Alcoholics
Anonymous History
Why Bill Wilson Came
Firmly to Believe That Alcoholism Could Be Cured by Conversion
Dick B.
© 2013 Anonymous. All
rights reserved.
For many years during his childhood, Bill Wilson repeatedly
heard that his paternal grandfather William C. (“Willie”) Wilson had been cured
of alcoholism in a conversion experience atop Mt. Aeolus in Bill’s home town
village of East Dorset, Vermont.
Throughout his youth, Bill was exposed to the account of his
grandfather’s conversion and cure of alcoholism. And his exposure to the Bible,
to Christian upbringing and training in the Bible, and to spiritual growth was
far more substantial than has previously been known.
For example, Bill and his paternal and maternal families
attended the East Dorset Congregational Church. The Wilsons helped found it.
There the Wilson and Griffith families listened to sermons, and recited the
confession and creed. There were tent meetings and revivals, and Bill witnessed
conversions.
Moreover, Bill and his maternal grandfather, Fayette
Griffith, read the Bible individually and together. Grandfather Fayette
enrolled Bill in the East Dorset Congregational Church Sunday school. We are
still investigating what transpired of a religious nature, if anything, during
Bill’s residence in Rutland, Vermont. However, during his matriculation at Burr
and Burton Seminary in Manchester, Vermont, Bill regularly attended the daily
chapel, and heard Scripture reading, sermons, prayers, and hymns. He attended the
Manchester Congregational Church. He took a required, four-year Bible study
course at Burr and Burton. And Bill was president of the Academy YMCA, while
his girlfriend, Bertha Bamford, was president of the Burr and Burton YMCA, and
both attended chapel together at the Academy.
It was only after his girlfriend Bertha met an untimely
death just before graduation time, that Bill blamed the event on the Creator
and turned his back on him—during many years of
drinking.
Some years later, Bill’s psychiatrist, Dr. William D.
Silkworth, explained to Bill that Bill could be cured by the “Great Physician,”
Jesus Christ. This explanation occurred during Bill’s third hospitalization at
Towns Hospital in New York, where Silkworth told Bill that there was a need in recovery
for a relationship with Jesus Christ, Silkworth using the term “the Great
Physician.” [Dale Mitchel, Silkworth: The Little Doctor Who Loved Drunks
(Center City, MN: Hazelden, 2002), 50]. Bill himself wrote about this “Great
Physician in his autobiography, My First
40 Years.
Then Bill’s old friend, Ebby Thacher, made a visit to Bill.
Ebby related to Bill that the celebrated psychiatrist, Dr. Carl Jung, had made
a statement—“the one which saved Rowland Hazard’s life and set Alcoholics
Anonymous in motion. . . . : ‘Occasionally, Rowland, alcoholics have recovered
through spiritual experiences, better known as religious conversions.’” [Bill W.: My First 40 Years (Center City,
MN: Hazelden, 2000), 125]. Ebby also told Bill that he had been lodged at
Calvary Rescue Mission on the East Side in New York. [Bill W., 131]. Ebby was sober. He said to Bill, “I’ve got
religion.” [Bill W., 133]. He touched
upon the subject of prayer and God. [Bill
W., 133-34]. And then, as Bill stated in his own words
My friend sat before me, and he
made the point-blank declaration that God had done for him what he could not do
for himself. His human will had failed. Doctors had pronounced him incurable.
Society was about to lock him up. Like myself, he had admitted complete
defeat.” [Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th
ed. (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 2001), 11].
I found a manuscript at Stepping Stones which, at lines
935-942, told of Bill’s further statement:
Nevertheless here I was sitting
opposite a man who talked about a personal God, who told me how he had found
him, who described to me how I might do the same thing and who convinced me
utterly that something had come into his life which had accomplished a miracle.
The man was transformed; there was no denying he had been reborn.” [See Dick
B., Turning Point: A History of Early
A.A.’s Spiritual Roots and Successes (San Rafael, CA: Paradise Research
Publications, 1997, 99-100.]
Bill also pointed to a further statement by Ebby, and said:
But my friend sat before me, and he
made the point-blank declaration that God had done for him what he could not do
for himself. His human will had failed. Doctors had pronounced him incurable.
Society was about to lock him up. . . . That floored me. It began to look as
though religious people were right after all.” [Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed., 11].
Bill’s next move was to go to Calvary Church to hear Ebby’s testimony
and check out his story. Bill stated:
Remembering the mission where Ebby
stayed, I figured I’d go and see what did they do, anyway down there. I’d find
out. . . . There were hymns and prayers. Tex, the leader, exhorted us. Only
Jesus could save, he said. . . . Then came the call. Penitents started marching
toward the rail. . . . Soon I knelt among the sweating, stinking penitents.
Maybe then and there, for the first time, I was penitent too. Something touched
me, I guess it was more than that. I was hit.” [Bill W.: My First 40 Years, 136-37].
