Dick B. discusses the purpose of the
redesign of DickB.com on the March 16, 2014, episode of the "Christian
Recovery Radio with Dick B." show
You may hear Dick B. discuss the purpose of
the redesign of www.DickB.com
web site on the March 16, 2014, episode of the "Christian Recovery Radio
with Dick B." show here:
or here:
Episodes of the "Christian Recovery Radio
with Dick B." show are archived at:
By Dick B.
© 2014 Anonymous. All rights reserved
The
Dick B.'s main website URL is www.dickb.com. The site was established November
18, 1995. The basic design has been the same for many years. But the
information investigated, published, and disseminated has grown into huge
volumes of valuable historical points. Much has been learned along the way, and
much more has been discovered. The key today is to present this material in an
organized, categorized fashion that not only reflects our research and results,
but also moves the A.A. picture from its earliest beginnings to the present
day. And that enables the suffering afflicted and affected to utilize all of
the valuable factual insights, and not just a cherry-picked basket of
speculative ideas.
Tonight's program will provide you with a brief
introduction to the redesigned DickB.com website as newly framed and formatted.
It will tell you, in orderly fashion, some of the major historical landmarks
along the A.A. path to recovery. It will show you the major changes in the
recovery program. And it will make clear how the lessons and successes of what
we call "old-school" A.A. can—if learned and applied—enhance the
rates of recovery, curb recidivism, and permit spiritual progress in today's
scene.
This
recovery program of A.A. is not about a group of drunks sitting in meetings
exchanging old wives tales and war stories of yesteryear. It is about progress.
Spiritual progress. And two short excepts from A.A. basic text will illustrate
the point.
Page
60: “Do not be discouraged. No one among us has been able to maintain anything
like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. The point is
that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles we have set
down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual
perfection.”
Page
87: “There are many helpful books also. Suggestions about these may be obtained
from one’s priest, minister, or rabbi. Be quick to see where religious people
are right. Make use of what they have to offer.”
The Purpose of Dick
B.’s Alcoholics Anonymous and A.A. History Website
Why
this site by Dick B. on the history of A.A., and the people and organizations
involved with successful Christian Recovery efforts which preceded and
influenced Alcoholics Anonymous? We believe you should hear the whole A.A.
history story if you are to receive and pass on the spiritual tools that A.A.
offers to those who still suffer. But our primary focus is on “the rest of the
story.” The fact is that that there are countless untold, ignored, discarded,
distorted, or omitted pieces of A.A. history that offer opportunities to still-suffering
alcoholics and addicts to be lifted out of the mire, to seek the same cure that
early AAs received, and to pursue a transformed life anew. The many resources
here will supply what has been missing. They will highlight what AAs in misery,
in confusion, and in repeated relapses can do if they learn and know what the
original A.A. pioneers did in depending and relying upon the power and love of
God. And in finding or rediscovering God through His Son Jesus Christ on the
path found in the Bible.
Major Historical
Landmarks along the Alcoholics Anonymous Path to Recovery
In
Alcoholics Anonymous (“the Big
Book”), the “basic text” of A.A. (the first edition of which was published in April
1939), A.A. cofounder Bill W. wrote: “Rarely have we seen a person fail who has
thoroughly followed our path.” [Big Book, 4th ed., 58]. What is
usually unfamiliar to the A.A. Fellowship is Bill W.’s inspiring declaration in
the personal story of AA Number Three (Bill D.) found in the second edition
(published in 1955), the third edition (published in 1976), and the fourth
edition (published in 2001) of the “basic text”:
“. . . [T]he
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.” [Big Book, 4th
ed., 191]
A.A.
