The Oxford Group was a Christian fellowship founded by American Christian missionary Dr. Franklin Nathaniel Daniel Buchman. Buchman was a Lutheran minister who had a conversion experience in 1908 in a chapel in Keswick, England. As a result of that experience, he founded a movement called A First Century Christian Fellowship in 1921, which had become known as the Oxford Group by 1931.
Buchman summed up the group's philosophy in a few sentences: "All people are sinners"; "All sinners can be changed"; "Confession is a prerequisite to change"; "The change can access God directly"; "Miracles are again possible"; and "The change must change others."[4]
The practices they utilized were called the five C's:
Confidence
Confession
Conviction
Conversion
Continuance
Their standard of morality was the Four Absolutes—a summary of the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount:
Absolute-Honesty
Absolute-Purity
Absolute-Unselfishness
Absolute-Love
In his search for relief from his alcoholism, Bill Wilson, one of the two co-founders of AA, joined The Oxford Group and learned their teachings. While Wilson later broke away from The Oxford Group, their teachings influenced the structure of Alcoholics Anonymous and many of the ideas that formed the foundation of AA's suggested twelve-step program.[5][6] Later in life, Bill Wilson gave credit to the Oxford Group for saving his life.[7]