The Emmet Fox Myths Regularly
Promulgated by A Few Against A.A
Dick B.
Copyright 2012
Anonymous. All rights reserved
First, when someone asks about a supposed New Thought
foundation for A.A. and tosses aside the very clear basic ideas A.A. took from
its studies and efforts in the Bible, I often like to point out these two
truths:
(1) Emmet
Fox did not deliver the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus did! See Matt. 5-7.
(2) Emmet
Fox rejected the idea of “born again” and salvation. Jesus made these
available. Early AAs in Akron required acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and
Savior.
Here is a relevant quote (with some new additions) from one
of my articles:
Number
Fifteen: New Thought. Also beginning to take wing through the impetus of Christian Science
and similar movements that started to flower at almost the same period as the
first two sources [of A.A.] But the New Thought focus was on a new kind of
god—a higher power—that took descriptive words from the Bible but saw God,
good, and evil in non-salvation terms. New Thought words and phrases like
higher power, cosmic consciousness, fourth dimension, and Universal Mind
filtered in to the A.A. stream. Even the “Christ in you-Christ in everybody”
nonsense that still floats in recovery circles. The New Thought expositors included
Mary Baker Eddy, Waldo Trine, William James, Emmanuel Movement writers, and
Emmet Fox. See The Books Early AAs Read for Spiritual Growth, 7th ed;
When Early AAs Were Cured and Why; Dr. Bob and His Library; Good Morning: Quiet
Time, Morning Watch, Meditation, and Early A.A.; God and Alcoholism. See
for further relative research, see New Wine, written by an advocate for
New Thought among his A.A. friends.
[Source for the quote above: "A.A.’s Fifteen Major
Well-Springs" by Dick B. Copyright 2007 Anonymous. All rights
reserved: http://dickb.com/15wellsprings.shtml].
Fox’s book, along with many others, was widely read by a few
early AAs. So too were the books of Oswald Chambers, Nora Smith Holm, E.
Stanley Jones, Thomas a’Kempis, Leslie D. Weatherhead, Samuel M. Shoemaker,
Jr., Harold Begbie, Brother Lawrence, Ebenezer MacMillan, Sherwood Day, Julian
P. Thornton-Duesbury, B. H. Streeter, Cecil Rose, Hallen Viney, Howard J. Rose,
Jack Winslow, Upper Room, Robert E.
Speer, Charles Sheldon, Rev. James Stalker, T.R. Glover, Geoffrey Allen, The Fathers of the Church, Henry
Drummond, Toyohiko Kagawa, Glenn Clark, Mary Baker Eddy, James Moore Hickson,
Ethel R. Willitts, Star Daily, Mary W. Tileston, and the Holy Bible, were all
widely circulated, read, and quoted. I suggest you familiarize yourself with them.
Go, if you like, to Dr. Bob’s Home in Akron, to the Dr. Bob Core Library in
Vermont, to the Wilson House in Vermont, to Brown University, to the Shoemaker
Room at Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. Viewed as a whole, you can see
the foregoing books early AAs read, and many many others. But cherry picking
this or that author or book and labeling it as representative of the Christian
faiths, denominations, creeds, and beliefs of early AAs is just another path to
the myths now being manufactured by some who are violently opposed to A.A. I
also suggest you read page 13 of The Co-Founders of Alcoholics
Anonymous pamphlet with your sponsees:
“But we were convinced that the answer to our problems was
in the Good Book. To some of us older ones, the parts that we found absolutely
essential were the Sermon on the Mount, the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians,
and the Book of James.”
There is no mention there of some particular book—only of
three essential parts of the Bible the pioneers studied with regularity.
The "Sermon on the Mount" (Matthew 5-7) was, of
course, given by Jesus, not by Emmet Fox. I suggest you encourage your sponsees
to read the "real thing" to which Dr. Bob was referring rather than a
watered-down version peppered with the New Thought, anti-salvation positions
and declarations, and personal opinions of one man.
Also, I hope you have your group or fellowship purchase many
(!--even 500) copies of The Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous pamphlet
(Item # P-53) from A.A. and that you are giving and will continue to give a
copy to every person who walks through the doors of your meeting, group, and
fellowship. It is also a great tool to give to ministers, recovery pastors, sponsors
and speakers. That plus The Good Book and the Big Book: A.A.'s Roots in
the Bible by Dick B. have been really blessing people throughout the
U.S. and in other countries such as Canada.
Gloria Deo
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