cofounder Dr. Bob said in his last major talk to AAs:
It wasn’t until
1938 that the teachings and efforts and stories that had been going on were crystallized
in the form of the Twelve Steps. I didn’t write the Twelve Steps. I had nothing
to do with the writing of them. . . We already had the basic ideas, though not
in terse and tangible form. We got them, as I said, as a result of our study of
the Good Book [i.e., the Bible]. [The
Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous: Biographical Sketches: Their Last Major
Talks (Item # P-53), 14]
An
effort that began with the founding of A.A. in June 1935 in Akron, Ohio. And
Dr. Bob concluded his own personal story in the Big Book by voicing the same
emphasis that Bill W. gave when he spoke of his having been cured of alcoholism
by the Lord. Dr. Bob stated:
Your Heavenly
Father will never let you down! [Big Book, 4th ed., 181]
The
problem is that neither I nor most AAs nor most other people in the recovery
arena know or even seem to want to know exactly what occurred that put A.A. on
the map. Or that generated sales of over 40 million Big Books. Or that brought
the worldwide Society of Alcoholics Anonymous to a membership level of about 2 million
people. Yet A.A. had produced a wide variety of solid, reliable, spiritual
tools between its founding in June 1935 and the publication of the first
edition of Alcoholics Anonymous (“the
Big Book”) in April 1939. And we want to be sure that desperate, “seemingly-hopeless,”
“medically-incurable” alcoholics hear the whole story. Better stated, that they
know “the rest of the story” about their cherished Fellowship. And the option
of placing their recovery in God’s hands today.
The
following is a brief outline of key points about A.A.’s earliest years:
First Century
Christianity.
Many early observers of Alcoholics Anonymous likened early Akron A.A. to First
Century Christianity. As Mr. Albert Scott, chairman of the trustees of
Riverside Church, put it at a meeting with a number of early AAs and some
supporters in New York:
“Why, this is
first-century Christianity!” Then he asked, “What can we do to help?” [‘PASS IT ON,’ 184]
And a careful study of what the Apostles
did in the First Century, as reported in the Book of Acts in the Bible and as
mirrored in early A.A. (particularly in Akron), is very rewarding.
A.A.’s Christian
Predecessors.
Centuries later, beginning around the mid-1800s, Christian individuals,
churches, and movements began looking at alcoholics, addicts, homeless people,
and derelicts in a new light. Instead of condemning them as downtrodden
wretches, many Christian people and entities set about bringing to them the Bible,
salvation, and some very real help. One such Christian organization was the
Salvation Army. The distinguished scholar and theology professor Howard J.
Clinebell wrote, for example:
The long history
of the Salvation Army . . . has demonstrated persistent concern with the
practical application of religious resources to help victims of social chaos,
oppression, and addictions. From the beginning, there has been an ongoing
commitment to help “the least, the last, and the lost” with “soup, soap, and
salvation.” This down-to-earth orientation led the Army from its inception into
the field of alcoholism. Firsthand experiences in the squalor of London slums
made the founders, William and Evangeline Booth, and their fellow Salvationists
keenly sensitive to the problem. Booth agonized over the tragic plight of
England’s half million alcoholics. [Howard Clinebell, Understanding and Counseling Persons with Alcohol, Drug, and Behavioral
Addictions, rev. and enl. ed. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1998), 184].
And the Salvation Army efforts coincided
with those of:
- Gospel
Rescue Missions;
- the Young
Men’s Christian Association;
- Christian
evangelists such as Moody, Sankey, Moorhouse, Meyer, Drummond, Moore, and
Folger—who accomplished many a healing as they carried the need for
salvation and the Word of God to the derelicts;
- Congregationalists
in Vermont; and
- the Young
People’s Society of Christian Endeavor (in which Dr. Bob and his parents
were active in Bob’s youth), which developed a program for young
Christians that much resembled that of the subsequently-developed Akron
A.A. “Christian fellowship” program. (E.g., both programs included
conversion, Bible study, prayer, Quiet Hour, and outreach to newcomers.)
The group founded in the autumn of 1922
by Lutheran minister Dr. Frank N. D. Buchman and a couple of his associates called
“A First Century Christian Fellowship”—better known after 1928 as “the Oxford
Group”—also contributed its share of life-changing ideas to early Alcoholics
Anonymous, though Buchman’s group focused primarily on saving “drunken nations”
rather than on saving drunks. But its emphasis of God, His Son Jesus Christ,
and the Bible, brought rescue to a number of alcoholics in its ranks.
The Christian
Upbringings of A.A. Cofounders in Vermont. As A.A.’s cofounders-to-be were
receiving their Christian upbringing in Vermont, they absorbed the news about
the organizations and people just mentioned. But they also attended
Congregational Sunday schools, churches, and Congregationalist-dominated
academies. There they studied the Bible and attended daily chapel (with its
sermons, reading of Scripture, hymns, and prayers). And they were necessarily
put in touch with a substantial amount of the Young Men’s Christian
Association’s salvation and Bible emphasis.
