When she came to Caux in December 1974, Swedish actress Vendela Tyndale-Biscoe (then Lofgren) had everything she had ever thought she wanted. That year, at the age of 24, she had been given a permanent contract with one of the biggest theatres in Sweden. But she felt ‘dead inside’.

Vendela had made her performing debut as a 12-year-old, four years after her father died from a hereditary kidney disease. ‘I experienced the sweetness of making people laugh and applaud for more,’ she said. ‘I knew that this was what I wanted to do.’

I experienced the sweetness of making people laugh and applaud for more. I knew that this was what I wanted to do.

She started singing her own songs in rock clubs. But she didn’t tell her mother about the drink, drugs and destructive relationships into which she was drawn ever deeper as she finished school and moved on to drama college.

By Christmas 1974, she had quit drugs after a religious experience which turned her back towards the Christian faith of her childhood. She had even – on an earlier visit to Caux in 1971 – broken down the ‘glass wall’ between her and her mother by telling her about the drugs. Her mother had taken the bombshell with unexpected calm. The experience had left Vendela ‘feeling as free as a bird’. 

In spite of all this, three years on she felt her life was not worth living. Her work was exhausting and her latest boyfriend was becoming an alcoholic. ‘I thought I might as well die.’ She went back to Caux, in search of ‘the only hope I had seen in life so far’.

On arrival, she was asked to take a part in a play – and declined because she wanted to go ski-ing. When she found the ski lift wasn’t working, she relented. 

She was the only woman in the cast and the rehearsals were an eye-opener. ‘I felt that the men I was working with loved me just for being me’. There was no need to flirt. She realized that this was the sort of life she wanted. 

‘I decided to stop trying to make myself more popular, stop thinking that I had to sleep with every boyfriend, stop drinking alcohol and become open with everyone, especially in the theatre world, about what I had decided. It was like saying goodbye to my career.’

She returned to work ‘a new person’ and found, to her surprise, that her colleagues respected her values, because she was living them herself, rather than lecturing them. The next summer she gave up her contract so as to work with Initiatives of Change (IofC).

She found, to her surprise, that her colleagues respected her values, because she was living them herself, rather than lecturing them.

The first year was tough. She started off in Britain, where she fell deep into depression – caused, she believed, by mercury poisoning from a dental operation. When she returned to Sweden four months later, she had a minor nervous breakdown. She found her feet again in Canada, and there faced the decision of whether to return to her acting career.

‘I shut myself into my room for a “talk” with God,’ she said. She had a clear thought: ‘if you give the theatre to me, even risking to never do theatre again, I promise to give you a life that you could never dream of’. When she was offered a part by her theatre in Sweden, she declined.

Over the next decades, this decision took her to Africa, India, Russia and other parts of Europe, often acting in plays and reviews which challenged the audience to rethink their lives and values. In 1980, she married Philip Tyndale-Biscoe, an English actor who had been in the cast at Caux in 1974. After 11 years in the UK and travelling internationally, they settled in Sweden in 1992.

Philip and Vendela performed together many times in Caux and elsewhere, including in two plays of their own – Let’s Talk Turkey  (‘about three Christmases, two people and one bookcase’) and Stalling Between Two Fools (‘a pocket review which we could perform anywhere’).

Not long after throwing in her lot with IofC, Vendela discovered that she had inherited the kidney disease her father died of. She decided, ‘From now on, I will live every day as if it is my last.’ She died 39 years later, in 2018.

You can read more on Vendela here.

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Vendela performing "I've dropped the charge", 2013

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This story is part of our series 75 Years of Stories about individuals who found new direction and inspiration through Caux, one for each year from 1946 to 2021. If you know a story appropriate for this series, please do pass on your ideas by email to John Bond or Yara Zhgeib. If you would like to know more about the early years of Initiatives of Change and the conference centre in Caux please click here and visit the platform For A New World.

• Photo portrait: For a New World
• Photo Nordic Revue: Tone Nelson
• All other photos: Philip Tyndale-Biscoe
• Photo top: Performing with Philip in 'Stalling between two fools', 1996-97

In 1973 Australia’s national elections brought a Labor Government to power, and Kim Beazley – a familiar face at Caux – was appointed Minister for Education. Beazley was determined to ensure that every Australian child received the best possible education, and launched a transformation in Australian schools.

The schools were either run by churches or by the state, and there was immense resentment at the inequities in their state funding. Under Beazley’s leadership, the Department of Education started funding all schools according to their need, giving the largest grants to the poorest schools.

When the Australian National University awarded an honorary doctorate to Beazley in 1976, the citation stated that his action had ‘healed an ulcer that has festered in our society for close to 200 years. Sectarian bitterness, which has focused on schools and their funding, was dealt a death blow by needs-based funding.’

Beazley regarded his first visit to Caux in 1953 as fundamental to his political approach. At Caux he had encountered the idea of taking time alone to seek God’s guidance, having ‘nothing to prove, nothing to justify and nothing to gain for yourself’.

