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 October 18, 2005

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Alcoholics Anonymous History
Big Book and 12 Step Sources
Identifying Spiritual Roots and Study References
By Dick B.

Summary of the Identifiable Sources

My materials which have covered in much detail the six major Big Book and Twelve Step sources—sources which are Bible-related—will be referenced in this article. Other sources will be identified in my own limited writings, in the studies of others, and in those areas where further research and writing are appropriate and very much needed. 

Outlined in their substantial totality, A.A.’s identifiable sources are:

The Seven Major Roots of A.A. Ideas—Roots that are primarily Bible-related:

•  The Bible (King James Version) which AAs called the “Good Book.”
   

• Quiet  Time – a  period used for prayer; Bible study—primarily the study of the sermon on the mount (Matthew 5 to 7), 1 Corinthians 13, and the Book of James; for seeking God’s guidance; for reading from sources such as Anne Smith’s Journal and devotionals like The Upper   Room; and discussion of relevant thoughts and ideas.
   

• Anne Smith’s Journal – a booklet written between 1933 and 1939 in the hand of Dr. Bob’s wife, with discussions of Bible, Oxford Group,           recommended literature, and practical ideas for Christian living. Whose contents Anne Smith shared each morning at the Smith home with AAs and their families.
   

• Oxford Group Principles and Practices – some twenty-eight ideas that impacted on the A.A. fellowship, were codified into its Big Book and 12 Steps, and are contained primarily in a large number of writings by various Oxford Group activists—beginning with the book Soul       Surgery published in 1919. Whose writings, certainly those of founder     Frank Buchman were “soaked” in Bible references and ideas.
   

• The Teachings of Rev. Samuel M. Shoemaker, Jr. – Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in New York in A.A.’s formative years; a close friend of and teacher of Bill Wilson’s; and the author of over 30 titles,   many   sermons, and frequently published articles. Whose language can be found throughout the Big Book, Twelve Steps, and A.A.          fellowship jargon; whose materials were very much Bible-oriented; and who, because of his enormous impact on A.A.’s program, was called by Bill   Wilson a “co-founder” of A.A.
   

• Religious literature widely circulated among and read by Pioneer AAs — books, pamphlets, and articles (primarily Christian and Protestant in   thought and language), by such popular authors as Henry Drummond, Oswald Chambers, Glenn Clark, E. Stanley Jones,    Charles Sheldon, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Emmet Fox, James Allen,     Harold Begbie, Samuel Shoemaker, Victor Kitchen, Stephen Foot, and A. J. Russell. Also, daily devotionals such as The Upper Room, My   Utmost for His Highest, The Runner’s Bible, The Meaning of Prayer, Victorious Living, Practicing the Presence of God, and The Imitation of   Christ.

• The United Christian Endeavor Society - a worldwide organization, numbering in the tens of thousands, consisting primarily  of young  people supporting their particular church. Espoused most of the principles and practices that characterized the unique Akron A.A. Christian Fellowship program . . . (finish the article). See Dick B., When Early AAs Were Cured. And Why; The James Club.

Other Significant Influences on Bill’s Big Book and Steps:

• William Duncan Silkworth, M.D. — the psychiatrist in charge of Towns Hospital in New York, who frequently treated Bill Wilson for alcoholism, seems to have fostered A.A.’s “allergy” theories about the so-called “disease” of alcoholism, and who wrote the Doctor’s Opinion contained in each edition of Bill’s Big Book.  
   

• Carl Gustav Jung — the world-renowned Swiss psychiatrist who treated Rowland Hazard, recommended Rowland’s affiliation with a         religious group, and opined there was no cure for Rowland’s chronic, alcoholic mind, except through a religious conversion experience—the       solution believed by Bill Wilson to have been the source of his own          cure and to be the foundation for the Twelfth Step’s “spiritual       experience” idea.
   

• William James, M.D. –- called by many the Founder of American Psychology; long dead before A.A. was founded; a Harvard Professor whose focus was on psychology, experimental psychology, and    philosophy; whose works impacted the writings and beliefs of Rev. Sam Shoemaker, Jr.; and whose book The Varieties of Religious   Experience was, to Bill Wilson, a validation of his “hot flash” “spiritual” experience and also a foundation of Bill’s First Step theory about “deflation in depth.”
   

