MORAL AND SPIRITUAL RE-ARMAMENT

Now that Blomberg and the steelworkers were coming forward, Buchman felt more confident. Even so, not everyone immediately took to him. Sven Stolpe, Blomberg's literary colleague, was 'horrified' when they met. He had first heard of Buchman in Norway 'through that marvellous team of brilliant men, Fangen, Wikborg, Skard, Mowinckel', and was expecting to be deeply impressed by this man to whom they all declared they owed so much. But Stolpe found him 'one hundred per cent American, ugly and so unintellectual'. 'He did not think logically and what he said often seemed to me naive and incoherent. He laughed and laughed and smiled all day. He was never solemn, and we Swedes are always very solemn about holy things.'

To his astonishment, however, Buchman asked him to interpret for him when he returned in August to hold the first Moral Re-Armament Assembly at Visby, on the Baltic island of Gotland.*

Buchman at Visby, translated by Sven Stolpe

(* The wife of the Bishop on the island of Gotland, Torsten Ysander, consulted Buchman on the seating of a dinner party. Buchman said, 'Oh, I think we seat the changed and the unchanged alternately.' 'Where should I sit?' asked Mrs Ysander. 'Beside me, of course,' replied Buchman. 'And we both laughed uproariously,' added Mrs Ysander. (Frank Buchman— Eighty, p. 192.)

Stolpe protested: 'I've never been to England or spoken English or known any English people.'

'Oh, God will help,' replied Buchman, and Stolpe agreed to do it.

The crowds at Visby were all the greater because the visit had been so long delayed. They poured in until there was no building large enough to hold them except the ruins of the old church of St Nikolaus. Stockholms- Tidningen, then the largest Swedish daily, sent its aeroplane each day for pictures and reports. Yet Buchman believed it would be tough going, against the complacency of Swedish society and the cynicism among its intellectuals. Stolpe agreed. 'I have never known such hatred as there was towards Buchman from some present and from some who had sent them,' he said. 'This American coming to teach Christianity to good old Swedes!'

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Photo: Buchman speaking at Visby, translated by Swedish author, Sven Stolpe.
©Arthur Strong/MRA Productions