goes back to Frank Buchman one of the most powerful, and little acknowledged, evangelicals in the US and UK throughout much of the twentieth century. During the late 1920s, he set up the Oxford Group at the famed British college barring the Group's name. As World War II approached, the Group was rechristened the Moral Re-Armament movement (MRA). Through these organizations, Buchman was able to craft a very elitist and cultish approach to Christianity that would have a profound reach in the postwar years. Buchman called for "a new social order under the dictatorship of the Spirit of God." In practical terms, this meant courting powerful men in positions of influence. This would usher in a "God-controlled nation" that would bring an end to labor strife, then an overriding concern in the 1930s, among other things. Wealth would of course not be redistributed, but workers could take solace in the fact that the robber barons were no longer driven by greed, but God.
Among two of Buchman's favorite tools were what he dubbed "soul surgery" and house parties. Both were centered around confession. The former consisted of surrendering to God by cutting out sin one incision at a time. This frequently involved confession to Buchman and his confessors. Whether this was a path to God is debatable, but it certainly gave Buchman and company access to the darkest secrets of the elite they courted. Buchman's house parties operated on a similar basis:
"… The most successful events took place at one of the estates around the world that Buchman used as outreach stations. He had won the allegiance of a number of wealthy widows and heiresses and neglected wives of businessman, and they regularly showered him with riches, including their great homes, to which Buchman would invite select groups for a day in the country. There would be tennis and golf and some praying, and then the group would gather for the party. A fire would be built, the lights dimmed, and Buchman or a trained confessor might begin with some minor transgression, a traffic ticket, a youthful prank. Another Buchman veteran might than up the ante. 'Some lad might now turn evidence against a governess or an upstairs maid,' observed a New Yorker writer in 1932. And from there it was on to the weaknesses that afflict not just college boys but also the grand dames who flocked to Buchman and the big men they dragged in their wake, all stumbling over one another in elaborate description of their private perversions, how they had been blinded to their purpose in life by sexual desire, and how 'Guidance' had saved them. Around circle they went, spurring one another on."
(The Family, Jeff Sharlet, pg. 128)
According to veteran CIA officer Miles Copeland in his The Game Player, Buchman's movement was courted by the CIA in the postwar years for the type of access the house parties and such like offered. He notes that "the arrangement we made with Moral Rearmament that gave us useful secret channels right into the minds of leaders not only in Africa and Asia but also Europe" (pg. 177). Unsurprisingly, the MRA would serve as the foundation of elite, intelligence-aligned Christian cults such as the Unification Church and The Family. The Unification Church shall be dealt with below, while much more information on The Family can be found here.
http://visupview.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-family-part-i.html