A.A. History or A.A. Mystery

A.A. History or A.A. Mystery
A Series with Answers

Dick B.
© 2011 Anonymous. All rights reserved

A.A.’s own resources:

A.A.’s Pamphlet P-53 reports the complete talk Dr. Bob gave at his last major address in 1948, emphasizing A.A.’s roots in the Bible—Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5, 6, and 7), the Book of James, and 1 Corinthians 13.

Bill W. wrote some “fragments” that became available in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age ( 1957), and, in an article published in The Language of the Heart: Bill W.’s Grapevine Writings, Bill sketched out the source of the 12 Steps as Dr. William D.
Silkworth, Professor William James, and Rev. Samuel M. Shoemaker, Jr.

It was not until the 1980’s that A.A. published DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers (1980)
which recorded the Original A.A. program in Akron (from 1935-1938); and not until 1984 that A.A. published “Pass It On” – a partial biography of Bill’s life with most of Bill Wilson’s shortcomings frankly conceded.

What was missing:

There was no complete, accurate, or informative material on the Christian upbringing of
Dr. Bob in Vermont. There was no complete, accurate, or informative material on Bill W.’s Christian upbringing in Vermont Nor on the solution that Dr. Silkworth gave Bill—the cure through Jesus Christ. Nor Ebby Thacher’s new birth at Calvary Mission Nor Bill’s decision for Jesus Christ at Calvary Mission. Nor his original witnessing with a Bible under his arm and his testimony that the Lord had cured him of his terrible disease.

There was no mention of Bill W.’s autobiography which lay dormant in Stepping Stones for years and years.

It took a bid at auction for slightly less than one million dollars to result in Hazelden’s publication in 2010 of the drastically changed printer’s manuscript of the First Edition
of Alcoholics Anonymous.

There was no publication for years and years of anything accurate about the personal
Journal that Dr. Bob’s wife Anne Ripley Smith had kept from 1933 to 1939, which
laid out the basic principles of the A.A. program, and from which she shared each morning at the Smith home in Akron with pioneer AAs and their families.

There was no significant information published about the excellent training that Dr. Bob said he had had in the Bible as a youth. There was no significant information published about Bill’s Bible study with his grandfather and with his friend, or the four-year Bible study Bill undertook at Burr and Burton Academy in Manchester, Vermont.
There was no adequate report on the many Christian conversions and cures that Professor William James recorded in his Varieties of Religious Experience that both Dr. Bob and Bill owned and studied.

There was no adequate report for years and years on the prescription of conversion as a cure for alcoholism that Dr. Carl G. Jung prescribed before A.A. was founded. And that Dr. William D. Silkworth had specifically mentioned to Bill Wilson on Bill’s third visit to Towns Hospital as a patient.

There was no report or documentation of the twenty-eight Oxford Group principles that so strongly influenced Bill W.’s writing in the Big Book and Twelve Steps.

There was no public report of the “Bedford” Manuscript that Bill dictated to Ed B. in the 1950’s when Bill recorded a version of A.A. history that was later used by Robert Thomsen (Bill’s first biographer) and even by the authors of “Pass It On” – but no apparent or recognizable opportunity for the public to see and analyze the report itself

There was no report of the hundreds of articles in newspapers and magazines and even books where early AAs told how they had been “cured” of alcoholism. And eventually
A.A. literature (except for page 191 of later Big Book editions) simply obliterated the idea that alcoholism could be cured, that Bill Wilson had said so, but and had also specifically attributed the cure to Jesus Christ in a story about Cleveland that has
now been removed from the Third Edition of “Alcoholics Anonymous.”

There has been no presentation of the more than 400 pages of Big Book manuscript materials – containing Christian and biblical materials – that were discarded before the Big Book manuscript was published. And there has been no presentation of the “dogma” that Bill wrote had been learned from the churches and missions that had helped AAs.

The price paid and the mystery created by the omissions

Writers put out books like “Not-God,” “Slaying the Dragon,” biographies of Bill, and reflections by hundreds of later A.A. members on what A.A. had given them or not given them in the way of “spiritual experiences” or “Something saves” if they even acknowledged the existence of such novel recovery interpretations..

