A.A. History
Dick B.
Copyright 2012
Anonymous. All rights reserved
[A brief addendum to a very important article written a few
months back. We now know why there has been such a growing onrush of Christian
recovery leaders, workers, newcomers, and those who want God’s help in recovering
from alcoholism, drug addiction, and life controlling problems. The answer is
that the more we have searched and researched, the more we have learned where
A.A. really came from. And that
information should buttress the faith, the efforts, and the programs of
those who want the primary role of the Creator placed back in front of those
who are struggling in recovery programs—struggling with psychiatric solutions,
behavioral solutions, pharmaceutical solutions, “medical models,” “spirituality,”
“higher powers,” and all the other ineffective methods that have cluttered the
original highly successful scene.
To encourage others to list themselves—at no cost—in International
Christian Recovery Coalition—and become champions of God’s role in recovery—has
become a major focus of our last three years of conferences, seminars,
workshops, meetings, and networking. You
can find the evidence on www.ChristianRecoveryCoalition.com,
on www.ChristianRecoveryRadio.com,
and on my main website with its many links www.dickb.com.
What’s the news?
The successful turning to God by alcoholics began at least as early as the 1850’s. The Great
Evangelists like Dwight Moody, Ira Sankey, F.B. Meyer, Allen Folger and others
held huge revivals where salvation, the Word of God, and healing were
emphasized. And drunks were healed. Rescue Missions began offering the same
type of solution to derelicts who came in off the streets. And drunks were
healed. The Salvation Army reached out into the streets with salvation, the
Word, and a helping hand and developed the idea of one recovered person helping
another find God and His help. And drunks were healed. The Young Men’s
Christian Association brethren started in England helping young men move from
the streets and drunkenness to the word of God and salvation. And drunks were
healed. And then came the United Society of Christian Endeavor which was
founded in Maine in 1881, attracted the young Bob Smith to its ranks, and soon
grew to 4.5 million members round the
world. And a program of conversion, prayer meetings, Bible study, Quiet Hour,
reading Christian literature, and bringing youngsters back into the church became
a frontispiece for the later AA of Akron program.
Amidst it all, was the Christian upbringing of A.A.
cofounders Robert Holbrook Smith (Dr. Bob) of St. Johnsbury, Vermont and
William Griffith Wilson (Bill W.) of East Dorset, Vermont. And Vermont
Congregational Churches, Vermont Congregational Academies with their daily
chapel and Bible studies, the Young Men’s Christian Association, the
Evangelists, the growth of the Salvation Army and of Christian Endeavor all
made their mark on A.A. founders in their youth and before there was an A.A. or
an Oxford Group.
Then came the dark years of drunkenness and dereliction for
the founders. But they didn’t forget their youth, salvation, the Bible,
healing, and the importance of abstinence.
That part of the story
has been equally obscured and now been brought to light as Christians have
awakened to the fact that God has long done for drunks what they could not do
for themselves.]
Now, back to the original article which prompted this
revisitation of real Twelve Step History
Many Claims. Many Errors. One Truth
When was A.A. Founded?
You'd
think by now that everyone knew. Yet I was active in A.A. and its meetings for
two or three years before I ever heard mention of the founding. Finally, I
learned that the date was June 10, 1935 - the date that Dr. Bob had his last
drink. But that didn't satisfy today's historians. They tinkered with dates and
concluded that Dr. Bob didn't have his last drink on June 10th, that the
medical convention to which he went in Atlantic City never occurred when AAs
said it did, and that A.A. was founded on some other date thereabouts.
If you asked someone
when George Washington cut down the cherry tree, just think how many different
answers the historians might provide. Does it matter? Today, we don't even seem
to celebrate his birthday and prefer lumping all our presidents together.
Well, AAs do care. It
matters to them. So I set forth all the arguments and dates long ago in my
title, The Akron Genesis of Alcoholics
Anonymous. You can study them there if you like. Long after A.A. was
founded, Lois Wilson wrote that it had been founded in 1934 when drunks were
coming to the Wilson home in Brooklyn. Others wanted to date it when Ebby
Thacher first carried the message to Bill Wilson. T. Henry Williams often said
that A.A. started right on the carpet of his Palisades home in Akron when Dr.