• Richard Peabody – a lay alcoholism therapist whose title The Common Sense of Drinking was owned by both Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob; who, though he did not teach reliance on God and died drunk, nonetheless appears to have influenced Bill’s writings; and whose parallel  language Bill appears to have used in such ideas as “powerlessness,”   “once an alcoholic always an alcoholic,” “no cure for alcoholism,” “surrender,” “half measures availed us nothing,” and  other therapeutic ideas.

• The New Thought Movement – a curious, unique spin-off from conventional Christian denominations that embraces, Unity, Science    of Mind, Divine Science, Religious Science, Psychiana, Society for the Study of Metaphysical Religion, Christian Science (though often disputed as being different), and Process New Thought—whose ideas      probably contributed unusual and little-understood “spiritual” words    to A.A. language. Words such as “Higher Power,” “Fourth   Dimension,” “spirituality,” and other metaphysical terms differing substantially from the Biblical words used by A.A. pioneers and taken from their King James Version Bibles. KJV words such as “Creator,” “Maker,” “Father of light,” “God of our fathers,” and “Our Father.” I characterize the new thought words as strange and unusual because you can be sure that when Dr. Bob wrote that your “Heavenly Father      will never let you down” (Big Book, p. 181), he was not speaking of some ill-defined, “higher powered” “radiator” or “goddess” of New Thought or “New Age” creation.

The Bill Wilson Legacy

Bill Wilson was the author of the basic text of Alcoholics Anonymous and of the Twelve Steps of recovery suggested therein. Questions have been raised about the authorship of the chapters “To Wives” and “To Employers” in the Big Book; but Wilson said he had asked Dr. Bob’s wife to write the chapter to the wives, that Anne Smith declined, that Lois Wilson (his wife) was angry about the slight, and that he wrote the chapter. As to the “To Employers” chapter, I leave that authorship quandary to someone else’s research and conclusions.

Some A.A.-related shibboleths that nee to be discarded.

• First, that there were “Oxford Group Steps.”  No!  Non-existent. Both Bill Wilson and his wife Lois suggested that the Oxford Group (an A.A. source) had six steps (But the Oxford Group did not have “six steps.” See Pass It On, pp. 197, 206 n.2) The Oxford Group had no steps at all, no six steps, and no twelve steps, whatever you may have heard.
   

• Second, that the Twelve Steps were derived from the Exercises of St. Ignatius or John Wesley’s Principles of Holiness. No.  Not involved. Father Ed Dowling met Bill Wilson after the Twelve Steps were written. According to one writer, Dowling “was interested in the parallels he had intuited between the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and the Exercises of St. Ignatius. . . . That . . . Wilson wearily confessed ignorance of the Exercises at once endeared the diminutive cleric to Bill” (Kurtz, Not-God, Hazelden, 1991,  p. 88). Parallels, not product. And the same may possibly be said of some of Wesley’s ideas on works on grace and mercy. But I have found nothing in the accounts of A.A. or its Biblical progenitors that suggests any derivative relationship at all between early A.A. and either Ignatius or Wesley. In fact, as we will point out, the Steps bear an unmistakable Oxford Group imprint and more precisely the imprint and language of Rev. Sam Shoemaker, who, Bill said, had taught Bill almost every step idea.
   

