Remaking The World

Summary

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Family Lore — "Remaking The World"

Host: Lloyd Lockridge
Guest: Dave Belden
Date: June 24, 2026
Podcast: Family Lore by Audacy

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Episode Overview

In this episode, host Lloyd Lockridge explores the intricacies of family mythology and collective memory through the story of Dave Belden, who grew up inside Moral Rearmament (MRA)—a mid-20th-century Christian movement that saw itself as "remaking the world." The conversation examines how personal and historical narratives intersect, the idealism and contradictions at the heart of MRA, and the lingering impact on Dave’s life of living in what some would call a cult that sought global reconciliation. At its core, the episode investigates how far family (and organizational) legends diverge from historical truth and what legacy they leave behind.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Early Indoctrination and the Burden of "Remaking the World"

[01:02–02:14]

• Dave learned about the movement before he could speak, absorbing its ideologies subconsciously.
• As a child, he had recurring nightmares of global destruction, which he attributes to the intense messaging from his family and MRA community about remaking the world.
• Quote:
  "We were all engaged in, quote, unquote, remaking the world. And there was a tremendous urgency about our work… I think that I felt the urgency of changing the world from a very young age." – Dave Belden ([01:17])

2. Overview of the Moral Rearmament (MRA) Movement

[02:14–05:33]

• MRA, led by Frank Buchman, sought to influence the powerful to be guided by conscience and—ideally—divine inspiration.
• Buchman’s strategy entailed living among the wealthy ("up and outs") in privileged parts of London to evangelize the British establishment.
• Quote:
  "We were leading a sort of upper class lifestyle in order to reach the up and outs… [Buchman] had a very grandiose concept of how individual change could actually resolve conflicts between nations." – Dave ([04:20])

3. Practices and Philosophy in the Home

[05:33–06:20]

• Everyday conflicts were resolved via “listening to God”—even between children, as in a story where Dave and his sister meditated to settle a fight.
• Memorable Anecdote:
  Dave recalls his 5-year-old self saying after such a session, "God told me that we should take our ball and kick the ball and not each other." ([05:49])
• Discipline was based on self-reflection and conscience over punishment.

4. MRA’s Approach to Conflict and Social Change

[06:20–09:03]

• MRA prioritized influencing employers and the upper class, believing that changing the hearts of the powerful would solve systemic issues like labor disputes.
• Their focus on personal apology and accountability was unusual for the period.
• Quote:
  "You know, there’s all this sort of homey wisdom about what you can do to apologize first and try to make amends. And how do you know what to do? Well, you have to just sit down and listen…" – Dave ([08:19])

5. MRA’s Post-WWII Moment: European Reconciliation

[12:16–20:39]

• After WWII, MRA—via Swiss diplomat Philippe Motu—founded a conference center in Switzerland for European reconstruction, inviting both victims and former enemies (including Germans) to reconcile.
• The story of French resistance leader Irene Lor encapsulates MRA’s method: Lor, at first enraged by the presence of Germans, experiences a profound transformation after receiving an apology from a German widow.
• Quote:
  "She said, we didn’t do enough early enough to prevent Hitler, and I’m sorry. ... [Irene asks,] Would you pray with me?... That’s the moment the bridge across the Rhine was built." – Dave ([17:14])
• Irene Lor would become an advocate for Franco-German reconciliation.
• MRA’s efforts played a background role in postwar initiatives such as the European Coal and Steel Community, a precursor to the EU.
• Quote:
  "I’m not ascribing this to [MRA]... but Frank Buchman was decorated by both French and German governments for the work that he had done." – Dave ([19:47])

6. Internal Contradictions: Control, Purity, and Repression

[22:13–24:41]

• By the 1950s, MRA began exhibiting more cult-like features: mandatory morning meditations, confessional note-sharing, and surveillance of members for ‘impurity.’
• Homosexuality and non-procreational sex were heavily policed, causing suffering and ostracizing key figures (e.g., Dave’s godfather Philippe).
• Memorable Moment:
  Dave reflects on the movement’s control over his parents’ intimacy:
  "It really bothered me that they actually hadn’t had sex since I was conceived. I thought, damn, what was that about?" ([24:10])

7. Disillusionment and Self-Discovery

[24:41–29:56]

• At 18, Dave’s transformative trip to India exposed the limits of MRA’s ideals, especially in the face of extreme poverty.
• He began privately doubting MRA, confiding only in close friends like Bemore Franklin, a Black American student, who offered a new model of honesty and friendship.
• Quote:
  "A friend is someone you can just be honest with. A friend is someone you say, actually how it is for you." – Dave ([27:55])
• Dave’s father’s posthumous diary revealed that he too had questioned MRA, paralleling Dave’s own struggles.
• By the early 1970s, Dave gradually left the organization, channeling his activist energy into anti-poverty work.