Bob, Henrietta Seiberling, and the others in the Oxford Group knelt and prayed
for Dr. Bob's recovery. Still others like to date it as of the publishing of
the Big Book in the Spring of 1939. Clarence Snyder claimed he was the founder,
and that the first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous was held in Cleveland on May
11, 1939. One would-be expert has now asserted that the "original"
program occurred some time after that in the 1940's. And, Bill Wilson made the
statement that the first A.A. group began when A.A. Number Three was cured of
alcoholism, was visited by Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob in the hospital, and walked
from there a "free man" - never to drink again. That happened very
shortly after Dr. Bob himself got sober.
So—if you think they matter in the battle to overcome
alcoholism--you'll have to make up your own mind. FDR changed Thanksgiving. We
call Armistice Day Veterans Day. And on and on. Which leads to the conclusion
that "founding" days are perhaps less important than the founding
facts.
Personally, I'm convinced that A.A. began. I am convinced it
began at Dr. Bob's Home in Akron. I am convinced that Bob and Bill agreed that
it began when Dr. Bob took his last drink. I'm convinced that fairly soon after
AA began, Bill and Bob agreed that the founding date was June 10, 1935. And
thereafter, Bill Wilson attended and actually spoke at "Founders Day"
each year in Akron where the "founding of A.A." on June 10, 1935 is
celebrated.
Do you know when A.A. was founded? I don't. But I'm very
sure it was founded because that's where I took my last drink forever and was
cured. The date was April 21, 1986.
Where did the original program come from?
I know what it was,
where it began, when it began, and how it was practiced. But you'd have a heck
of a time convincing a lot of AAs today. People who have never met or even read
much about Bill Wilson, Dr. Bob, or the original days in Akron.
In the first place, people have chosen to call the early
days the "flying blind" period. Yet there never was more light
shining on the cure for alcoholism. Real alcoholics who really tried, who were
"medically incurable," who were willing to go to any lengths to get
well, were cured in astonishing percentages. By 1938, some forty of them-called
the "pioneers"-were maintaining sobriety, half or more for two years.
Richard K. has produced three books now detailing who these folks were, when
they got sober, and what happened to them. Their names can be found on a dozen
rosters. The pictures of many are on the walls at Dr. Bob's Home in Akron.
Fifty per cent got sober and stayed sober, despite the fact that many a
creative A.A. amateur historian insists that the original gang all died drunk.
Nonsense!
In the second place, the program came from the Bible. Maybe
that's why doubters and unbelievers want to call it the "flying
blind" period. The Bible was read to Bill and Bob and studied by them
throughout their youth in Vermont. It was read to them at at the Smith Home
each day in the summer of 1935 by Dr. Bob's wife Anne Smith. Bob had studied
the Bible all his life and began refreshing his memory as a youngster. He read
the Bible straight through three times. Bob and Bill stayed up until the wee
hours of the morning every day that Bill stayed at the Smith home in Akron in
the summer of 1935. The discussed the Biblical basis for recovery which their
experience had then revealed to them.
Later, when asked a question about the program, Dr. Bob
said: "What does the Good Book say." He often commented that the old
timers felt that the answer to all their problems could be found in the Good
Book. Over and over, Bob emphasized that the Book of James, Jesus’s sermon on the mount (Matthew 5, 6, 7), and 1
Corinthians 13 were absolutely essential. I've written much about the specifics
AAs borrowed from these three books. See The
Good Book and The Big Book, Why Early
A.A. Succeeded, The Oxford Group and
Alcoholics Anonymous, Turning Point,
New Light on Alcoholism: God, Sam
Shoemaker, and A.A., When Early AAs Were Cured and Why, and my new article,
"A.A., The James Club, and the Book of James".
Bob and Bill both said that the sermon on the mount
contained the underlying philosophy of A.A., that 1 Corinthians 13 was favored
reading, and the A.A. thought so much of the Book of James that they wanted to
call their Society the "James Club." The Bible was read at every A.A.
meeting in Akron for years-not Oxford Group books, not Shoemaker books, not
popular Christian literature, not even much from devotionals like The Upper
Room.
The Bible was stressed, and AAs said so. You can read it in DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers, the A.A.
Conference Approved book published in
1980. In fact, in his last major talk to AAs-which is on tape, which has been
edited and reprinted, and which can be found in A.A.'s own literature-Dr. Bob
said A.A. basic ideas came from the Bible.