The “solution” that had made Bill and A.A. famous—Bill’s own story of conversion to God through Jesus Christ and called a “spiritual experience” was changed to speak of a “spiritual awakening” and finally a “personality change.”

Every mention of the Bible was omitted from the Big Book main text.

Every meaningful mention of Jesus Christ was omitted from the Big Book main text.

Significant mention of God as Creator, Maker, Heavenly Father, and Father was mixed with Bill W.’s self-made “Czar of the Heavens,” “Universal Mind,” “Spirit of Nature,” and “Creative Intelligence,” and other human appellations seemingly derived from New Thought writers.

A few dogged anti-A.A. Christian writers began publishing untruths about A.A. and
Spiritualism, A.A. and “spirituality,” A.A. as being “spiritual but not religious,” A.A. and Masonry, and absurd names for “a god” like higher power, light bulb, radiator, chair, table, Gertrude, Ralph, Santa Claus, the Great Pumpkin, and Something.

A few A.A. apologists began trying to equate the biblical roots and expressions of early A.A. with Bible verses the mention of which in early A.A. was simply not documented.

A large number of AAs and the A.A. hierarchy began pushing the idea that one didn’t need to believe in anything at all in order to recover in the A.A. program.

A.A. Traditions and A.A. “Conference Approved” barriers were manufactured by people in the rooms to bar books, to suppress mention of the Bible and Jesus Christ, and even to exclude from recognition those groups that studied the biblical and Christian roots of A.A.

The “wisdom of the rooms” with its psychobabble and self-made religion gained much more usage by members than the Bible verses and Christian ideas that dominated the early A.A. of Akron. Phrases like “this too shall pass,” “turn it over,” “acceptance is the answer,” “just play with the cards that are dealt you,” “don’t drink and go to meetings,” and “go to meetings – go to meetings – go to meetings” predominated over reading the Bible, having Quiet Times, holding prayer meetings, affirming belief in Almighty God, accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and talking about “religion.”

Worship of some “higher power” began to be widely accepted as a remedy instead of being rejected or ignored as an “absurd name for God” which Rev. Samuel M. Shoemaker, Jr. had warned against in A.A. conferences and literature.

The possibility that someone could and can be a participant in a 12 Step or A.A. program or fellowship and still be a Christian caused some writers to concoct interpretations of the Bible and fearful condemnations of those who dared to be Christian and A.A.

A.A. History or A.A. Mystery?

One who is an AA and Christian is often left with several misunderstood or seemingly unacceptable choices: (1) Believe the “wisdom of the rooms.” (2) Misuse A.A. tools like “Conference-approved” and the “Traditions” to suppress reading and meeting talk. (3) Read the volumes of later published literature promoting A.A. as a “broad highway,” a place where those of any belief or no belief could flourish in their discussions of A.A. and its Steps. (4) See himself vocally and in writing condemned for expressing his views about God, Jesus Christ, Holy Spirit, the Bible, religion, and church.

God has not left A.A. Nor has the Christian history of A.A. disappeared. Jesus Christ has not vanished from the beliefs of thousands and thousands of AAs. The Bible has not been burned—as with Nazi German and other historically reported book-burnings. Idolatry has not been acclaimed by Christians. “Higher Powers” are not proven vehicles of healing or understanding or worship or belief. They are bogus crutches for those who have heard and believed a rumor, “forgotten where they came from” and never learned how it is that the original believing AAs (40 in number) had a 75% success rate—which is far far far from the success rates of those in A.A. who don’t believe or those who rely on frequent rotating “rehabs” and “treatment” programs.

The “mystery” perhaps is just how long the perpetrator of unbelief, the victims of unbelief, and the publishers of unbelief will continue to dilute and perhaps even destroy the desperate hopes for healing, outcries for help, and solid reliance on God that still cause the formula to be published in A.A.’s Big Book – “God could and could if He were sought.”