How the First
Three AAs Got Sober.
The story of how the first three AAs got sober is not a story about an A.A.
program. It is an account of how three down-and-out Christian alcoholics—who believed
in God, had been Bible students, and had been active in churches at a one or
more points in their lives—admitted their alcoholism, determined to quit for
good, turned to God for help, were cured, and actively helped others for the
rest of their days.
The Original
Akron A.A. “Christian Fellowship” Program. This first actual A.A. program
founded in Akron in June 1935 was Bible-based. It had no Twelve Steps or Twelve
Traditions. It had no Big Book. And it had no “war stories” or meetings like
those seen today. The pioneers believed the answers to their problems were in
the Bible. The AAs in Akron called themselves a “Christian fellowship.” And
their seven-point program as it looked in February 1938 is summarized on page
131 of DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers.
Its principles and practices incorporated ideas both Bill W. and Dr. Bob had
learned growing up in Vermont. And do you know what that program really was?
Bill W.’s “New
Version of the Program, . . . the ‘Twelve Steps.’” Then came Bill
Wilson’s “new version of the program, . . . the ‘Twelve Steps.’” [See Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, 162].
Bill prepared his Big Book and the content of his “Steps” from the things he
borrowed from Dr. William D. Silkworth, Professor William James, and Reverend
Samuel M. Shoemaker, Jr.—a chief lieutenant of the Oxford Group in America and rector
of Calvary Episcopal Church in New York. [See The Language of the Heart , 195-98, 297-98].
A Major
Compromise by a “Committee of Four.” Shortly before Bill W.’s Big Book was
published in April 1939, a dramatic change in A.A. occurred. Bill described in
considerable detail how the Big Book was written on pages 153-73 of Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. On
page 166, Bill described what he said “[a]t the time . . . looked like just
another battle over the book.” On pages 17 and 162-64, he had given the
background of an ongoing “debate” among the “conservative, liberal, and radical
viewpoints,” out of which “came the spiritual form and substance of the
document.” And on page 166, Bill stated:
We [i.e., a
“committee of four” comprised of Fitz, Henry, Henry’s secretary Ruth, and Bill
W.] were still arguing about the Twelve Steps. All this time I had refused to
budge on these steps. I would not change a word of the original draft, in
which, you will remember, I had consistently used the word “God,” . . .
From
the quote immediately above, together with other language in the same
paragraph, we learn from the Big Book’s (primary) author, Bill W., that he had
written the (unmodified) word “God” in his “original draft” of the Twelve Steps
and had firmly stuck with that language up to the point of this “battle over
the book.” But then the “contentions” of the “radical” viewpoint—represented by
Bill’s partner Henry (“Hank P.”) and Jimmy B.—won out. Bill spoke of
“compromise” and “compromise words,” stating:
. . . In Step
Two we decided to describe God as a “Power greater than ourselves.” In Steps
Three and Eleven we inserted the words “God as
we understood Him.” . . .
Such were the
final concessions to those of little or no faith; this was the great
contribution of our atheists and agnostics. . . .
God was
certainly there in our Steps, but . . . [Alcoholics
Anonymous Comes of Age, 167; italics in original]
When 400 copies of the typed
“prepublication copy of the text and some of the stories,” which Bill said he
had labeled “the mimeograph issue ‘Alcoholics Anonymous,’ were circulated to
“everyone we could think of who might be concerned with the problem of
alcoholism,” the wording of Steps Two and Three had already been changed to
reflect the “compromise.” But Step Eleven still contained the unmodified word
“God”:
11. Sought
through prayer and meditation to improve our contact with God, praying only for
knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. [“Chapter Five:
How It Works” in The Original Manuscript
of Alcoholics Anonymous available on Silkworth.net: http://mcaf.ee/siokx]
It was not until Hazelden published
high-resolution scans of the printer’s manuscript of Alcoholics Anonymous in 2010 under the title, The Book That Started It All: The Original Working Manuscript of
Alcoholics Anonymous, that it became possible for the first time for the
public to see both the unmodified word “God” in Step Eleven and the handwritten
circle added around the word “God,” accompanied by the handwritten words “as we
understood” stretching into the right-hand margin. The scanned copy of the
printer’s manuscript, reprinted on pages 21-190 in The Book That Started It All, is filled with scribbled notes,
changes, deletions, and initials of those who fiddled with it. And a
considerable number of the markings reflect an effort to remove Christian and
Bible traces, as well as references to God. And they surely altered the whole
tenor of Bill’s codified Oxford Group “new version of the program.”
