Disastrous disturbances: Buchmanism and student religious life at Princeton, 1919-1935

This dissertation tells the story of the Buchmanism controversy at Princeton University in the 1920s. It traces the development of student religious life at Princeton, the origins of the Buchman movement, and the intersection of these two histories Along the way it looks at how students and the institution organized campus religious life at Princeton.;The dissertation examines the Buchmanism controversy within the context of changes in student religious life at Princeton, arguing that Buchman's style of evangelical Christianity did not fit in the student culture of the 1920s. It discusses student religious life during Princeton's early years, focusing on the birth and development of the Philadelphian Society since 1825. It also introduces Buchman and Shoemaker, identifying their influences. A concluding chapter identifies the consequences of the conflict, including Princeton's appointment of a chaplain and creation of a religious studies department.;Looking at the relation of religion and higher education, this dissertation shifts the focus from institutional history and intellectual biography to the role religion played in the everyday life of the college campus. It looks for the religious vitality in the unofficial spaces of the university's life, and reflects on what kind of religion was possible at 1920s Princeton.;Frank Buchman (1878-1961) was a Lutheran clergyman and YMCA secretary who repackaged YMCA evangelism and Keswick perfectionism to address the spiritual needs of sophisticated students at Ivy League and English universities after World War I. The center of this work was at Princeton, where Buchman's disciples Samuel Shoemaker and Ray Purdy led the Philadelphian Society, Princeton's YMCA. Shoemaker and Purdy reshaped the Society, which had become the university's all-inclusive and quasi-official religious agency, into a sectarian cell group. Their confrontational evangelical style grated against many students' culture Christianity; rebellious students objected to what they perceived as the Society's moralism and exclusivity. They provoked a public controversy in the fall of 1926, leading to Purdy's resignation and Buchman's shift to England. Buchman's movement was known in the 1930s as the Oxford Group Movement and after 1938 as Moral Re-Armament, an increasingly secular anti-communist and pro-morality organization.