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THE PRINCETON ENQUIRY

The trouble had begun that September of 1926, in a town in Connecticut called Waterbury. The occasion was a student mission, to which students from all the Eastern colleges were invited. Whether by design or simply because they were the ones enthusiastic enough to sacrifice the last ten days of their summer vacation, three-quarters of those who turned up were young men who had found a faith through Buchman's work; and Princeton provided easily the largest delegation, including several officers of the Philadelphian Society. Among them was Ray Purdy, Sam Shoemaker's successor as General Secretary, who had given up a job in Wall Street to go back to Princeton. Shoemaker himself had been invited to rake the lead in the preparation days for the campaign.

During these preparations one of the young men from Princeton was able to help the rector of a local Episcopal church with some personal problems; and the rector subsequently told his congregation about his new experience of faith. This alarmed some of his brother clergy. One of them, in a preparatory meeting, declared at length that the clergy were not the target of the mission. When he had finished his speech, he asked Sherwood Day - who was sitting beside him - what he really thought of it. Somewhat taken aback, Day replied candidly, 'Oratory, empty oratory.'

The campaign seems to have been successful enough. Afterwards, however, a series of critical articles appeared in an Episcopal magazine called The Churchman, the editor of which, Guy Emery Shipler, was a long-term opponent of Buchman's work and said to be the inventor of the term 'Buchmanism'. They noted the fact that Princeton had supplied more missioners than any other college and inferred that it had been a plot of Buchman's devotees to take over the campaign. The articles, written by Ernest Mandeville, were described as 'distorted, untruthful and unworthy' in a letter signed by eight senior churchmen who had token part in the campaign.1 However, Time magazine, on 18 October 1926, reproduced some of the more offensive portions from these articles, without their qualifications, and described Buchman, under a picture, as 'Soul- surgeon and anti-auto-eroticist'. On the same day Buchman, whom The New York Times had reported as having dined on board ship with Queen Marie and her family, arrived in New York.

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