8. Legacy and Evolution: Activism, Restorative Justice, and Reflection

[29:56–end]

• Dave later published a thesis critiquing MRA as a cult, albeit one that did “good work,” complicating the negative stereotype.
• Quote:
  "It was awful. It was a cult in certain ways, but it was also a cult that was doing good work in the world, which is kind of confusing because we think of cults as just sort of bad and horrible and wrong." ([29:56])
• He identifies as a “restless soul” still seeking to change the world—a drive inherited from his upbringing.
• Dave now works in restorative justice, a practice emphasizing accountability, empathy, and communal healing rather than punitive justice—a mission reminiscent of MRA’s original focus but without its hierarchical control.
• Quote:
  "So for example, in New Zealand... young people who had committed crimes went to family group conferences where they met with the person that they had harmed." – Dave ([32:11])
• Host Lloyd notes the circularity in Dave’s journey, suggesting that the principles that guided MRA resurface in Dave’s dedication to restorative justice, though with a more inclusive, democratic spirit.
• Quote:
  "It felt more like a spiral going upwards, meaning there was something circular about it, but he hadn’t simply returned to the beginning." – Lloyd ([32:59])

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Nightmares induced by family’s mission:
  "I saw an explosion happen in the center of the planet. And then the planet would come apart..." – Dave ([01:17])
• Meeting Prince Charles in the park:
  "Say hello to the little boy, Prince Charles.” – Nurse ([03:31])
• Parable of apology and Franco-German reconciliation:
  "Would you pray with me?" … "That’s the moment which the bridge across the Rhine was built..." – Dave ([17:14])
• The pain of enforced celibacy:
  "It really bothered me that they actually hadn’t had sex since I was conceived. I thought, damn, what was that about?" – Dave ([24:10])
• Friendship with Bemore Franklin:
  "A friend is someone you can just be honest with..." – Dave ([27:55])
• On seeing his upbringing as both cultish and constructive:
  "…a cult in certain ways, but it was also a cult that was doing good work in the world…” – Dave ([29:56])
• Restless legacy:
  "Just an obsession with trying to change the world. I mean, that'll be with me till I die." – Dave ([30:44])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:02–02:14 — Early indoctrination and childhood anxiety
• 03:06–05:33 — Strategy and upper-class lifestyle of MRA
• 05:33–06:20 — Family conflict resolution via listening to God
• 12:16–20:39 — WWII aftermath, MRA, and the Swiss conferences
• 22:13–24:41 — Surveillance, purity standards, and repression in MRA
• 24:41–29:56 — India trip, doubts, college years, friendship with Bemore
• 29:56–32:11 — Conclusions about MRA, legacy in Dave’s life
• 31:03–32:59 — Restorative justice parallels, evolving activism

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Tone and Closing Reflections

The tone is introspective, honest, and at times emotional, blending personal memoir with wider historical context. Dave Belden’s story illustrates both the lure and dangers of utopian movements, and Family Lore traces the legacies—both harmful and inspiring—of those who truly believe they can remake the world.

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For more information about Dave Belden’s work or to share your family stories, email familylorepodmail.com. To read further, see Dave’s memoir, "The World Remaker’s Child: A Memoir of Activism and Healing."

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Transcript

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[Dave Belden]

Are you really buying a car online on Autotrader right now?

[Commercial Narrator]

Really?

[Dave Belden]

At a playground?

[Commercial Narrator]

Yeah, really. Look at these listings from dealers.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Wow, your search can really get that specific.

[Commercial Narrator]

Really?

[Lloyd Lockridge]

And you just put in your info

[Dave Belden]

and boom, car's in your budget.

[Commercial Narrator]

Mom needs a second. Honey, you can really have it delivered. Really? Or I can pick it up at the dealership. One sec, sweetie. Mommy's buying a car. Mommy.

[Dave Belden]

I think your kid is walking up the slide. Kyle.

[Commercial Narrator]

Again? Really? Auto trader. Buy your car online? Really?