When was the original program developed and completed?
There's a very simple set of facts. Yet many don't want to
acknowledge them because they are busy saying that Dr. Bob could never get
sober studying the Bible or being a member of the Oxford Group, that there were
"six" Oxford Group Steps (which there weren't), that there were
"six" word-of-mouth A.A. steps (which Wilson characterized in half a
dozen ways), and that the "twelve" steps somehow represented the
"steps" that early AAs took (even though there were no steps at all,
not six, not twelve, not any) and even though there was no basic text
containing any steps until the Spring of 1939 (shortly after Bill had asked Rev.
Sam Shoemaker to write the Steps), and even though the actual vote authorizing
Bill to write a textbook was controversial, was taken in Akron, and occurred in
1937 or 1938 before Bill ever began writing the Big Book.
Dr. Bob also pointed out that, in the development years,
"there were no steps" and that "our stories didn't amount to
anything." So, by 1938, when Bill and Bob had counted noses, found that
some 40 men were maintaining continuous sobriety-some for as long as two years,
and concluded that God had shown them how to pass along their program, the
program could certainly be said to have been completed.
What Was The Original A.A. Program?
The program in Akron had, under the leadership of Dr. Bob,
worked so well that Bill managed to persuade John D. Rockefeller, Jr. to take a
careful look at it.
Rockefeller dispatched his representative, Frank Amos, to
Akron to investigate. And Amos did just that. He interviewed doctors, judges,
AAs, family members, and Dr. Bob himself. He concluded the program bore close
resemblance to First Century Christianity as described in the Book of Acts.
He was astonished at its success and at the simple elements
that comprised "the" program. He submitted two reports to
Rockefeller, and Amos was later to become an A.A. trustee-presumably in
recognition of his vital role in the
founding of the real, original, A.A. program.
Some of the Amos Reports can be found in DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers: (New
York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1980). But I wanted to see the
originals. So I went to A.A. General Services in New York and to the archives
at the Bill Wilson home called "Stepping Stones" at Bedford Hills in
New York. I saw the reports and verified the basic accuracy of the A.A.
excerpts.
Amos did not discuss the hospitalizations at Akron City
Hospital which were "musts" in the early program. Possibly because a
newcomer's program did not really begin until he had detoxed, been relieved of
some of his fuzzy thinking, and become a real candidate. Nor did Amos discuss
the surrender with Dr. Bob at the conclusion of the brief hospitalization. For
it was then that the newcomer dealt with three issues: (1) Did he believe in
God. (2) Would he get down on his knees with Dr. Bob and pray. (3) Would he
"surrender" his life by accepting Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.
And if he "passed" that surrender test, out of the hospital he
went-to begin all the activities I have described at such length in my
published titles.
You can find an excellent and concise description of the
whole process in my title "God and Alcoholism: Our Growing Opportunity in
the 21st Century, pp. 2 -12. A short description of the original program as
Frank Amos described it, would be:
Abstinence-the alcoholic shall realize he must never again
drink.
Absolute surrender of himself to God.
He must remove from his life the sins which frequently
accompany alcoholism.
He must have devotions every morning-a Quiet Time of prayer
and Bible reading.
He must be willing to help other alcoholics get straightened
out.
Important, but not vital, he must frequently meet with other
"reformed" alcoholics
and form both a social and religious comradeship.
Important, but not vital, he must attend some religious
service at least once weekly.
There is much more in terms of activity-Morning quiet time
with Anne Smith at the Smith home, individual quiet time, the Wednesday Oxford
Group meeting, regular informal meetings at the Smith Home, Bible study and
prayer and the reading of Christian literature being circulated, talks with Dr.
Bob and Anne and Henrietta Seiberling, and visits to newcomers at the hospital.
But the "cure"-the permanent solution to their problems--was
described as above in the Frank Amos report.
No drunkalogs. No steps. No Big Book. No service structure.
No offices. And no money! Just the Creator, Jesus Christ, obedience to God's
will, the Bible, prayer, fellowship, and witness.
It worked! Seventy-five percent documented success rate in
those days; and, shortly thereafter, at the beginning of the 1940's, a
ninety-three percent documented success rate. Documented by carefully kept
rosters, names, dates, addresses, and phone numbers.
Gloria Deo
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