Several witnesses confirmed what Bill did at that altar: (a)
Mrs. Samuel M. Shoemaker, Jr., talked with me on the telephone and told me she
was present when Bill made his decision for Christ. [Dick B., The Conversion of Bill W. (Kihei, HI:
Paradise Research Publications, Inc., 2006), 61]. (b) Bill’s wife, Lois Wilson,
confirmed Bill’s decision for Christ. Speaking of Bill’s trip to the altar at
the Mission, Lois Wilson said: “And he went up, and really, in very great
sincerity, did hand over his life to Christ.” [“Lois Remembers: Searcy, Ebby, Bill & Early Days.” Recorded in
Dallas, Texas, June 29, 1973, Moore, OK: Sooner Cassette, Side 1]. (c) Rev. Sam
Shoemaker’s assistant minister, W. Irving Harris, wrote this: “It was at a
meeting at Calvary Mission that Bill himself was moved to declare that he had
decided to launch out as a follower of Jesus Christ.” [Dick B., New Light on Alcoholism: God, Sam Shoemaker,
and A.A., 2d ed. (Kihei, HI: Paradise Research Publications, Inc., 1999),
533-35.]. (d) Bill twice made a further statement of great interest. It is not
clear whether Bill was referring to his decision for Christ at the Calvary
Mission altar or to his subsequent blazing indescribably white light experience
after calling on the “Great Physician” at Towns Hospital not long thereafter.
But Bill Wilson twice wrote, “For sure I’d been born again.” [See Bill W., My First 40 Years, 147; Dick
B., Turning Point, 94-98; and Dick B., A New Way In (Kihei, HI: Paradise
Research Publications, Inc., 2006), 61-62)]. (e) At Stepping Stones, I (Dick
B.) personally found a letter that Bill had written to his brother-in-law
stating that he [like Ebby] had “found religion.” [Dick B., The Conversion of Bill W., 62].
After his born again surrender at the Calvary Rescue Mission
altar, Bill wandered drunk for a time and then staggered into Towns Hospital
for his last visit there. Bill said:
I remember saying to myself, ‘I’ll
do anything, anything at all. If there be a Great Physician, I’ll call on him.’
Then, with neither faith nor hope I cried out, ‘If there be a God, let him show
himself.’ The effect was instant, electric. Suddenly my room blazed with an
indescribably white light. . . . I became acutely conscious of a presence which
seemed like a veritable sea of living spirit. I lay on the shores of a new
world. ‘This,’ I thought, ‘must be the great reality. The God of the
preachers.’ [In an article in The
Language of the Heart, Bill recounted that he had thought: “Bill You are a
free man. This is the God of the Scriptures”]. . . I thanked my God who had
given me a glimpse of his absolute Self. . . . Save a brief hour of doubt next
to come, these feelings and convictions, no matter the vicissitude, have never
deserted me since.” [Bill W.: My First 40
Years, 145-46].
As Lois Wilson’s biographer related the situation, Bill
said, “I thanked my God, who had given me a glimpse of his absolute Self. . . .
It was December 11, 1934. Bill had just turned thirty-nine. He would never
again doubt the reality of God.” [William G. Borchert, The Lois Wilson Story: When Love Is Not Enough (Center City, MN:
Hazelden, 2005), 166].
When Bill consulted Dr. Silkworth after the experience, Dr.
Silkworth said to Bill, “You have had some kind of conversion experience.”
[Bill W.: My First 40 Years, 148]. And the recent biography of Bill Wilson’s
wife, written by William G. Borchert, tells the details of Bill’s immediate,
enthusiastic witnessing as follows:
The doctor [Dr. Silkworth] always
allowed Bill to share his God-experience with some patients, hoping somehow it
might help. And Bill began learning about the mental and spiritual part of his
alcoholic malady from Dr. Shoemaker, who had now befriended the former Wall
Street analyst. Dr. Shoemaker encouraged Bill to spread the message of change
and spiritual recovery to others like himself.
Bill took the preacher at his word.
With Lois’s full support, he was soon walking through the gutters of the Bowery,
into the nut ward at Bellevue Hospital, down the slimy corridors of fleabag
hotels, and into the detox unit at Towns with a Bible under his arm. He was
promising sobriety to every drunk he could corner if they, like he, would only
turn their lives over to God.” [Borchert, The
Lois Wilson Story, 170]
And what was the simple message, as Bill explained it to the
wife of A.A. number three and set forth in his “Basic Text” (Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed.) at page
191:
Henrietta, the Lord has been so wonderful
to me, curing me of this terrible disease, that I just want to keep talking
about it and telling people.
Bill’s conviction about his permanent cure was so strong
that he arranged a meeting in December 1937 at the boardroom on the 56th floor
at the Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. The meeting lasted five hours. Four
Rockefeller associates—Albert Scott, Leroy Chipman, W. S. Richardson, and Frank
Amos—were present. So, too, were Dr. Silkworth and Bill’s brother-in-law, Dr.
Strong. In addition, there was an array of what Frank Amos called “the
following ex-alcoholics, William G. Wilson, Henry G. Parkhurst, William J.
Ruddell, Ned Pointer and Bill Taylor, all of New York and vicinity; Mr. J. H.
F. Mayo of near Baltimore, Maryland; Dr. Robert H. Smith and J. Paul Stanley of
Akron, Ohio.” Frank Amos stated that Bill Wilson had briefly told Mr.
Richardson,
the story of how, after many vain
attempts to discontinue the use of alcohol, he had achieved what he believed
was a permanent cure, through what he termed a religious or spiritual process.”
Dr. Silkworth stated “without reservation that while he
could not tell just what it was that these men had which had effected their
‘cure’ yet he was convinced they were cured and that whatever it was, it had
his complete endorsement.” [The foregoing is contained in the “History of the
Alcoholic movement up to the formation of The Alcoholic Foundation on Aug. 11,
1938.” I personally obtained, with permission, my copy of this second report by
Frank Amos at the Stepping Stones archives in Bedford Hills, New York.]
For further details, please see Dick B., The Conversion of Bill W.: (http://dickb.com/conversion.shtml),
and contact dickb@dickb.com
Gloria Deo
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