[Lloyd Lockridge]

So at what point are you told explicitly about what your family was engaged in? When is it described to you and how?

[Dave Belden]

Oh, I think I learned about it from before I could talk.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

This is Dave Belden.

[Dave Belden]

So I had these nightmares when I was 4 years old about the world coming to an end. One was where I was out in space and I was looking at the world and I saw an explosion happen in the center of the planet. And then the planet would come apart and huge shards of the planet, huge sort of quarters and eighths and so on, of the planet would fly out into space. And I would wake up screaming and screaming. And I've thought a lot about why I had those nightmares. And I think part of the reason is what I was hearing all the time from my parents, my family. We were all engaged in, quote, unquote, remaking the world. And there was a tremendous urgency about our work. Everybody was hyped up and intense about it. And I think that I felt the urgency of changing the world from a very young age.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Dave Belden was born into an organization that was especially active in the middle of the 20th century called moral rearmament, or MRA. It was a Christian organization that some of its own members would eventually describe as a cult. MRA members believed that they were remaking the world by convincing powerful people, politicians, labor leaders, CEOs, etc. To be guided by conscience and to listen to God. I had never heard of Moral Rearmament before I met Dave, but now that I know a little bit more about the work they were engaged in, I at the peak of Their influence, I can see why they truly believed they were in fact remaking the world. I'm Lloyd Lockridge, and this is family lore.

[Dave Belden]

We lived in a big house in London. There were like 16 or 20 of us in the Mayfair district of London. Very posh area. These were old aristocratic houses that you might have seen on Downton Abbey growing up.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Dave and his sister lived in this house with their parents and a bunch of other Moral Rearmament members. It had all the superficial signs of a charmed life.

[Dave Belden]

Just to give you an idea of the location, our local park was Green park, which has Piccadilly, the street Piccadilly on one side, and Buckingham palace on the other side. And there was an occasion which I actually remember when I was probably about 4 years old, and we were walking rather sedately in the park, and I went up to a little boy and I said, hello. And the boy said absolutely nothing to me. And he had a nurse with a great big black pram next to him. And after a little, the nurse said, say hello to the little boy, Prince Charles.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Living in this neighborhood among the most rich and powerful people in London was a strategic decision by MRA's founder, an American man named Frank Bookman.

[Dave Belden]

We were leading a sort of upper class lifestyle in order to reach the up and outs. I don't know if you know the phrase down and outs. Down and outs was a, you know, phrase for people on skid row. Up and outs was what Frank Bookman called the sort of wealthy and powerful people who actually were as spiritually bereft as. As the people out on skid row and who needed God and who needed to come to God, and they were going to be converted in houses like ours. One of the enduring goals of the movement was to win over the British establishment. And he had a very grandiose concept of how individual change could actually resolve conflicts between nations.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Frank Buchman was an ordained Lutheran pastor who was also influenced by the evangelical revivalist movement. And he believed that many of the world's conflicts could be solved if powerful people would just spend more time listening

[Dave Belden]

to God, listening to your inner voice, your voice of conscience. You didn't really have to believe in God to begin with from his point of view, but you had to listen to your conscience.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

As Dave grew up, conflicts between him and his sister were settled in the same way conflicts were dealt with in the larger movement. He remembers one physical fight with his sister over a ball, in which his mother told them both to go to their rooms and listen to God and come back and tell her what they'd heard.

[Dave Belden]

Apparently what she remembered was that I, at 5 years old or something, said, God told me that we should take our ball and kick the ball and not each other. We were never punished, that I remember. Certainly never smacked or anything like that. Instead, I was always told to listen to God. And so I had this sort of extremely fine tuned conscience from a very early age.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Dave was thrilled when he was finally old enough to join MRA's morning meetings where they would discuss conflicts that were happening around London and, and how they could get solved.

[Dave Belden]

Things like people saying, well, there's a strike brewing down in the docks and we think that we could probably bring some resolution to that. I mean, this is why the left really hated them, because the left was trying to brew up conflict to try and actually get better conditions for the workers. But MRA thought you got better conditions for the workers by changing the employers and getting them out of their conscience to give better wages and conditions. I know that people on the left thought that they were horrendously conservative. What I learned as a child was that both sides were materialistic and everybody needed God and we were the ones who God had chosen to change the whole world.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

MRA members like Dave's parents were supposed to be out in the world meeting people and inviting them into the practice of listening to God.