• Third, that A.A. originally had an alleged six “word –of-mouth” steps.
  Bill suggested that there were six word-of-mouth steps being used before the Twelve Steps were written (Pass It On, p. 197). That’s possible, but these steps, if there were any, were certainly not well defined or consistently described. Lois likened them to a supposed six Oxford Group steps (Lois Remembers, pp. 113, 92). Today, it’s quite clear that the Oxford Group had no such six steps (Pass It On, pp. 197, 206 n. 2). Moreover, there is no convincing evidence to support Bill’s assertion of a supposed six steps. Sometimes, they were referred to as the Oxford Groups six steps—which, as we have said—did not exist. On other occasions, Bill described these “word-of-mouth” steps in varying and inconsistent ways (See Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, p. 160; The Language of the Heart, p. 200; Lois Remembers, p. 113; and my review in Dick B., The Akron Genesis of Alcoholics Anonymous, 3^rd ed., pp. 256-260). And he added his own disclaimer that the six were subject to considerable variation—which they were (See Dick B. The Akron Genesis, supra, p. 256). In fact, long after Bill’s death, his secretary and long-time aid Nell Wing personally handed me one of the versions in Bill’s own handwriting. But this version in no way resembled Bill’s other descriptions. The final questionable rendition of the “six steps” seems to stem from a personal story in the Big Book’s later edition which purportedly was the story of Earl Treat of Chicago. There is a description there of a supposed six steps used by Dr. Bob (Alcoholics Anonymous 3^rd ed., p. 292; Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, pp. 22-23).  However, Dr. Bob was then dead and the procedure attributed to him uses words like “Complete deflation” and “Higher Power” that were simply not characteristic of descriptive words such as “God” and “Heavenly Father;” the need for abstinence; and the references to “sins” accurately attributed to Dr. Bob and his technique by Frank Amos (See DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers, p. 131). I therefore strongly believe that the descriptive words of the Early Treat story were not those spoken or used by Dr. Bob and that that portion was most probably written or edited and changed by someone other than Earl Treat. Even a cursory glance shows that Treat himself spoke of a number of other “Oxford Group” procedures that Dr. Bob used in Bob’s session with Earl in Dr. Bob’s office. And the first two of the supposed Bob Smith six steps employ language that I have never found in any records of what Dr. Bob said in those days—deflation in depth and “higher power.” These were phrases and ideas that came from Bill Wilson, and they were used by Wilson long after the early Akron days in which Dr. Bob and Bill formulated the seven-point program reported to John D. Rockefeller by Frank Amos and specifically set forth in A.A.’s Conference Approved biography of Dr. Bob.  In describing his actual writing of the Twelve Steps, Bill spoke of six ideas then in use, and he and Lois both indicated he expanded the six to twelve so that there would be no “wiggle room” for those taking the steps. The problem is that all of the major ideas that Bill incorporated into the twelve steps were in Bill’s reservoir from what his own sponsor Ebby Thacher had taught him in  1934—at least four years before the steps were written. (See Alcoholics Anonymous 4^th ed., pp. 13-16; also my extended treatment and review of the Stepping Stones manuscripts and what Bill originally wrote about the Oxford Group teachings from Ebby and others, as found in my title, Dick B., Turning Point: A History of the Spiritual Roots and Successes of Early A.A. Kihei, HI: Paradise Research Publications, Inc., 1997, pp. 81-116. They were also in Bill’s reservoir of what the Oxford Group had been teaching since 1919—the five C’s of “Soul Surgery,” the “Four Absolutes” borrowed from Dr. Robert E. Speer, the moral inventory ideas that came from the Oxford Group and Matthew 7:1-5 in the sermon on the mount, the confession ideas that came from James 5:16, the restitution ideas that came from many parts of the Bible, particularly the Sermon on the Mount, the Quiet Time ideas that were popularized in the previous century with the “morning watch” and writings of F. B. Meyer (and well supported by the materials in the first chapter of the Book of James), the “spiritual experience,” and “pass it on.” Further, Bill’s last point on practicing of spiritual principles seems probably to have been based primarily on 1 Corinthians 13, the Ten Commandments, and portions of the Sermon on the Mount.

Some have objected to my innumerable footnotes and specific citations, but they are the foundation of my writings. When I find something, I identify its source if I can. Then I identify its link to A.A. if I can. And then I specify my sources so that others can check them out and discuss or dispute them if they wish. The end result during the past fourteen years has been heart-warming. This despite occasional sarcastic remarks now and then by a trio of history commentators about my supposed “preaching,” “love” for the Oxford Group, an “agenda,” and my merely qualifying for historical research as a “hobbyist.” That keeps me out of the hair of some revisionists and bleeding deacons. But the perpetrators seldom if ever offer documentation of any kind whatever which discusses, disputes, or analyzes the sources materials I rely on. Rely only, I’d suggest, on those who make an argument and supporting it by pointing you to the quote or source book that backs it up. For my part, I try very hard stick to the hard evidence and let the nay sayers throw stones if they care to. And a few do.

