Frank Buchman

TIME AND PLACE: CAUX, Switzerland post WW2

THE PEOPLE INVOLVED: Frank ND Buchman was the initiator of Moral Re-Armament, now known as Initiatives of Change.

SITUATION: Buchman returned to Europe after WW2, conscious that lasting worldwide peace could only be established on the basis of a change in personal and public relationships. At this time any contact with the Germans was extremely difficult.

WHAT HAPPENED: Moral Re armament opened an international conference centre in Caux, Switzerland, made possible through the generosity and hard work of hundreds of Swiss citizens. Over the next four years more than 3,000 Germans and 2,000 French came to Caux, and their

CAUX Conference Center

encounters became the basis of a massive development in reconciliation and reconstruction.

END RESULTS: Buchman was later decorated by both the German and French governments for his contribution to European reconciliation. The story of one them, Resistance leader Madame Irène Laure, is told on video – and is also available as a book. The conferences at Caux, and similar ones at Mackinac Island in the United States, achieved further public recognition through several other major contributions to international developments in the post-war years, notably the part played in the reconciliation of Japan with her South-East Asian neighbours, and in the achievement of independence by several African countries without major bloodshed. By the 1950s, casts of plays presenting MRA’s ideas were travelling all over the world.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

See the IOFC website under history