[Dave Belden]

I think that a skillful member of the movement would be just getting into conversation with somebody that they were interested in and they might share their own story. This is what happened to me. This is how I changed.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

And this kind of sharing might inspire the other person to share something in return.

[Dave Belden]

And this woman might say, oh my God, we got all this problem with my husband and he's an impossible guy. And MRA woman might say, well, I just realized that if I think the blame is 90% his and 10% mine, well, I can at least put right my 10%.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

And this represents an important aspect of Moral Rearmament's approach to resolving conflict. The organization placed a lot of emphasis on learning to apologize.

[Dave Belden]

You know, there's all this sort of homey wisdom about what you can do to apologize first and try to make amends. And how do you know what to do? Well, you have to just sit down and listen and would you like to do that with me?

[Lloyd Lockridge]

The people they were inviting to do this were in London's upper crust. And so they came, the rich and powerful, in and out of Dave's childhood home in their tailored suits and dresses to learn to apologize, to listen to God, and to discuss what their consciences were telling them.

[Dave Belden]

So we might have 50 people for dinner or even 100 people for dinner. We had this huge drawing room upstairs and my father would be making speeches.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Dave's mom, on the other hand, had a different job. She had a degree in psychology from London University, but women were not allowed to take leadership roles in mra. So she ran the kitchen.

[Dave Belden]

She worked out. I put this in my book, but I think it was served 26,000 meals in the course of one year. Something like that.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

If you could invite powerful people to listen to God about something personal, like a marital problem, maybe the practice would transfer for bigger decisions with higher stakes. That was the idea. And it wasn't just an idea. Before they owned the house in London, in the years right after World War II, MRA members convened some of the most powerful people in the world to heal one of its deepest wounds.

[Commercial Narrator]

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[Lloyd Lockridge]

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[Lloyd Lockridge]

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[Lloyd Lockridge]

Carvana made it. They buy and sell cars, so they made a car cup holder. So, got any good cups lately?

[Commercial Narrator]

Used to. Just couldn't figure out where in the world to put them.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

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[Lloyd Lockridge]

in the years Following World War II, the European continent was in ruins. Cities across Britain, Germany, Poland, France, the Netherlands and the Soviet Union had been leveled. Tens of millions were dead, including 6 million Jews. In the aftermath, Europe was split into two blocks. The Soviets were imposing communism across Eastern Europe, and America and Great Britain were trying to keep the Western bloc of countries united with each other and against communism. Germany, after the war, had been divided, one side being controlled by the Soviets and the other by the Allied powers. But what to do about Germany was a huge question. There was more than enough reason to punish Germany to the fullest possible extent. At the same time, leaders were painfully aware that it was the punitive measures following World War I which led to Hitler's rise. Many of the Allied countries, particularly France, did not believe it was possible to invite Germany to join in a united Europe after all it had done. But they had to do something. Rejecting Germany entirely would make it vulnerable to communism. This was the backdrop of moral rearmament's biggest moment.

[Dave Belden]

So there was a Swiss diplomat, Philippe Motu.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Motu was an MRA member and after

[Dave Belden]

the war was over he decided that because Switzerland had been spared the devastation of the war, it had to do something. And he collected 100 Swiss families who got together and bought a decrepit old hotel high in the Alps, above Montreux, above the Lake of Geneva. So they bought this hotel and they cleaned it up and they started fanning out across Europe, inviting people to come to post war conferences.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

The conferences were meant to facilitate European reconstruction and reconciliation. The need for reconstruction was obvious, but reconciliation was a more novel idea and to some, unfathomable. To mra. However, reconciliation was paramount and my parents

[Dave Belden]

responded to the call to go to Switzerland and help build this conference center and so on. So I was actually born in 1949 in Bern the capital of Switzerland. Philippe Marthu was my godfather. I called him uncle Philippe.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

One of the people invited to the hotel in the Swiss Alps was a French woman named Irene Lor. When the Germans had occupied her country, Lore had been a leader in the resistance against them. She and her family had suffered greatly during the war.