Now let’s get down to some very specific statements about A.A.’s roots. Let’s see what Bill Wilson, Dr. Bob Smith, Dr. Bob’s wife Anne Ripley Smith, and the Smith’s son Robert R. Smith (“Smitty”) had to say about the sources embodied in pioneer A.A. and later in the Big Book and Twelve Steps. Then we can get specific about those sources, the documentation, and the references. Note also that the references to those specifics are described here in only limited and outline form.

Some enlightening statements by A.A.’s “founders” as to sources:

• Bill Wilson wrote the following:

[The author has compacted the various statements into the following                               lump even though they were written at different points in time].  (1) A. A. was not invented. (2) Nobody invented Alcoholics Anonymous. (3) Each of A.A.’s principles, every one of them, has been borrowed from ancient sources. (4) Having now accounted for AA’s Steps One and Twelve. . . . Where did the early AAs find this material for the remaining ten Steps. . . . The spiritual substance of the remaining ten Steps came straight from Dr. Bob’s and my own association with the Oxford Groups, as they were then led in America by that Episcopal rector, Dr. Samuel Shoemaker. (5) The early A.A. got its ideas of self-examination, acknowledgment of character defects, restitution for harm done, and working with others straight from the Oxford Groups and directly from Sam Shoemaker, their former leader in America, and from nowhere else. (6) [As to] the “co-founder” tag [Bill wrote Shoemaker] . . . I have no  hesitancy in adding your name to the list. (7) I’m always glad to say privately that some of the Oxford Group presentation and emphasis on the Christian message saved my life. (8) Now that Frank Buchman  [founder of the Oxford Group] is gone and I realize more than ever what we owe to him, I wish I had sought him out in recent years to tell him of  our appreciation” (See specific quotes and citations in Dick B. Turning Point, pp. 12-13).

• Lois Wilson wrote the following:

[Here again compacted:]  (1) Alcoholics Anonymous owes a great debt to the Oxford Group. (2) Bob already understood the great opportunity for regeneration through practicing the principles of the Oxford Group. He stopped drinking. (3) God, through the Oxford Group, had accomplished in a twinkling what I had failed to do in seventeen years. One minute I would get down on my knees and thank God. . .  and the next moment I  would throw things about and cuss the Oxford Group. (4) Finally it was agreed that the book [Big Book] should present a universal spiritual  program, not a specific religious one, since all drunks were not Christian  (Lois Remembers, pp. 92, 96, 99, 113).

• Dr. Bob Smith said the following:

[Again compacted] (1) When we [Bob and Bill] started in on Bill D.    [A.A. #3], we had no Twelve Steps, either; we had no Traditions. But we were convinced that the answer to our problems was in the Good Book. To some of us older ones, the parts we found absolutely essential were the Sermon on the Mount, the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, and the   Book of James. (2) It wasn’t until 1938 that the teachings and efforts and        studies that had been going on were crystallized in the form of the Twelve Steps. (3) If someone asked him a question about the program, his [Bob’s} usual response was “What does it say in the Good Book?” (4) I didn’t write the Twelve Steps. I had nothing to do with the writing of them. . . .   We already had the basic ideas, though not in terse and tangible form. We got them. . . as a result of our study of the Good Book. (5) Members of Alcoholics Anonymous begin the day with a prayer for strength and a short period of Bible reading. They find the basic messages they need in the Sermon on the Mount, 1 Corinthians, and the Book of James (See The Co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous: Biographical Sketches Their last Major Talks. NY: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, 1972, 1975, p13; Dick B., Turning Point, supra, p. 16.

• Anne Ripley Smith—Dr. Bob’s wife—wrote:

[Again compacted:] (1) Guidance is the principle of the Bible, its very structure. . . . The Bible is guidance written down. (2) Let all your reading be guided. What does God want me to read? (3) Of course the Bible ought to be the main Source Book of all. No day ought to pass without reading it. See Dick B., Anne Smith’s Journal, pp. 57, 69, 82-83.

