After a scholarly survey of the emergence of sects through the centuries, from which he concluded that the Oxford Group must inevitably become a sect, Henson examined 'Group principles' as he conceived them. Chadwick summarises his attitude as, 'Here was the confessional, exposed to its worst risks and stripped of its protective discipline; here were adolescents acting as father-confessors, the blind leading the blind; here was the fascination of prurience as well as a moral ideal; here was an idea of guidance as immediate inspiration, taking the place of reasonable discussion and sensible judgement; here was a movement which seemed to have little place for the poor but went for Oxford undergraduates and political leaders and capitalists, its work done in hotels and centres of fashion; here was a movement claiming to be above denominations but like all such movements turning already into another denomination.'17

The Bishop, however, had never accepted any invitation to attend any Group house-party, meeting or occasion, or to meet people closely associated with it. He declared he was not 'temperamentally fined' for such an ordeal, and had an 'almost physical repugnance'18 against the kind of movement he conceived the Group to be. Chadwick comments: 'He (Henson) was not well fitted for the impartial critique which would have helped, because his inner revulsion from any such movement ran too deep.'19 His reasons for writing the Charge were, according to Chadwick, his duty to his diocese, his love of Oxford (whose name he considered Buchman to have stolen) and, 'far more emotionally', that 'one of the young men for whom he cared much . . . and thought to be the most promising of his ordinands, became a disciple of Dr Buchman' and 'went off to Canada' with him.20

The first edition of Henson's Charge made little impact, but he returned to his theme to more effect in the autumn and winter. During the summer a number of prominent Londoners had urged that an Oxford Group campaign should take place in London. The Bishop of London had invited Buchman and his team to be commissioned in St Paul's Cathedral, and the Archbishop of Canterbury had received them at Lambeth Palace. Henson thereupon summarised his objections in a letter to The Times on 19 September, and brought out a second edition of his Charge, with a new preface, in December.

After his letter the bishops, according to press summaries of their diocesan conferences, were divided. The Bishops of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich '21 and of Southwark 22 appear to have been more critical than laudatory, while those of Manchester, Oxford and Rochester,23 although offering advice and caution, had no doubt that the Oxford Group was changing people's lives and making religion more real to many. A typical contribution came from Dr Hewlett Johnson of Canterbury, soon to be christened 'the Red Dean'. While stating that 'the "house-parties" idea smacks of snobbishness' and saying 'the doctrine of guidance gets dangerously near to magic', he continued, 'What, however, outweighs these tendencies - and they can be avoided - is that careless, selfish and even vicious lives, especially among young men and women, are being changed and consecrated to God. There is a new orientation Godward . . .'24 One of the points Bishop Henson, too, raised in his letter was that Buchman concerned himself with the upper and middle classes, the 'up and outs', rather than, as was traditional in evangelistic movements, with the 'down and outs'. Prebendary Wilson Carlile, the current Honorary Chief Secretary of the Church Army, was one of those who replied. 'Many of us have tried to deal with the outcast and the criminal,' he wrote, 'but the Groups have aimed at changing the lives of the lazy and dangerous intelligentsia. I admire their pluck. Let us help them all we can.'25

182