[Dave Belden]

Her children had been malnourished. Her oldest boy had been tortured by the Gestapo. She was a Marxist, an atheist, a very passionate, fierce woman. And after the war, she was elected to go to Paris as a member of parliament. Two guys show up at her office in Paris, and one of them had been in the resistance, and they say, we are starting this conference to rebuild Europe, and we would like to invite you to come. And it's up in this lovely place in the Alps. And she said, all right, because she thought her children needed some lovely fresh air and some good milk from Swiss cows and so on. So she went to this conference and was absolutely horrified to learn one day that a party of Germans were coming to the conference. This was at a time when no hotel in Europe would accept a party of Germans, I mean, outside of Germany.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

But MRA founder Frank Buchman and Dave's godfather, Philippe, believed that including the Germans in a conversation about how to rebuild Europe was not only tolerable, but necessary. This was not a popular idea, nor was it logistically simple.

[Dave Belden]

In fact, they had approached the British, French, and American occupation forces in Germany and got permission for all kinds of leading Germans to leave the country to come to this conference center. And Irene Law hears that the first party is about to arrive, and she packs her bags and is on the way out of the hotel when she's accosted, as it were, by Frank Boeckman, who says, madame, as a socialist, how can you imagine building a new Europe without the Germans?

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Irene Lohr, the story goes, recognized some kernel of truth in this. And she took her bags and her children back to her hotel room, and

[Dave Belden]

she stays there, apparently three days and nights without food, wrestling with her own absolute hatred of the Germans.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

In MRA terms, Irene Lohr was doing the important work of listening to God, or in other words, listening to her own conscience.

[Dave Belden]

And finally, she comes out to eat, and a woman in MRA says, would you like to meet a German, madame? And she says, all right. And she finds herself at a lunch table with one of the widows of one of the men who had been executed for attempting to kill Hitler. And this woman apologizes to her. She says, we didn't do enough early enough to prevent Hitler, and I'M sorry. And Irene Law replies, I think what she says is something like, would you pray with me? Which is a surprising thing to come from the mouth of an atheist because she's realized that she needs some power greater than herself to get rid of this hatred. And later she said that's the moment which the bridge across the Rhine was built, when she had this. I'm feeling tearful telling you this because it's deeply meaningful to me. It's how people who have been so consumed by hatred can try to transcend it.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

This story would become one of the defining narratives of mra. It was repeated over and over as a kind of parable, affirming the power of its methodology.

[Dave Belden]

A little bit later, Irene Law gets up on the platform in the conference and says that she wants to apologize to the Germans present for the amount of hatred that she had for them. Not for being in the resistance, of course, not for opposing them, but for the hatred that she felt, which in itself would prevent the creation of a new united Europe.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Following this time in Switzerland, Irene Lore would make her way across Europe, speaking some 200 times in public and appearing in 11 of the 12 European state parliaments, saying in one speech, our task is to take the first step toward the Germans so that what happened before can never happen again. The German chancellor of the 1950s, a man named Konrad Adenauer, said that Irene Lohr and her husband were the couple which did the most over the last 15 years to build unity between the two countries, meaning Germany and France, which had been enemies for centuries. Eventually, some of the politicians who had attended those MRA conferences in Switzerland, including Chancellor Adenauer and Foreign Minister Robert Schuman, would help create the European Coal and

[Dave Belden]

Steel Community, whereby France and Germany and some smaller countries, but particularly France and Germany, unified their armaments making industries, their steel and coal, so that they could never go to war with each other again. And this was after the two world wars and before that, the Franco German war. Hundreds of millions of people had died in these wars and they came to their own voluntary decision. I'm not ascribing this to moriament, but Frank Buchman was decorated by both French and German governments for the work that he had done. Because you have the politicians creating their plans on the one hand, but are people actually going to agree? It's like there needs to be a degree of reconciliation for people to be able to do that.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Would you say that this moment in the MRA's history would represent the peak of its influence?

[Dave Belden]

I think so, yes. I think this was when they really came into their own. They were having this huge influence and yet within the movement things were not going that well.

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[Lloyd Lockridge]

In 1952, Dave's family left Switzerland and moved back to London and into the big house in the Mayfair district that you heard about at the beginning of this episode. Their commitment to the cause was total, which was expected of all full time MRA members. And although Dave didn't realize it at the time because he was just a kid, the organization was becoming increasingly tyrannical.

[Dave Belden]

In the 1950s there started to be a kind of witch hunt period in the movement.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

MRA members had always been expected to spend an hour each morning listening to God and writing down the thoughts that came to them. These notes were then shared with other members. This system at its best was meant to keep you accountable to yourself and to your community. But at its worst, it acted as a means of surveillance and control. Members who expressed doubts about the movement during these sessions might find themselves suddenly facing accusations.

