Excerpted
from:
A
Guidebook to
“Bill W.,
Dr. Bob, and the Cure of Alcoholism: The Rest of the Story”
A Video Class by Dick B. and Ken B.
© 2015
Anonymous. All rights reserved
T. D. Seymour Bassett’s book, The Gods of the Hills, is a scholarly,
comprehensive study and report on Vermont Congregationalism as it existed when
A.A. cofounders Bill W. and Dr. Bob were growing up in the Green Mountain
State.[1] We just acquired another important Vermont history
resource: Michael Sherman, Gene Sessions, and P. Jeffrey Potash, Freedom and Unity: A History of Vermont
(Barre: VT: Vermont Historical Society, 2004). And two more that are relevant
to the Vermont picture.[2] Of particular interest in the Freedom and Unity title are the materials on the origins, the state
constitution, the Revolution, the admission to the union, and the strong
foundation in religious orthodoxy redirected to bolster religious revival and
personal reform with the framework of Congregationalism (pp. 73-143); the
religious trends of Federalist and Calvinist Congregationalism; the
non-Calvinist sects; the evangelical awakenings; the latter Congregationalist
doctrine of election; the legislation enabling Towns and Parishes to tax
residents to enable the erection of Houses for public Worship, and support of
Ministers of the Gospel; the Standing Order abolition that made Vermont the
first New England government to cut the tie of church and state; “popular
evangelism,” revivals; temperance, and prohibition (pp. 145-211).
The principal historical points that
the scholar T. D. Seymour Bassett covered were:
·
The study of Congregationalism in
Vermont [pp. 193-215].
·
Camp meetings and revivals [p. 241].
·
The Bible and church emphasis [pp.
153, 266].
·
Emphasis on youth [p. 192].
·
At the level of religious education,
churches indoctrinated adults in catechism,
·
Confirmation, and Sunday or study
groups. Sunday schools thrived [p. 210].
·
The pluralism which encompassed the
work of the Salvation Army [pp. 215, 231-32].
·
The immense impact of the work of
evangelists Dwight L. Moody and Ira Sankey [p. 193].[5],[6],[7],[8]
·
Bassett also observes: “Vermont’s
early nineteenth century revivalists shaped religion until the 1840’s. Although
the technique became habitual in the camp meetings and urban revivals down
through Billy Sunday and Billy Graham. . . .
In
the unexpected trauma of the Civil War experience, comrades and chaplains tried
to meet human needs regardless of religious persuasion. . . .
Revivalists
in Vermont continued to recruit many converts to carry the gospel across the
world, and in the state they worked against liquor and slavery, but focused on
new, political means” [p. 141].
“[During
the Moody and Sankey Vermont campaign in October 1877,] . . . inquirers and
converts asked what to do after the excitement of Moody’s meetings. He told
them: ‘Join a church; take communion; attend church meetings; repeat Bible
verses; help others resist temptation; join the YMCA. . . .’ [H]ome visitors
supplied Bibles, urged householders to go to church and Sunday school, and
found some attending the YMCA who did not go to church” [p. 195].
Congregationalism
and Vermont
·
The first church established in
Vermont was a Congregational church. The First Congregational Church of
Bennington, Vermont—also known as “the Old First Church”—was “gathered” on
December 3, 1762. It was also the first Protestant congregation in the New
Hampshire Grants. The current meeting house was built in 1805.[10] [Bicentennial Discourse and Sermon, on August 13, 2006].
The church is located on Monument Avenue in Bennington, Vermont. It was added
to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
·
As illustrated with frequency in our
new video series and accompanying guidebook here, the families (grandparents
and parents) of both Bill W. and Dr. Bob
were much involved with Congregational Churches. So were Bill and Bob
themselves. Dr. Bob and his family attended the North Congregational Church of
St. Johnsbury, Vermont. As Bob stated in A.A.’s Big Book, the Smiths frequently
attended five times a week. And the Griffith and Wilson families were intimately
involved in the Congregational church located next door to the houses of each
family. All three buildings as restored are still present in East Dorset,
Vermont—the Griffith Library on one side; the East Dorset Congregational Church
in the middle; and the Wilson House on the other side.
