The MRA conference center in Switzerland : a working experiment in applying a philosophy of life

This article was first printed in a shorter form, in `The Times', London, who had asked Graham Turner to defend the orthodox Christian position.

Women from around the world light a candle to launch a peace initiative with a difference. Mary Lean joined them in the mountain village of Caux, Switzerland.

'Democracy starts with me' was the theme of MOral Re-Armament's 1991 conference at Caux, Switzerland. Over seven weeks 2,160 people attended its sessions. Michael Smith reports:

A task that's just begun' ran the slogan across the backdrop at the Victoria Palace theatre, London. An unusual theme, you might think, for a 50th anniversary meeting.

In his address, Bishop Wheeler spoke of meeting Frank Buchman, the initiator of Moral Re-Armament, in Oxford in the 1930s. `And, God forgive me, I did not take to the man,' he said. `Looking back, I think this must have been my loss... I began to see things in a different light when I read of the extraordinary achievement of postwar reconciliation brought about by his establishment and labours in the Mountain House at Caux in Switzerland.

'If it were not for Margit Borg Sundman, I would be dead today.'

I find myself writing this article surrounded by packing cases in a house devoid of books and looking strangely barren and uninviting. We are moving house, not knowing where our future home is to be.

For 40 years Buchman built up a worldwide network of men and women of different views and backgrounds united by their determination to seek and try to follow God's will.

MRA is ten years older than I am, and I've known it all my life, man and child, which is my only qualification for this very personal view.