What drives a person to try to heal a broken world — and what happens when, for many years, every movement falls short? How did hope and even joy, flower again for David Belden?
In this wise, moving, and unexpectedly humorous memoir, David Belden traces a lifelong quest to unite the personal and the political, the spiritual and the secular. Born in postwar London to parents who believed their faith-based movement — the Oxford Group, later Moral Re-Armament (MRA) — could literally “remake the world”, Belden grew up surrounded by the conviction that personal transformation could end poverty, war, and hatred.
Through experiences ranging from spiritual awakening to social struggle, and from communal idealism to personal healing, The World Remakers' Child explores what it truly takes to repair the world in an age of climate crisis, inequality, and disconnection.
A memoir for readers drawn to progressive spirituality, restorative justice, trauma healing, and social change movements, Belden’s story is an inspiring call to go deep — to rediscover the courage to remake the world.
“This book is a must-read for anyone who has ever wondered where Alcoholics Anonymous came from or what it's like to grow up as a child within a cult-like social movement — and to make sense of that experience after leaving it.” Alana Yu-Ian Price, journalist and editor
“His unusual life story reveals a readiness to throw himself into challenging undertakings; an eye, right from childhood, for detail; a lasting dislike of haughtiness; steady candor, tinged with humor, about himself; and a thirst for a less harsh, more loving, and fairer world.” Rajmohan Gandhi, Indian historian, academic, biographer, and grandson of Mahatma Gandhi
“By pointing out each hopeful vista and heartbreaking pitfall in his lifelong search for a spiritual, political, and moral home, this memoir is equal parts honoring and questioning the revolutionary paths Dave has walked.” sujatha baliga, Buddhist practitioner, restorative justice innovator, and 2019 MacArthur Fellow
"David Belden’s autobiography takes us on a roller-coaster life journey, from Moral Re-Armament to Californian prisons and the restorative justice movement. ‘A new project to re-shape society,’ he calls it. A rich full circle. Feeding the world, politics, feminism, social movements, class, anti-imperialism, sex and divorce, therapy, carpentry and woodwork.
"Late-learning to cry, to show emotion, even to come to terms with what he’s feeling. There’s a chapter headed ‘Burned out on movements’, but there's the endless urge to work for a better world, a better future for all. David finds ‘a connection with the human race’. ‘We are descended from the survivors ... It’s in the DNA they gave us to have faith against the odds,’ he writes. His brief history of Moral Re-Armament and its initiator, Frank Buchman, conclude the book, with balanced judgments and the question that I personally share: why isn't this movement better known, more talked about, studied?" Andrew Stallybrass, lifelong full-time worker and amateur historian of MRA/Initiatives of Change
The book can be ordered on Amazon
English