• “Smitty”—the son of Dr. Bob and Anne Smith—wrote:

Before there was a Big Book—in the period of “flying blind”—God’s Big Book was the reference used in our home. The summer of 1935, when Bill lived with us, Dr. Bob had read the Bible completely three times. And the references that seemed consistent with the program goals were the Sermon on the Mount, 1 Corinthians 13, and the Book of James. At Anne’s “Quiet Time”—a daily period held with the alcoholics in our home, the Bible was used (See Dick B., The Good Book and The Big Book, p. ix).

The sources of A.A.’s ideas, their specific relationship to the Big Book and Twelve Steps, and References for your further study

• For a Comprehensive History of Early A.A. Spiritual Roots, and a Comprehensive Bibliography of A.A. Biblical Sources and Critiques

Dick B., (1) Turning Point: A History of Early A.A.’s Spiritual Roots and Successes; (2)  Making Known the Biblical History of Alcoholics Anonymous.

• The Bible Roots

Dick B., (1) The Good Book and The Big Book: A.A.’s Roots in the Bible; (2) That Amazing Grace: The Role of Clarence and  Grace S. in Alcoholics Anonymous; (3) The Golden Text of A.A.  (4) Cured. (5) When Early A.A.’s Were Cured and Why. (6) Why Early A.A. Succeeded (A Bible study primer).

• Quiet Time Roots

Dick B., (1) Good Morning! Quiet Time, Morning Watch, Meditation, and Early A.A. (2) The Books Early AAs Read for Spiritual Growth, 7^th ed. (3) United Christian  Endeavor Society.
http://www.dickb.com/Christian_Endeavor.shtml

The Common Sense of Drinking by Richard Peabody. http://www.aabibliography.com/common_sense_of_drinking.htm

Ron Roizen. Ranes Report # 7.
http://www.roizen.com/ron/rr7.htm

• United Christian Endeavor Society

Francis E. Clark. Christian Endeavor in All Lands. Boston: The United Society of Christian Endeavor, 1886

_____. Memories of Many Lands: An Autobiography: Boston: The United Society of Christian Endeavor, 1922.

Amos Wells. Expert Endeavor: A Textbook of Christian Endeavor Meetings and Practices. Boston: United Society of Christian Endeavor. n.d.

_____. The Endeavourer's Daily Companion (no further data yet) Dwight L. Moody. Golden Counsels. Boston: United Society  of Christian Endeavor, 1899.

J. F. Cowan. New Life in the Old Prayer Meetings. Boston: United Society of Christian Endeavor, n.d.

Dick B. (1) Dr. Bob and His Library, 3^rd ed. (2) When Early AAs Were  Cured and Why; (3) Comments at First Nationwide History Conference. (4)  Alcoholics Anonymous, Its Christian  Endeavor Root, and A.A.’s Co-founder Dr. Bob
http://www.dickb.com/Christian_Endeavor.shtml

• New Thought Language and Ideas

Charles S. Braden. These Also Believe. The Macmillan Company, 1949.

 Richard B. Mathison, Faiths, Cults and Sects of America. NY: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc.. 1960.

Leslie D. Weatherhead. Science Healing and Religion, supra, pp. 155-196, 462-463.

Dick B. Henrietta B. Seiberling: Ohio’s Lady with a Cause. Kihei, HI: Paradise Research Publications, Inc., 2004, pp. 10-14.

Mel B. New Wine, supra, pp. 101-116.

William L. Playfair, M.D. The Useful Lie. IL: Crossway, 1991.

New Thought. Religious Movements Homepage: New Thought Movement.
(http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/Newthoug.html)

New Thought Home Movement Page http://www.websyte.com/alan/

Alan Anderson. The New Thought Movement: A Link Between East and West. http://website.com/alan/parl.htm

John Ankerberg. Theological Research Institute,

http://www.johnankerberg.org/Articles/new-age.

