Description:
Margaret grew up believing that individuals could bring peace to the world...
A Spectacular Inheritance is a riveting account of one woman's experience coming of age in the world of Moral Re-Armament (previously known as the Oxford Group), the evangelical conflict resolution organization that spawned both Alcoholics Anonymous and Up With People. Margaret Eastman Smith grew up entirely in the movement, worked for it until she was thirty-five, and later became a college professor of international peacemaking. Amid the vivid memories of the unusual life she shared with the community and her evolving view of it, she winds her own story of finding herself and values that she could rely on, even as she steps away.
The movement was a contributor to Franco-German reconciliation after World War II, but has also been excoriated by some, including actress Glenn Close in The Hollywood Reporter and Oprah Winfrey's documentary The Me You Can't See. In Margaret's telling, the book is a reflection on the search for self, on forgiveness and the meaning of love.
Brief description: Margaret Eastman Smith, the daughter of a Scottish father and American mother who devoted their lives to the work of the Oxford Group and Moral Re-Armament, grew up on three continents in a series of communal living arrangements with other families in the movement. She then worked for the movement herself in the UK, India, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Richmond, Virginia and Washington, DC, before going to university in her mid-thirties. She earned her doctorate in International Relations in 1999, taught in the School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC for eighteen years. She now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.