died suddenly (and some within MRA think suspiciously) while representing the organisation in South America. Both Buchman and Howard were charismatic and effective leaders with a clear ideological vision. However, Howard was not universally popular and following his death it was decided to run the movement collectively. Around this time MRA went into decline, partly due to infiltration. Several communists were identified in MRA and double agents appeared to be working to usurp this avowedly anti-communist organisation.
Moving with the times
The story of MRA did not end in 2001. From its remnants Initiatives of Change, a new non-governmental organisation, was formed. This was the brainchild of Erik Andren, a charismatic polymath, inventor, architect and entrepreneur. Andren was on the fringes of MRA and did not intend to form a movement, but the success of his methods became apparent and MRA chose to resurrect itself as Initiatives of Change.
Initiatives of Change bears little resemblance to MRA. Its website promotes individual growth as the means of making a better world. While claiming to be ‘faith-based’, the Christian fundamentals of MRA are downplayed in Initiative of Change. However, MRA itself had long ago become a syncretistic organisation. In his later life Buchman caused concern to Christians when he said: ‘MRA is the good road of an ideology inspired by God upon which all can unite. Catholic, Jew and Protestant, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and Confucianist — all find they can change, where needed, and travel along this good road together.’
Initiatives of Change spreads its wings through a plethora of hubs and internet activities around the world. A core theme is positive change through reconciliation and peace initiatives, working with refugees and promoting sustainability. However, gone are the grand properties, and most of the major conference centres. An exception is the former Caux Palace Hotel at Caux overlooking Lake Geneva in Switzerland, which has long been the world headquarters of the movement. Instead of being funded by MRA members and supporters, this property is run by Initiatives of Change as a commercial conference centre, mirroring the operation of its new owner, in whom any lingering MRA philosophy is little more than vestigial.
Buchman the globalist
Although the League of Nations failed to prevent war, it provided a framework for the subsequent formation of the United Nations in 1946. Undoubtedly Buchman strove to instil a Christian vision within both of these global organisations, and his ability to bring world leaders together was grounded in his strong faith.
Testament to the influence of Buchman is the fact that planning meetings for the European Community were held at the MRA headquarters in Caux. Present at the meetings were the architects of a united Europe: French prime minister Robert Schuman; German chancellor Konrad Adenauer; and Italian prime minister Alcide de Gasperi, whose portraits adorn the walls of the main hall at Caux. The specific influence of Buchman on Adenauer and De Gasperi is uncertain. But his influence on Schuman was profound and Schuman left his substantial Paris residence in prestigious Bois du Bologne to MRA, which became the French headquarters of the work.
Global industrialist Frits Philips was a prominent member of MRA. It is worth noting that Philips’ daughter Annejet was married to Paul Campbell, who had served as Frank Buchman’s personal physician and who also accompanied Peter Howard on his international work, including his final and fatal visit to South America. The possibility of MRA being manipulated or used for their own ends by characters like Philips becomes more apparent when it is understood that he was a founding member of the Bilderberg Group.
The Bilderberg Group was ostensibly a peace initiative between Europe and North America, involving the great and perhaps not so good from politics, industry, finance and academe. It is named after the plush hotel where the inaugural meeting was held. Initially the Bilderberg Group was under the chairmanship of the highly controversial ex-Nazi and scandal-ridden figure of Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. In essence it is an elitist organisation and, while it makes no secret of its existence and meetings, membership is strictly by invitation and proceedings are confidential. As noted in its Wikipedia entry, the group meets annually at prestigious locations such as Gleneagles Hotel, and it continues to be chaired by a succession of European nobility.
The Bilderbergers have demonstrable links to another powerful body of the global elite, the Trilateral Commission. In 1986 Philips launched the Caux Round Table group of senior European, Japanese and American business executives, a similar geographical grouping to that of the Trilateral Commission. Andrew Young, a Trilateral Commission member, addressed the MRA annual conference in 1987.
In facilitating globalist organisations that became synonymous with conspiracist conjecture of a ‘new world order’, was MRA a Trojan horse for people and ideas that went well beyond its aims? The movement was also used to provide a smokescreen of legitimacy specifically to the founding of the European Community and its prestigious premises used to bring together those identified as the key players. Buchman’s personal commitment to this initiative is not in doubt but it is likely that he was corrupted by personal ambition and a desire to achieve something significant for MRA in the post-war years. Certainly MRA and its sequel Initiatives of Change make plentiful reference to the part played in founding the European Community.
Influence or impotence
It is hard to gauge the real impact of MRA on world politics, but there were some notable events in which they were intimately and very publicly associated such as the transition to majority rule in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). MRA worked with people on both sides of the conflict, although arguably the organisation claimed more credit than was merited. The book Darkness and Dawn in Zimbabwe presents a typical MRA insider’s account. Much was made of the working relationship with Alec Smith, a Rhodesian Army chaplain, reformed drug addict, and son of the prime minister Ian Smith, who issued a unilateral declaration of independence from Britain.
MRA had little influence on Smith senior, but his son was a reconciliatory character who formed a friendship with African National Congress member Arthur Kanodereka, to whom MRA became very close. Through Kanodereka MRA reached Robert Mugabe, the future dictator of Zimbabwe, but with limited success. Eventually it transpired that Kanodereka was a double-agent, but tribute was paid to him in an obituary by prominent MRA member Hugh Elliott. Less was made publicly of MRA attempts to influence the Solidarity movement in Poland, and of their early visits to Communist China.
MRA literature and Initiatives of Change literature are replete with examples of meetings and encounters and stories of change. But the zenith of the movement founded by Buchman passed long ago. MRA was prone to exaggeration of its achievements in world affairs, although it cannot be criticised for effort. Ken Lefolli described its ‘simple-mindedness and self-infatuation’ in The MRA Dossier: ‘MRA literature abounds with approving messages from Chancellor Adenauer of Germany, Harry Truman, former Japanese Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi…(and) an alarming list of American generals and admirals.’
The pattern was set by the leader, as Lefolli noted: ‘There is no doubt that Frank Buchman sedulously pursued the friendship of powerful or popular men . . . By the time of his death (Buchman) had been photographed with, or at least greeted through the mail by, roughly half the celebrities in the Western world, from Queen Marie of Romania to Sugar Ray Robinson.
The globalist and elitist Bilderberg Group was undoubtedly inspired by the MRA. Among MRA membership was at least one leading industrialist who was a founding Bilderberger. From a historical perspective, the Bilderberg Group may be viewed as a bridge from the philanthropic but naïve world movement of MRA to the technocratic globalism of the Trilateral Commission and World Economic Forum. The time for talking was over . . .
This article appeared in Niall McCrae’s substack on October 6, 2025, and is republished by kind permission.