C. Alan Anderson and Deborah G. Whitehouse. New Thought and  Conventional Christianity. http://www.gis.net//~caa/church.html

Raymond Laginess. God’s Sword of Truth – The Word;
 http://www.members.aol.com/member888/alcoholicA.htm

A. Orange. The Heresy of the Twelve Steps.

http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-heresy.html

L. Allen Ragels. Is Alcoholics Anonymous a Cult? An Old Question Revisited. http://www.aadeprogramming.com/reclaim/oldquestion.html

Guide and Comment on this revised summary and its identification of sources

The reader may be surprised at the new items and new approaches presented in this article. Some 14 years ago, I set out primarily to find out if A.A. had come from the Bible. And it did, though you wouldn’t know it from what you see in A.A. today. Many have kicked and screamed about that fact because it threatened their long-standing straw-man hypothesis that early A.A. came from the Oxford Group, that I have therefore focused my writings on the Oxford Group, that the Oxford Group was an heretical one-man control plan, and that it was a flop in A.A., a flop in the world, and of value historically primarily because it allegedly showed AAs what they should not do. That line of historical nonsense has served many different groups quite well. It allowed some Roman Catholics in the early 1940’s to breathe more easily, dub A.A. a spiritual group but not religious, and claim that A.A. was valuable in eliminating drinking and the Church was the place to go for religion. It has allowed many dissenting Protestants today to chew up every principle, practice, and personality in the Group and label it and A.A. “not of the Lord.” It still enabled the atheists and members of other religious persuasions (few in number, I might add) to point to the “Christian” and “religious” roots of A.A. that needed to be abandoned because of the alleged Oxford Group’s taint. And it has enabled lazy historians to fashion a separate history for A.A. that focused on Carl Jung, William James, the “devilish” Oxford Group, and Dr. Silkworth’s medical ideas and leave the Bible in the trash heap, rather than reporting the facts about Akron’s Christian Fellowship, Christian program and techniques, and high success rates in effecting cures..

But what of the Bible, Quiet Time, Anne Smith, the old fashioned prayer meetings, the surrenders to Christ, the requirement of  adherence to God’s commandments, the elimination of “sin,” and the devotionals like The Upper Room. Even more, what has happened to Sam Shoemaker? The fact is that he not only disappeared from the scene for twenty years but is, though an A.A. co-founder, virtually unknown today in 12 Step fellowships.

So a good chunk of my fifteen years of research and effort was devoted to unearthing and reconstructing the real facts of our history—the facts that had just been ignored in favor of a Jung-James-Silkworth-Oxford Group line of history and why some of it needed to be abandoned in favor of universalism. My efforts therefore brought further yowls from people who just didn’t want to talk about the Bible or Jesus Christ or religion at all. But the surprise was and is that the very cover-up has brought enormous inquiries to my website, starting eight years after my research began, and amounting today to more than 400,000 visitors. It has brought a flood of requests for the more than 150,000 of my books now in print, the 25 published titles I’ve written, the more than 110 articles, and the facts themselves—long-buried facts. I discovered there are thousands and thousands of Christians and others IN Alcoholics Anonymous and other recovery fellowships who are awash in the confused, “spiritual,” “any god,” New Age, anti-religion trend today. In fact, a recent Penn and Teller TV show illustrated very well much of the current absurdity, albeit ignoring our early history. They rightly made fun of those in the program who would call their higher power a rock and then speak of praying to that higher power.

I still urge you to read, learn, and (if you wish) apply the original seven Biblical roots of Alcoholics Anonymous. They are first on my history list. But people need to know much more about three personalities: (1) Carl Jung as one who recommended “religious conversion” as a solution for Rowland Hazard’s chronic alcoholism; (2) William James as one who had far more influence on Bill Wilson’s language, ideas, and theories than just that of a long-dead writer of a book on “varieties of religious experiences;” and (3 ) Dr. William Silkworth as one who actually believed in divine healing through the power of Jesus Christ, as Dr. Norman Vincent Peale so clearly illustrated with a personal story in his title, The Positive Power of Jesus Christ.

Then came my realization that Akron A.A. was in fact very very different in origin and in practices from the goings-on in New York that gave rise to Bill’s book and steps. Akron A.A. was focused on three books of the Bible—Matthew (containing the Sermon on the Mount); 1^st Corinthians (containing the principles of “love” about which Henry Drummond commented); and the entire Book of James—which was the Akron favorite and which spoke to temptation, God’s guidance, obeying God’s commandments, eliminating sins, living the law of love, serving God and others, being a “doer” and “worker” of God’s will and not merely a believer of God’s Word, relying on God for help in resisting the devil, being lifted by Him out of the mire, and praying for forgiveness and healing. These were not major Oxford Group objectives, team efforts, or literature items. The Akron Christian literature included far more than Oxford Group literature. Anne Smith’s unique morning teaching sessions and quiet time were like nothing Frank Buchman had fashioned. Akron’s frequent quiet times with the use of devotionals were a “must” in the Akron and soon all but ignored by the New York groups. Where did this great dichotomy come from? As I looked at Dr. Bob’s youth, at his remarks about church, prayer meetings, and Christian Endeavor, I was struck with the possibility that a completely different root of A.A. principles and practices in Akron had been un-intentionally ignored. This root has not yet been carefully or fully researched, well-defined, or proven. But it is a facet of our history that presents an exciting and refreshing challenge.

