Moral Re-Armament (MRA) was an international moral and spiritual
movement that, in 1938, developed from the American minister
Frank Buchman's Oxford Group. Buchman headed MRA for 23 years
until his death in 1961. In 2001 the movement was renamed
Initiatives of Change. In 1938 Europe was rearming militarily.
Frank Buchman, initiator of the work which became known as the
Oxford Group, was convinced that military rearmament alone would
not resolve the crisis. At a meeting of 3,000 in East Ham Town
Hall, London, on 29 May 1938, he launched a campaign for Moral
Re-Armament. "The crisis is fundamentally a moral one," he said.
"The nations must re-arm morally. Moral recovery is essentially
the forerunner of economic recovery. Moral recovery creates not
crisis but confidence and unity in every phase of life." The
phrase caught the mood of the time,and many public figures in
Britain spoke and wrote in support. British tennis star H. W.
Austin edited the book, Moral Rearmament (The Battle for Peace),
which sold half a