How empowering was the Oxford Group/Moral Re-Armament’s spirituality for social change?
Publication information:
Belden, David. 2023. “How Empowering Was the Oxford Group Moral Re-Armament’s Spirituality for Social Change?.” in Uses and Abuses of Power in Alternative Spiritualities. Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Abstract
Abstract: This paper considers the unusual and still underappreciated attempts by the Moral Re-Armament movement (MRA) to apply its personal transformation modality, in the pietist Christian tradition, to major socio-political conflicts. While thousands of people felt energized and empowered by MRA to participate in peacemaking at the height of the Cold War and the colonial independence movements, their claimed successes were never studied in academia, nor taken seriously by the liberal intelligentsia at large. The paper asks why this was so, and whether there is still something to be learned from MRA's experience for peacemaking and social activism today.
Presenter bio: David Belden, D. Phil, was raised in Moral Re-Armament's London headquarters. He was a true believer and evangelist with it for five years before leaving it and writing a doctoral thesis about it in the Social Sciences faculty at Oxford University. In his eclectic life he was been a social change activist, carpenter, published novelist, magazine editor, adjunct professor at Marist College and the California Institute of Integral Studies, and, for the past ten years, restorative justice facilitator.
Affiliation: The Ahimsa Collective
Presenter bio: David Belden, D. Phil, was raised in Moral Re-Armament's London headquarters. He was a true believer and evangelist with it for five years before leaving it and writing a doctoral thesis about it in the Social Sciences faculty at Oxford University. In his eclectic life he was been a social change activist, carpenter, published novelist, magazine editor, adjunct professor at Marist College and the California Institute of Integral Studies, and, for the past ten years, restorative justice facilitator.
Affiliation: The Ahimsa Collective