When he did, he realized that he had ‘formed the habit of not being absolutely accurate in political statements’. As he told the conference, ‘I analyzed the government’s mistakes, but never their virtues. This is one of the most mischievous forms of lying in politics. I have decided to concern myself daily with the challenge of how to live out God’s will, to turn the searchlight of absolute honesty on to my motives, and to try to see the world with the clarity of absolute purity... and absolute love.’

His approach to people – his eyes, his voice – were different. (...) His new approach showed me the possibilities of change.

A first step for him was ‘sitting down and writing a letter of honesty to my wife’. And when he returned home she found that ‘his approach to people – his eyes, his voice – were different’. Life was not easy for her with three children and a husband away in Parliament on the other side of Australia for long periods. She said: ‘I had seen many marriage breakups in political life. His new approach showed me the possibilities of change.’

Some of his parliamentary colleagues were hostile. ‘Facing the prospect of political destruction at this moment is young Kim Beazley,’ wrote a prominent political columnist later that year. ‘Powerful, office-hungry individuals fear that his idealism and his current determination to pursue the truth, whatever the price, could cost the Labor Party the next election. The story they are assiduously and effectively peddling is, “Beazley has lost his balance.” So the word has gone out, “Destroy him”.’

They did not destroy him. He was returned to Parliament at every election for 32 years. When he retired, the Melbourne Herald wrote that he was ‘beyond any dispute one of the best Members of Parliament Australia has ever had’.

In particular, he had played a significant role in advancing Aboriginal land rights, voting rights, health care and education in 22 Aboriginal languages. The ANU doctoral citation stated, ‘It has become popular over the last years to recognize the injustices done to Aboriginal people. But over the last half-century this was far from popular. In that time few people have done as much, and none have done more, than Kim Beazley has to bring about that change in attitude.’ When he died in 2007, three former Prime Ministers attended his funeral.

Beazley summed up his approach: ‘The thoughts of God, given primacy in the life of a person, bring to the innermost motives the virtue of mercy, and with it the cure for hatred that can turn the tide of history. This is the essence of intelligent statesmanship.’

Watch a short film about Kim Beazley from our archives.

Watch an interview with Kim Beazley on his ideas and visons for the future, 1981 (Music: David Mills)

In 1972, three Egyptian students arrived in Caux. Their visit sparked a remarkable series of exchanges in which more than 200 Arab and British students took part over the next decades. 

One of the three, Nagia Abdelmogney Said, had taken part in a youth leadership course at Caux in 1968. She had been amazed at the depth of communication between people of different cultures and nationalities. ‘I felt that the common language was the language of the heart,’ she says.

When she returned to Caux four years later, she had a ‘heavy heart’ as she felt that a mistake had distorted her final academic results. ‘I had filed a complaint, but was not satisfied with the response. It meant that I had to repeat the whole year.’

The morning after she arrived, Nagia had a ‘quiet time’ with her room-mate, a Christian from Malta. ‘I was amazed that we both had similar thoughts even though we came from different religious backgrounds. I had remembered a verse from the Holy Qu’ran and she had recalled one from the Bible: both conveyed the same message that “all things work together for those who love God”.’

Nagia and her companions returned to Cairo with a vision for a bridge-building exchange between Egyptian and European students, based on values shared by Islam and Christianity. Their request to the Ministry of Youth was passed on to Mohsen Hussein, then working in Egypt’s Supreme Council for Youth and Sports. ‘Their eyes were glowing with enthusiasm,’ he remembered. He made arrangements for five British students to visit Egypt in April 1973 as guests of the Egyptian Government.

I was amazed that we both had similar thoughts even though we came from different religious backgrounds.

At the British end, the students’ vision had been taken up by Bill Conner, a friend of Nagia’s father, Abdel Mogney Said, then Egyptian Under-Secretary for Labour. Bill had commanded a tank at the battle of El-Alamein in Egypt in 1942. ‘I remember thinking, if I do get back home, I must find something dealing with the root causes of what’s wrong in the world, because clearly this war wasn’t going to do it,’ he wrote later.

Bill and other Moral Re-Armament (MRA, now Initiatives of Change) associates set up a charity, the British-Arab University Association (later known as British-Arab Exchanges – BAX) to coordinate the exchanges. Its aim was to ‘establish firm links of trust and respect between future decision-makers of the Arab countries and the West’.

I was one of the British students who visited Egypt in 1973. We were bowled over by the warmth of our reception: particularly from people who had suffered under British rule. Abdel Mogney Said had been interned twice, yet welcomed us like family.

We were challenged by the generosity and inclusivity of our hosts, and took what we called the ‘Egyptian spirit’ back to our universities. The experience opened our eyes to the wider world, and we all ended up engaged in development, human rights or trust-building in one way or another.

That August, we hosted a return visit of 15 Egyptian students, first at Caux and then in Britain. They came from five universities and had been selected as ‘ideal students’. They were accompanied by Mohsen Hussein and his wife, Lamia, who was Palestinian, and by Nagia. Further exchanges with Egypt followed up to 1979.

