The Drum Beat for
Atheism and Agnosticism in Alcoholics Anonymous
What is a reasonable
position for Christians in A.A.
Dick B.
© 2014 Anonymous. All rights reserved
With a small
group consisting of an atheist (Henry P.) who soon got drunk, a secretary (Ruth
Hock) who wasn’t a drunk, a Christian (Fitz M.) who tried hard to perpetuate
the original A.A. solution—having a vital religious experience bringing the
Creator off the bench, and Bill W. (a young man born and raised a Christian, a
Bible student, and a Congregationalist ([the umpire] who set in motion in 1939 an
admiration for nonsense gods, higher-powered light bulbs, and atheist support
as the Big Book went to press.
All those
who are perceptive observers may well see that A.A. today may well have evolved
into a non-monolithic fellowship that
highlighted some Steps and helped others get well. Quashed relationships with God, but watched
the flow go out instead of in.
The personal
stories in the First Edition of the Bible Book testified primarily how the
original Akron Christian Fellowship worked. But they were gradually removed
from A.A. publications—one by one—in the ensuing A.A. decades. The unrelated chapters
of the First Edition Big Book were gradually changed to show how to find “a” God
and-make a new variety of idol that would supposedly affront nobody. An
illusory idol called a higher power, a door knob, a tree.
In other
words, the original Akron A.A. required belief in God, coming to Him through
Jesus Christ, the Bible as the source of answers for healing, and the simple
message of how to get well by renouncing liquor for God. And then deciding to
seek God’s help, and help others were placed in competition with the uninformed
meanderings of newcomers, the determined idolatry of academia, and the economic
fright over mention of the Creator.
Today, the
criticism of A.A. by the few Christian commentators who think it is a pathway
to destruction and hell, who think it is heretical to associate with those in
A.A. of the Christian faith, and who are determined as fighters to win their
case by condemnation and ostracism. But their charge has been met with a new
and much stronger foe that is barely mentioned and scarcely recognized by AAs.
Apathy!
Generally,
newcomers don’t enter A.A. to belong to a church, to learn apologetics, or to
find release through God. In the past, those proclivities just grew with the
sanity and sobriety of those who learned A.A. beginnings, revered God, and knew
they needed the love and power of the Creator to gain victory.
In other
words, mere fellowship among believers and unbelievers became secondary to
simplicity and helping others get well with God’s help.
But what
Bill W. set in motion by his committee of four--without Dr. Bob, Anne Smith,
Henrietta Seiberling, T. Henry and Clarace Williams, Rev. Samuel M. Shoemaker,
or even Clarence Snyder present, has become his “broad highway” through which
the uninformed, unbelieving, confused crowds from treatment, prisons, and
therapy find it easier to swallow than to learn what A.A. cofounder Dr. Bob
meant when he said: (1) We believed the answer to our problems was in the
Bible. (2) The basic ideas for the Steps came from our study, teaching, and
effort in the Bible.
Today the
choice remains. AAs can join together—whatever their religious or irreligious
beliefs—and focus on helping the still suffering alcoholic through abstinence,
steps, meetings, and book studies. Or AAs can join together—whatever their
religious or irreligious beliefs—and learn the role that God, His Son Jesus
Christ, and the Bible played in the healing of seemingly hopeless, medically
incurable alcoholics, and then decide whether to apply old school A.A. in today’s
fellowship or to drift farther and farther away from the facts showing the real
program and successes of early A.A.
Gloria Deo
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