Buchman’s Oxford Groups. This systematic use of lay testimony in evange-lism proved so successful that almost half the undergraduate population was attracted to a similar testimony meeting in the Town Hall in the subsequent term, and it was adopted as the standard pattern for future Pastorate missions.

There were limits, however, to the Pastorate’s irenicism. Despite the assertion in its own official history that it never had an official attitude to the Oxford Groups, and the fact that one of its own employees H.J. Rose (chaplain 1926-32) was a leading light in Buchman’s movement, the minutes of the Pastorate’s Oxford Committee reveal an attitude of suspicion.55 The committee seems to have sought to supervise Rose’s work quite carefully and he was given permission to take a party on a campaign in South Africa in 1928 only on the understanding that the visit had ‘no connection with Buchmanism’.56 Christopher Chavasse, in particular, seems to have become concerned at what he regarded as the excessive subjectivism of the Groups and he encouraged the appointment of Rose’s successor Bryan Green as a response – though, typically for the Pastorate, not so much to oppose Buchmanism as in the hope that he might be able to develop a positive counter-attraction to the Groups within Oxford.57