New Man at M.R.A.

Many a spiritual movement has expired with its founder, but Moral Re-Armament is made of more durable stuff. Three years after the death of Frank Buchman, M.R.A. feels as assured as ever that it will conquer the world with its four absolutes: honesty, purity, unselfishness and love.

Skeptical of the power of the pulpit. M.R.A. chiefly dramatizes its doctrines by stage and screen. Last week the latest of its simplistic message plays, Through the Garden Wall, in which feuding neighbors learn love through M.R.A., was touring Germany, drawing enthusiasm from crowds and shudders from drama critics. Thousands still flock each summer to M.R.A.'s grand rallies at its lavish headquarters at Caux, Switzerland, and Mackinac Island, Michigan; in 1962 M.R.A. opened a third and equally handsome center at Odawara, Japan. Although M.R.A. officials are vague about money and membership figures, Britain's Peter Howard, Buchman's designated successor as the movement's leader, insists: "We are getting more contributions than we did ten years ago, and many more people are working for M.R.A."

From Rugby to Royalties. Moral Re-Armer Howard could hardly be more unlike Buchman, who was a mild-mannered rural pastor and Y.M.C.A. worker until he founded the Oxford Group. M.R.A.'s predecessor. Lean, trim and handsome at 56, Howard was in his day one of Oxford's athletic greats, eight times a star on Britain's international rugby team. In 1941, as the best-known and most biting political columnist in Lord Beaverbrook's stable, he was assigned to write some pieces about M.R.A. and ended up joining it. He owns and operates a model farm in East Anglia, has turned out 16 plays (including Garden Wall); the royalties from his writing, $1,120,000 in all, have gone to the cause.

Since World War II, M.R.A. has offered itself to the world as an ideology for the West. Howard insists that the movement adheres faithfully to Buchman's grand strategy-converting the world's leaders to living by the four absolutes. The movement no longer flaunts the easily refuted claims of a decade ago that labor union converts had brought industrial peace to strife-ridden cities. And M.R.A. these days soft-pedals endorsements from African leaders maintaining that the movement has saved the continent from chaos.

Against Satirists & Cynics. Welcoming men of all faiths, M.R.A. claims that it is not a rival to existing churches. Rome suspects that it is, and many Catholic bishops have warned their flocks against joining. A number of Protestant leaders have attacked its ideology as essentially unBiblical, even though M.R.A. is about as rigid as the Old Testament prophets on the need for strict standards of personal conduct. Good members of M.R.A. do not smoke or drink, and even if married are urged to sexual restraint. Last week Peter Howard warned Britain's new Prime Minister Harold Wilson against "satirists and cynics" who "debase our ancient virtue and push pornography and godlessness down the national gullet." A current M.R.A. crusade in Holland features big newspaper ads, written by Howard, condemning the spread of homosexuality ("It can be cured").

M.R.A., obviously, is not the world's only spiritual movement that praises purity and honesty. But some Christians seem to find in it a spiritual solace and discipline unavailable elsewhere.

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