The Oxford Group was originally a religious group of Oxford students. It was founded in the 1910s by the Christian evangelist Frank N. D. Buchman and grew into an international movement until it was replaced in 1938 by its successor Moral Re-Armament. This was to disaccociate the movement because of Buchman's notorious Hitler interview. Also a catchy new title predicted the outcome of the war would not happen if enought people had the mindset to make amends and confess their sins. There were wrong. WW II killed millions of civilians and soldiers alike.

Various other movements were influenced by the Oxford Group, most notably what was later to become Alcoholics Anonymous. Oxford Group would not lend its credibility to AA because it was upscale and did not honestly want to include finacially deprived alcoholics.

The London newspaper editor A. J. Russell converted to the Oxford Group after attending a meeting in 1931. He wrote "For Sinners Only" in 1932, which inspired the two writers of "God Calling". They collaborated with A. J. Russel to publish in 1935 one of the all-time Christian bestsellers.

The Oxford Group was the brainchild of Dr. Frank Buchman, a Lutheran minister. Popular in the 1920s on college campuses (including Oxford University, from which it took its name) and in upscale neighborhoods, the group promoted Buchman’s belief in divine guidance: One should wait for God to give direction in every aspect of life (it wasn’t about alcoholism or any other single problem) and surrender to that advice. Buchman’s program emphasized public confession of sin during meetings at members’ houses, making restitution to those sinned against, and promoting the group to the public. The group’s individualistic bent—if God’s guidance could solve everyone’s problems, social movements seemed useless—divorced it from activism or politics. But when Buchman told a reporter in 1936, “I thank heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler, who built a front line of defense against the anti-Christ of Communism,” the Oxford Group’s fortunes started to fall. After Buchman’s death, in 1961, the group all but disappeared. Few remember his name today, but his principles—surrender to divine guidance, confession, and making amends—live on in another unlikely fellowship. Buchman was featured on the cover of Time magazine with the title "Cultist Buchanan". He never married.