[Dave Belden]

A very common accusation was that if someone was having doubts about the movement or the strategy or was being critical of Bookman or this or that, they were considered to be falling down on what we called the second standard, that is purity, that is, they were probably having sex that they shouldn't have, or maybe they were having homosexual desires. And this became a huge bugbear in the movement was Accusing people of being homosexual. So my dear uncle Philippe, this amazing man who had started the conference center at co, was accused of homosexuality because he had not done something that Bookman wanted him to do, which pretty much drove Philippe out of the movement and in fact drove him to a nervous breakdown.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

But homosexuality wasn't the only sexual behavior MRA policed and prohibited.

[Dave Belden]

People were expected to only have sex for procreation, and they could only have children if the MRA team agreed that they could. So I felt unbelievably sad for my parents who were totally in love with each other, really amazingly for 50 years or more. I mean, it was quite sweet to see. And it really bothered me that they actually hadn't had sex since I was conceived. I thought, damn, what was that about?

[Lloyd Lockridge]

But this kind of questioning would come later. When Dave was growing up, he was still very dedicated to the movement and eager to find his place in it, which was how, at 18 years old, he ended up taking a trip to India that would change his outlook forever.

[Dave Belden]

The leader of MRA in India was Rajmahan Gandhi, who was one of the grandsons of Mahatma Gandhi and was a very charismatic character in his own right. And he was at a youth conference. He came to visit a youth conference of MRA in England and asked for volunteers to help out with their work in India.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Dave volunteered. In India, he encountered a world beyond the one he'd come from. It was a world of new colors, new religions, new customs and poverty like he'd never witnessed before. One day he was asked to go on an errand. A young Indian woman who had come to visit the MRA conference center needed to return to her village and Dave was asked to accompany her.

[Dave Belden]

It was a three day, two night train trip, third class. And this was a kind of stunning experience for me as this 18 year old religious boy, white boy. The train was so crowded that there were men underneath my feet and on the luggage racks above my head. And everybody else was able to sit cross legged on these wooden boards, which is why people could be sitting down in the well between the seats. But I couldn't because I was an overweight boy raised on chairs. And I had to stick my legs straight out in front of me, sort of on the shoulders of the men below, which was the most embarrassing possible thing.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

This train ride and Dave's whole time in India made a deep impression on him. MRA didn't seem to have a good answer for solving the kind of poverty he was seeing there. When he came back from India, he Enrolled at Oxford. It was 1968. He was still dedicated to MRA, but he was starting to have doubts.

[Dave Belden]

I would write private notes on a little notebook that I had that I wouldn't show anybody because in MRA you're supposed to confess your sins, but not really your doubts.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

He did have one friend with whom he could talk about his doubts. A black American named Bemore Franklin.

[Dave Belden]

Be More was his nickname. He was from Baltimore. And Be More and I became unlikely friends somehow. And he was telling me one day about how people had got up in the cinema where he was watching a movie and they'd got up and moved away. And I said, I didn't know that you would be having racist put downs like that here. And I said, do you tell people about this? And he said, no, I'm just telling you. And I said, why are you telling? And he said, oh, because you're from another oppressed minority. And I said, I am. I was this white guy who had been to this posh private school. And he said, yes, everybody hates mra.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

To the young leftists at Oxford, MRA was an out of touch anti labor organization. Its members were weird and culty.

[Dave Belden]

Bemore Franklin was the first guy gave me a glimpse that, oh, a friend is someone you can just be honest with. A friend is someone you say, actually how it is for you.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

What was your concept of friendship before meeting Be More Franklin? What was a friend to you?

[Dave Belden]

A fellow fighter for God.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

During his years at Oxford, Dave would become increasingly pessimistic about MRA and its strategies for changing the world. On one trip home from college, he told his father he was so hopeless about the movement that he felt suicidal. Dave would later learn that his father harbored his own doubts about the movement.