Now what of “New Thought” and “New Age?” Most AAs probably don’t even know what those ideas involve. I’ve already written that, earlier on in my research and writing, I missed the boat on the significance of new thought ideas in early A.A. But I am quite clear that Dr. Bob read many new thought writings by Ralph Waldo Trine, Henry James, Emmanuel writers, James Allen, Charles and Cora Fillmore, and Emmet Fox; and that Dr. Bob also read many many more conventional Christian writings by Oswald Chambers, Sam Shoemaker, and others. Bill read studied few, if any, but Bill appeared to have a direct link with Emmet Fox or his lecture activities in New York. Bill picked up on a host of “New Thought” expressions and wove them into his Big Book language, his presentation to “agnostics,” and his expansion of A.A.’s “inclusive” outreach and so-called “higher power.” The new thought entities as such are not large in numbers or members, Many of its denominations are far overshadowed in growth by evangelicals and Pentecostals as well as unbelievers. Much of its literature has passed from the scene. However, many of its “spirituality,” “higher power,” “choose your own conception of God” mystical ideas are with us today. Though I agree with very little they assert, they deserve mention and definition as part of our history—not as “god parents” as one writer contended, but as part of Bill’s thinking and writing.

And why talk of “New Age?” It bloomed later than the AA founding years. But it shouldn't be ignored for a variety of reasons. First, the relationship of Bill and Lois to Swedenborgianism and its involvement in the occult. Second; the mystical ideas in the A.A.-William James link. Third, the burgeoning secularism in our society and in parts of the Twelve Step movement. Fourth, the extensive and long-standing  Wilson participation in spiritualism, “spook sessions,” and other psychic ideas. Finally, because it fuels an apparent pull for universalism emanating from book sales promotion, treatment center inclusiveness, the inclusiveness by professionals, and side-line cheering by atheists and humanists. All seem, for one reason or another, to push for a “universal” A.A. membership. In fact, today, the hand-writing is on the wall showing a growing interest in the A.A. hierarchy in expansion into Eastern religion areas—areas that have long embraced all sorts of new age idolatry, devil spirits, occult practices, and “global” inclusive thinking.

There you have it. I sure won’t abandon my convictions that early A.A.’s 75% to 93% success rate is what brought Alcoholics Anonymous to public view and approval; that the success of forty seemingly hopeless, medically incurable real alcoholics in the pioneer Akron program is what aroused the confidence of Bill and Bob, the interest of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the visits of Frank Amos to Akron, and the fairly rapid approval of science and medicine; and that the simple, easily-understood ideas in the Akron Christian Fellowship carried the day for the diverse group of pioneers and their widespread claims of cure. I have been cured and am cured. I know how I was cured. I know by Whom I was cured. And I know that my best assurance of truth about the healing, the how and the Who comes from the Bible and such additional revelation as God chooses to give to me and others of His kids who accept His son. Therefore, I remain in A.A. I’m not intimidated by some rock-throwing skeptic, critic, atheist, or secularism advocate. My confidence in the effectiveness of the early program remains. Moreover, I have a firm conviction that abstinence, acceptance of Christ, reliance on the Creator, obedience to His will, study of His Word, and the practice of love in service represent what Dr. Bob was teaching and what will work today for anyone who wants to quit drinking for good, return to good health and even prosperity for good, and live the abundant life that Jesus came to make available for God’s kids as underlined in John 10:10: “The thief [the devil] cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly.”

Contact:
Dick B.
P.O. Box 837
Kihei, Hawaii
96753-0837
Ph/fax: 808-874-4876
dickb@dickb.com

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