Alcoholics Anonymous History: Cover to Cover Ideas

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There are several important historical facts and developments that need to be reported and known.
The first is that early A.A. grew out of many prior Christian individuals and organizations that helped drunks through salvation, the Word of God, and fellowshipping with like-minded believers as those in the Book of Acts did.
The second is that the first three AAs got sober and stayed sober when they were believers in God, Christians, and conversant with the Bible, and there were no steps, traditions, basic texts, or drunkalogs.
The third is that the original A.A. Akron program had five major elements: abstinence, surrender of life to God, obedience to God’s will, growth spiritually through Bible study and prayer and quiet time, and helping straighten out others by the same methods.
Then came Wilson’s gradual return via what he called six “word of mouth” ideas to the ideas of the Oxford Group he had heard so much and learned so well in his early days of sobriety. The Oxford group was originally “A First Century Chrisitian Fellowship” that talked much about Jesus Christ, the Bible, Quiet Time–some 28 ideas in all (www.dickb.com/Oxford.shtml).
But it started emphasizing “finding” God and rejecting such terms as “conversion” and adopting the idea of “change.” Dr. Bob never swerved from his belief that A.A.’s basic ideas came from the study and effort in the Bible. But Bill’s multiple variations that wound up in the Big Book produced a program that moved farther and farther away from God, Jesus Christ, and the Bible and more and more toward higher powers, “spirituality,” and picking whatever conception one had of “a” god–but certainly not the “God of the Scriptures” Bill mentioned in his “The Language of the Heart” article.
In A.A. of today, there is plenty of room for Christians, Jews, those of other faiths, those who are atheists and agnostics and humanists, those who don’t like church or religion or the Bible, those who think their higher power can be a tree, Ralph, Santa Claus, a chair, or “something,” and those who don’t believe or want to believe in anything at all. And our principal concern is that Christians realize they are not alone in the recovery arena and can believe, say, read, worship, and follow whatever religious ideas they may hold.


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