[Dave Belden]

After he died and I was cleaning up his house, I found this diary that he had written when I had been about 14, when he had talked about all his doubts about the movement. It's so similar to me writing my thoughts privately. And in the diary. He said, I can't talk to Stella, my mother. He said, I can't talk to her about it. And I thought, damn, dad, you're having all these doubts. I mean, serious doubts. He was thinking of leaving the movement at that time.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

And maybe this partly explains why. As Dave drifted farther and farther from MRA over the next few years, his parents didn't put up much of a fight. By the early 1970s, he was basically out of the organization. There was never a formal split, just a slow realization for Dave and his parents that his Life was taking a different shape. In 1972, he and a handful of other Oxford students founded an organization dedicated to ending global poverty. And he would spend the next several years committed to that cause. In 1976, Dave would publish a graduate thesis on MRA, which is still to this day, some of the most thorough academic writing that exists on the subject. It was only while doing this writing that he realized the organization he'd grown up in looked a lot like a cult.

[Dave Belden]

The charismatic leader who's given way too much leeway and obedience and respect. That was true for Frank Buckman. The demonization, other people, the us and them quality. I mean, we had thought that we were the changed people and we were God's troops in the world and everybody else was the unto. It was awful. It was a cult in certain ways, but it was also a cult that was doing good work in the world, which is kind of confusing because we think of cults as just sort of bad and horrible and wrong.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

And that's the thing. Dave still believes that MRA did a lot of good in the world. And for better or worse, he is a product of his upbringing in the organization. He may be looking through a different lens now, but he's seeing with the same eyes.

[Dave Belden]

So one thing it definitely bequeathed me was just an obsession with trying to change the world. I mean, that'll be with me till I die. I'm sure I'm just a restless soul who constantly has to be involved in something that's working to change the world.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Dave has spent much of his adult life in leftist movements, looking for the work that felt like the best fit for him. And where he's landed in the last several years is a place that actually has some things in common with mra. Tell me, what is restorative justice?

[Dave Belden]

In our normal justice system, we break the law, we're punished for it. That's what the law asks. What rule or what law was broken? What was the punishment? And restorative justice asks completely different set of questions. It says, who was hurt? Whose obligation is it to put right that hurt? And how can we move forward with healing?

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Healing conflict was of course a core focus of MRA too. But Dave says in MRA it was all about individual change and took a kind of top down approach.

[Dave Belden]

It was trying to heal, in many ways, heal the rich and powerful in the world.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Restorative justice is community based. When a harm is committed, it requires the community and family members to be part of the process of accountability and healing.

[Dave Belden]

When people who've done harm can feel empathy for the people that they harmed and really take seriously accountability for themselves. What do I need to do to change? And then as we recover personally, how can we struggle to change the systems around us? So for example, in New Zealand, where the Maori people, the indigenous people, said too many of our young people are in prison, they instituted a whole different approach in New Zealand, where they eventually closed their juvenile detention centers and young people who had committed crimes went to family group conferences where they met with the person that they had harmed.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

As Dave was talking about the family group conferences in New Zealand where the people who had caused harm met with people they'd harmed, it was impossible not to think of Irene Lohr, the French woman who not only came to accept the presence of Germans at a post war conference in Switzerland, but actually apologized for harboring so much hatred towards them despite all they had done. This was the foundational story of MRA and the one that profoundly shaped Dave's life. When we asked him if he felt if he'd come full circle, he said that it felt more like a spiral going upwards, meaning there was something circular about it. But he hadn't simply returned to the beginning. He was always changing, moving forward, even if at almost 80 years old, Dave is still engaged in the work he's doing, known since before he can remember the work of remaking the world. Thank you for listening to Family Lore. If you have stories you'd like to share about your family, please email [e-mail] that's familylorepod family lore is an Odyssey original podcast. It is written and narrated by me, Lloyd Lockridge. Our executive producers are Leah Rees, Dennis and I. Our lead producer and sound editor is Zach Clark. Our story editor and co writer of this episode is Katie Mingle. Additional sound, editing, mixing and mastering by Chris Basel and production support by Sean Cherry. Special thanks to Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, Hilary Schuff and Laura Berman. If you're interested in learning more about David Belden's life and work, you can order his memoir, the World Remaker's Child, A memoir of activism and healing. Thanks again for listening to Family Lore and if you have time, we'd love for you to rate and review the show.

[Dave Belden]

At Lowe's. We're about to kick off something epic for fans who want more messy and trust us, you'll want to be a rewards member when it happens.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Join for free and get access to

[Dave Belden]

messy exclusives, surprises and more. Head to Lowes.com MoreMessy Now's the time to get in because members get more at Lowe's loyalty programs subject to terms and conditions. Visit lowe's.com terms for details. Subject to change.