BAX went on to sponsor some 40 exchange visits with Sudan, Jordan, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Occupied Territories. In the years before it wound up in 2019, BAX worked closely with the British Council on youth projects. These included welcoming pan-Arab groups from the Levant and North Africa, and a series of leadership training programmes via live video conference between London and Gaza.

Numerous alumni have risen to roles of responsibility in their countries, and have taken part in IofC networks and in Caux conferences.

‘Our interactions made an indelible impact on our developing consciousness,’ Egyptian Samia Kholoussi wrote in a booklet* published for BAX’s 30th anniversary. She had met her husband Aly Elesaby on the 1975 delegation and was now a university lecturer in the US. ‘Being exposed to Western culture through the values and morals of Moral Re-Armament (MRA, now Initiatives of Change) provided us with a positive outlook on the West. Then as now, MRA unravels a vision that thinks across the culture divide and negative stereotypes of monolithic categories.’

Then as now, [it] unravels a vision that thinks across the culture divide and negative stereotypes of monolithic categories.

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For Caux’s 25th anniversary in 1971, a charter plane brought 124 people from Australasia and the Pacific, including a group of Māori from New Zealand. As it flew up the coast of Italy, their leader, Canon Wi Te Tau Huata, experienced strong emotions.

Wi Te Tau Huata had been chaplain to the 28th Māori Battalion which had suffered heavy casualties in Italy during World War II, especially at Monte Cassino. Huata had conducted the burial service for each Māori who was killed.

When the party arrived at Caux, one of the hosts of the conference, Fulvia Spoerri, gave the new arrivals an introduction to the conference centre. She ended by saying, ‘I am a German; many of my generation call themselves Europeans. We are ashamed of the cost paid by your countries on the other side of the world for our actions in the Second World War. We don’t ask you to forget; we do ask for your forgiveness.’

As soon as the meeting ended, Huata stormed out. ‘That was one of the worst moments I have lived through,’ he told a friend who asked what was wrong. ‘I am reminded of all the friends I buried in Italy and of my prayer during those days: “God, destroy Hitler and wipe the Germans off the face of the earth.”’

‘What do you feel to do about it?’ the friend asked.

‘I need to apologize to the lady,’ Huata replied. ‘I have been a priest all these years and I have carried this hate in my heart.’ Before he left for Caux, his wife had asked him, ‘What are you going to do when you meet the Germans?’ His reply had been that he would wait until it happened.

At that moment Fulvia Spoerri walked by and Huata stopped her and asked for her forgiveness. ‘This produced a stormy conflict inside me and I had a restless night,’ he said later. ‘Next morning my room-mate told me it had been like sharing a room with a whale!’

The next morning, he asked for a chance to speak from the platform, and repeated his apology to all the Germans present. ‘I spoke about reconciliation and felt as if a ton weight had fallen from my back.'

I spoke about reconciliation and felt as if a ton weight had fallen from my back.

Unknown to him, former officers from the German Afrika Corps were present and at the end of the meeting they came to shake his hand. Some of them had come to Caux in a last attempt to heal difficult marriages, or to reach an understanding with their children. They asked Huata to help them.

After Caux, Canon Huata visited Northern Ireland, where he met the outspoken loyalist politician Ian Paisley. He told him of the freedom from bitterness he had found, and of the new friends he had made amongst former enemies.

He also went to see the Abbot of the Cistercian Order in Portglenone. There he spoke of the bitterness he had held towards Catholics. ‘My eldest son married a Catholic and I never forgave him, until at Caux I saw that “love your neighbour” includes those not in the Anglican Church!’ He had written a letter of apology to his son and daughter-in-law and received their loving reply on the day he arrived in Ireland.

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Before leaving Europe the Māori group visited Rome where they attended Pope Paul VI’s service at Castel Gondolfo. They were ushered to the front of the large auditorium with its congregation of 5,000.  

After the service the Pope came down from the dais to where the Māori were standing, wearing their traditional cloaks and headbands. Placing his hands on their shoulders, the Pope said, ‘My blessings and special greetings to the Māori people of New Zealand.’ He presented them each with a medallion. Huata later gave his medallion to his son and daughter-in-law.

The New Zealand Ambassador in Rome had known the Canon in Italy during the war. He provided a car and driver so that they could visit the war cemetery in Monte Cassino, 80 miles away. There, more than 25 years after the battle, the Canon conducted a memorial service for all those who had made the ‘supreme sacrifice’, both friend and enemy.

• Read more about Canon Huata in Matt Manson's article The Warrior Canon.
• Discover more about the Māori people and their history in Joan Holland's article 'Facing up to Waitangi' .

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This story is part of our series 75 Years of Stories about individuals who found new direction and inspiration through Caux, one for each year from 1946 to 2021. If you know a story appropriate for this series, please do pass on your ideas by email to John Bond or Yara Zhgeib. If you would like to know more about the early years of Initiatives of Change and the conference centre in Caux please click here and visit the platform For A New World.

• Photo Monte Cassino: Mark G Rule
• Photos Waipatu Marae conference: Initiatives of Change
• All other photos: Initiatives of Change
• The Warrior Canon, Matt Manson, 1989
• Facing up to Waitangi, Joan Holland, 1990