THE OXFORD GROUP

Buchman insisted, at the beginning of one term, that each should aim to change the most difficult person in the college. With some it happened, and the skill and reticence he practised gradually began to develop in his young friends. Meanwhile, there was trial, and not a little error. 'Ambition came in a good deal with me, and did harm,' recalls Ian Sciortino of St Edmund Hall. 'I met our College Vice-Principal - he'd got a brilliant First in theology - and told him all about the spiritual life. He didn't like being assaulted by a brash young hearty and told me so. I also buttonholed the college chaplain. He was quite encouraging, but I learnt later that he had given me a very unpleasant nickname which went around the Senior Common Room.' Sciortino's Principal, A. B. Emden, however, frequently had him and his friends to his rooms, listened and prayed with them, and remained a life-long friend.

Families naturally reacted in different ways. When the Isis cartoonist, Reginald Hale, met the Oxford Group, his mother was anxious about the subject of 'guidance' and wrote to her uncle, Prebendary Carlile, the founder of the Church Army. Back came a reassuring postcard: 'Dear Marie, Guidance is love in action. Yours in the fight. Wilson Carlile.'10 Margot Appleyard's11 father, anxious that she might later regret her decision to give her whole time to Group work after leaving Oxford, allowed her four months to try it out and then took her on six months' world-wide travel. On their way back across the Mediterranean, she told him that she was more sure than ever that she should work with Buchman and his friends. Her father was content, and backed her in her decision for the rest of his life.

Others met with sterner opposition. One young man was cut out of his father's will, and other parents feared that 'faith and prayer' would mean that their offspring would get into financial difficulties which would put some obligation on them. But most parents, when they were sure their young people felt a deep call, agreed to their following it. Indeed, quite a few followed their children. When Rozi Evans, a cheerful agnostic from Herefordshire, joined Buchman, she was followed by her father and mother, three brothers, two sisters and numerous cousins. The surviving parents of Kit Prescott, Ray Nelson and Francis Goulding were among many who took an active part with them in the Oxford Group for the rest of their lives.

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