Why
We Support “Old-School” A.A. in Company With
Bill
W.’s “New Version of the Program”
Dick
B.
© 2013 Anonymous. All rights
reserved
Introduction
to the Problem
Several
ideas severely critical of Alcoholics Anonymous are gaining support in the
recovery arena today primarily because A.A.’s detractors ignore the various
phases of Alcoholics Anonymous development and posture. They just don’t report
its history correctly or at least misinterpret
or distort that history. The anti-A.A. ideas lie among a few Christians,
many AAs, numbers of atheists and agnostics, others with non-Christian religious
beliefs, and many today with no belief in anything at all. But this diversity,
this variety, these scattered sources have severely challenged the biblical
roots and Christian origins of A.A., the Christian beliefs of its founders, and
the Christian nature of its original fellowship.
And
here are the phases, which are discussed and documented elsewhere in my
writings, that need to be at the heart of any examination of the society of
Alcoholics Anonymous—whether speaking of its origins, or of its beginnings, or
of its various activities and so-called membership.
One is the phase that catalyzed the
development of A.A. ideas long before A.A. was founded. Another is the phase involving
the Christian upbringing and beliefs of the first three AAs including its
cofounders. Still another is the phase where the first three AAs were cured by
the power of God before there was any A.A. group at all, or were any Steps or
Big Books at all, and only shortly after A.A.’s “founding.” by the first two
members. There was also the phase that has been shelved for years and yet
involved the original A.A. Christian Fellowship of the 1930’s and thereafter
together with its emergence from study and effort and teaching from the Bible
and Christian principles/
Then
there was the phase where Cofounder Bill W. was turning away from the Akron
A.A. Christian fellowship technique and program and being strongly influenced
in part by Rev. Samuel M. Shoemaker, Jr., and the Oxford Group life-changing
ideas. Next, Bill called his writing and publication of the Big Book and the
Twelve Steps a “New Version of the Program”—an incontrovertible situation.
Finally there was the phase where the entire A.A. “new version” was further
changed just before the Big Book went to press; and the idea of “One” God, the
Creator, the Maker, the Father of Light, the Heavenly Father of the Lord Jesus
Christ gave way to an intentional effort to inject new gods and no gods into
Wilson’s new version and the original plan he had for the Twelve Steps—a plan
that stood on Bill W.’s initial written and unqualified references to “God” and
God alone.
This
dramatic shift at the threshold of publication of the Big Book underlines the
fact that today there is no A.A. dogma, creed, liturgy, religious idea, or rule
that unites members to a particular delivering belief or to any belief at all.
But
the problem does not have to do with what A.A. is or isn’t, or what A.A. ought
to be or ought not to be. For A.A. “is what it is.” And neither analysts nor
AAs can do much but say today that anyone can walk in the door and sit down
whether a drunk or not and whether he or she wants to quit drinking or not.
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