What This
Website Offers Alcoholics and Addicts Still Suffering Today
The
history, origins, and development of A.A. are certainly covered by the many
dissemination categories covered by the many sources referred to in this
website. But “the rest of the story” is what we emphasize. “The rest of the
story” documents the early successes based on, and the later shift away from,
the Bible roots, Christian fellowship, and original and concise Akron A.A.
program
The
major and previously-obscured points are found in the books, articles, blogs,
audios, videos, radio shows, YouTube presentations, and other materials you
will find through this website. You will note how A.A. moved from its original
quest for a Bible-based cure of alcoholism by the power of God to self-made
Twelve Steps drawn from a philosopher, a psychiatrist, and an Episcopalian
Rector. You will see that there has been a decided drift in recovery tools from
reliance on God to literature that describes “gods” with weird names like
“light bulb, Big Dipper, tree, and door knob.” It shifted descriptions of God, His
Son Jesus Christ, and the Bible to “higher powers,” “spirituality,” and the
newly-proclaimed dictum that you may now, if you wish, believe in nothing at
all as you enter the rooms of A.A.
And
it is the result of 25 years of research, and 28 years of continuous sobriety,
as well as the hands-on work “in the trenches” by Dick B. and his son Ken B.,
that almost demand of the newcomer admission of some kind of total defeat, a
determination not to drink, reliance on God, reference to the Bible, and the
helping of and service to others. These are the simple ingredients of “old-school”
A.A.—particularly as it was seen in A.A.’s early days in Akron and to some
extent in Cleveland as well. We believe that Christians will—when fully
informed—consider their options in recovery today. The “old-school” ideas can and
should be applied in the 12-Step Fellowships as an option that placed A.A. on
the map and fostered the sale of millions of A.A. books in the ensuing decades.
The
All-But-Ignored-or-Forgotten Precepts of “Old School” A.A.
As
a taste of “the rest of the story” that you will find here, the following
pieces of evidence speak more loudly than any research, lectures, history
books, opinions, and statistical surveys.
Around
the beginning of December 1934, Bill Wilson went to Calvary Mission in New York
City where his friend Ebby was living and made a decision to accept Jesus
Christ as his Lord and Savior. On December 11, 1934, he checked into Towns
Hospital as a patient needing care for alcoholism for the fourth and final time.
About three days into that stay, Bill cried out to God for help. He had his
famous vital religious experience in which he said his hospital room “blazed with
an indescribably white light.” And Bill wrote that he believed “the God of the
Scriptures” was present in his room and that this was the source of Bill’s being
cured of alcoholism. [See, for example, The
Language of the Heart, 284]. Bill W.’s story still rests on his statement
quoted by AA Number Three, Bill D., in Bill D.’s personal story in the Big Book:
“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.” [Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th
ed., 191]
Dr.
Bob was persuaded by a tiny group of friends meeting at T. Henry and Clarace
Williams’ home in Akron, Ohio, to confess publically to them that he was a
“secret drinker.” He dropped to the floor on his knees with them and prayed for
his deliverance. The miracle of the appearance of Bill Wilson, a total
stranger, in Akron in May 1935, followed and constituted what the group and Dr.
Bob believed was the answer to the prayer. Soon, after one last binge in early
June, Dr. Bob said in Bill W.’s presence that he was leaving the surgery he was
about to perform and his determination to quit drinking in God’s hands. And June
1935 marked A.A. cofounder Dr. Bob’s last drink and the founding of Alcoholics
Anonymous.
There
is much much more to give present-day alcoholics and addicts a reliable picture
of how they can, even today, learn and
apply the history, the belief, and the
actions that buttressed the successful efforts of 40 “seemingly-hopeless,”
“medically-incurable,” “last-gasp-case,” “real” alcoholics who were staying
sober as of November 1937 to get well and stay well. And we suggest that the
principles and practices required in the highly-successful, early Akron A.A.
“Christian fellowship” program are still an option today, based on current A.A.
General Service Conference-approved literature.
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