Death of a Salesman, Peter Howard Takes Over
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and the Twelve Steps by A. Orange
Chapter 23: Death of a Salesman;
The MRA followers continued to drop out and desert. In 1935, 10,000 followers had gathered at "Hamlet Castle" (Kronborg Castle) in Denmark,44 and in 1939 the Buchmanites had bragged that 15,000 people attended their New York City house party at Madison Square Garden (the New York Times reported 12,000), and that 30,000 people attended their Hollywood Bowl rally, but by 1961 Moral Re-Armament was reduced to bragging that 1000 people had attended their World Assembly at Caux, Switzerland.41 "The Movement" was dying out. More and more, the MRA press releases were obituaries of the leaders and long-time faithful, rather than cheery news of the explosive growth of MRA.42
When Frank Buchman died in 1961, in Freudenstadt, Germany, one of his disciples, Peter Howard, took over the leadership of Moral Re-Armament, but he only lived for a few more years himself. Still, Peter Howard managed to promote the same hateful insane ultra-Right-wing philosophy of MRA during what little time he had remaining. He wrote and published a book, Britain and the Beast, which, among other things, continued the attacks on homosexuals. Howard devoted two whole chapters, out of the 14 chapters in his book, to attacking homosexuals. In the chapter titled "Queens and Queers", Howard complained bitterly about a Sunday sermon that he had heard on the radio which preached tolerance and charity towards homosexuals:
Homosexuals use such broadcasts to justify their ways. They protest that they are not propagandists. But it is a lie. (Homosexuals tell many lies. It is part of their retreat and cover from life.) They try to make others homosexual to ease the sting of their uncertainty. Two hundred and sixty-four homosexuals in the State Department? That sounds just like Senator Joseph McCarthy the Red-baiter, waving a piece of paper in the air and claiming that he had the names of 205 Communists who worked in the State Department (whom he never did identify, in spite of many repeated requests from the Senate subcommittees that were investigating McCarthy's charges).65 And Peter Howard seems to have found homosexuals everywhere:
A boy who last year [1962] left a well-known public school said to me, 'At the school I left recently, about eighty per cent of the boys went through some homosexual experience.'
From America, where a recent estimate made says that one man in six is homosexual, a man wrote from Seattle, on 24 January 1963, 'In my lifetime I have known personally at least 5,000 of those some people call security risks. I am a homosexual myself.'
With fascination I watched the little Sodoms functioning within Embassies and foreign offices. Somehow homosexuals always seemed to come by the dozen, not because they were cheaper that way but rather because a homosexual ambassador or chargé d'affaires or Under-Secretary of State liked to staff his 'team' with his own people.
Peter Howard denied that Moral Re-Armament was basically dead on its feet, an idea whose time had gone. He alternated between declaring it victorious and wallowing in self-pity, complaining about the criticism that MRA received:
Moral Re-Armament is an army on the march throughout the world united by an idea whose time in history has come. Such warriors cannot be lured by favours, nor halted by lies, threats or ruthless bullying. It is a winning march.
In Britain today, the easy course would be to drift with the stream and to yield the effort to turn the tide. Anybody who tries to restore God to leadership in Britain today, to bring purity to homes, unselfishness to business and industry, honesty to politics, and love to answer the snobbery of the new elite and the frustrated superiority of the old, has a rough time. Often they are misrepresented, misunderstood, gagged, smeared, and ostracized.
There was once a man who, after inspecting the Louvre pictures, told a gallery guard, 'I don't think much of the pictures.' The guard answered, 'It's not the pictures that are on trial here. It's the folk who look at them.' Those darkened souls who want to force the earth into acceptance of their own compromise needs must hate Moral Re-Armament. It is the reaction of Materialism against the reality of the Holy Spirit at work in human hearts.
We are said to be more idealistic and less real than the man who tries to change the world without changing human nature. ... ("We have no political ambitions. We just want to control everybody who controls the world.") Peter Howard died suddenly in March, 1965, less than four years after Frank Buchman, while on a trip to South America.
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Last updated 11 April 2009. |
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