During the early 1930s the Church of England made at least two official suggestions of closer co-operation. The first proposal was transmitted to Buchman and Loudon Hamilton by Dr Cyril Bardsley, Bishop of Leicester and Chairman of the Archbishop's Committee on Evangelism. Bardsley had attended several house-parties and had written that his 'chief impression was the utter sincerity and humility of the Group's leaders'.30

Buchman and Hamilton travelled to Leicester to hear the proposal. 'The idea', noted Hamilton, 'was that the Oxford Group should be recognised officially as a sort of Provisional Wing of the Church of England, recognised and organised accordingly, with Dr Bardsley as Chairman. Dr Bardsley seemed to me as if he did not relish the part he was chosen to play, but loyally expounded the proposal, ending with the suggestion of himself assuming the chairmanship.' There is some doubt whether Bardsley in fact proposed himself or Buchman for that office, as Buchman asserted the latter in a letter to a friend. To whichever proposal it was, Buchman replied, 'Hitherto there has been no chairman except the Holy Spirit,' and he and Hamilton left by the next train for London.

The second suggestion was made by the Bishop of Salisbury and was talked out in January 1935 at Lambeth, in the presence of three other Bishops. The Ecclesiastical Commission had bought Milton Abbey in Dorset, together with its large house and ample grounds. They now offered it, in the words of the Bishop of Salisbury, to be 'a training centre run by the Oxford Group under the aegis of the Church of England'. 'For my own part', he wrote enthusiastically, 'I confess I am fired with the possibility of grounding all that is good in the Group movement in the soil of the Catholic faith and tradition. It is certainly what the Church wants, and I believe would be for the strength and development of the Movement.'31 The upkeep, which would fall on the Oxford Group, would be about £2,000 a year.

The Bishops' first approach had been made to a number of Church of England clergy and laymen, and took place in early December. The letter quoted above was sent to Kenaston Twitchell in London, as Buchman was in Norway. Those first approached were enthusiastic about Church sponsorship, but Twitchell, noting that it would take twenty mature people to supply adequate leadership, was more cautious. 'It was offered to us free with the understanding that we would take care of the upkeep,' he wrote Buchman. 'It was pointed out that the Group is not an organisation* and therefore could run no establishment as a Group. With this the Bishop, I understand, concurred, but said he hoped it might be possible for us to supply individuals as leaders and make the place a Group centre as a private house.'32

(* There was, at that time, no legal body representing the Oxford Group.)

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