Religion: Absolute Honesty

Like patent-medicine manufacturers, the Oxford Groups of Dr. Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman esteem testimonials. From their London and Manhattan headquarters they send out batches of statements from the great and the near-great, praising their trademarked remedy—or at least denouncing the ills it is meant to cure.

The Groups have lately circulated a triple-shot testimonial containing the following items: 1) a letter from Dr. Henry St. George Tucker, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, calling attention to a speech by the Archbishop of Canterbury; 2) the Archbishop’s speech, in which he mentioned the Groups as one of many evidences of a new interest in religion; 3) a copy of the Church of England Newspaper devoted to extravagant praise of the Groups.

Last week the American Church Monthly (high-Episcopal) editorially charged that the Groups were trying to make it appear that Bishop Tucker and the Archbishop of Canterbury “esteemed the Groups as highly as the enclosed newspaper did (of which there is no evidence).” One tenet of Buchmanism is “Absolute Honesty” (along with Absolute Purity, Love, Unselfishness). Cracked the Monthly: “We do not for a moment suppose that Dr. Tucker was a party to this devious and dubious business, nor the Archbishop either; but it does go to show what happens to ‘absolute honesty’ in an advertising age.”