·
St. Johnsbury Academy, where Dr. Bob
matriculated, was dominated by Congregationalists. The Fairbanks family,
consisting of Thaddeus Fairbanks, Deacon Erastus Fairbanks, and Joseph
Fairbanks were very wealthy, businessmen, state-wide Congregational leaders,
much involved in North Congregational Church, much connected with the YMCA, and
officiated at the Academy. The Congregational influence in the little St.
Johnsbury village spilled over into the academy requirement that a
Congregational Church be attended once a week. Daily chapel was required of St.
Johnsbury Academy “scholars” (i.e., students)—with sermons, hymns, reading of
Scripture, and prayers.[11]
·
Bill Wilson’s families (the Wilsons
and the Griffiths) had homes immediately adjacent to East Dorset Congregational
Church in East Dorset where Bill was born and raised. Bill’s parents Gilman
Barrows Wilson and Emily Ella Griffith were married in that church and lived
for a time in its parsonage. Both families regularly attended that church. The
Wilsons owned Pew 15 in the church. Bill attended the Sunday school. And there
are specific biographical records of Bill’s mention of and attendance at
revivals, sermons, temperance, and conversion meetings.[12]
·
A reference in Stepping Stones
materials: “Books_at_Stepping_Stones.pdf” makes it quite apparent that Bill
Wilson was awarded a New Testament (with a copyright date of 1901—was it an
American Standard Version of 1901?)]: That New Testament was inscribed:
"Will Wilson, for perfect attendance at Sunday School, Fourth Quarter 1906
from his pastor D. Miner Rogers East Dorset Vt. Jan 1, 1907 II
Tim.3/14.15."
·
As documented elsewhere: When he was
enrolled in the Congregationalist dominated Burr and Burton Seminary,[13] Bill Wilson took a four year Bible study course there;
attended daily chapel with sermons, hymns, prayers, and reading of Scripture.[14] The Castle in the
Pasture book contains excellent photos of the officials, the Seminary
Building with bell tower, the North Chapel in the 1890’s, the original First
Congregational Church in Manchester Village,[15] many YMCA and athletic activities, and two pages on Bill
Wilson and his lady love, Bertha Bamford. And students frequently marched down
to the First Congregational Church from the Seminary for services (page 67).
·
The prominent St. Johnsbury leader
Henry Fairbanks presented a paper before the annual Congregational state
convention in 1895, titled “The Influence of Congregationalism upon Vermont.”
And Fairbanks wrote:
o
The Congregational way was primitive
Christianity revived after centuries of departure from the congregational
principles of St. Stephen and the Jerusalem elders.[16]
·
George Williams, a draper, founded
the Young Men’s Christian Association in London on June 6, 1844. The first YMCA
in the United States was founded in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 29,
1851.[17]
·
Beginning in 1871, YMCA lay
brethren—with the YMCA’s non-denominational approach—conducted canvasses to
bring the Gospel to non-Christians and “awakening” to Christians in the New
England area.[18]
·
Young Men’s Christian Association
laymen were largely responsible for organizing what became “The Great
Awakening” of 1875 in St. Johnsbury. It was a widely-reported event which
completely transformed the community of St. Johnsbury, resulted in construction
of many churches, and produced conversion of a large portion of the population
to God through His Son Jesus Christ.[19]
History
records many well-known evangelists who held campaigns in Vermont—as well as in
America and abroad—around the time Bill W. and Dr. Bob were growing up there. (It
also records Christian evangelists who put on large public meetings after Bill
had returned to New York following his service in the Army in World War I,
and/or who had put on meetings in Akron after Dr. Bob had moved there to work
as a medical doctor.) Moreover, many espoused the integrity of the Bible and
the necessity for salvation; and they did this through “personal work;” revivals;
books; and huge, widely reported meetings for half a century. Their efforts
brought people to God through His Son Jesus Christ; and they often focused on
healing even drunkards.[20] For example, the following reported the healing of drunkards and addicts.
·
James Hickson[24] and Evangelist Ethel Willitts.[25] A.A. cofounder Dr. Bob owned a book on healing by each of
these two authors.
These
protracted, effective efforts were the subject of extensive, scholarly,
studious lectures at delivered at Yale in 1945, in which Bill Wilson himself
was a participant.[27]
Today,
a disparate and thankfully-small crowd of writers and academics have opposed
the idea of recovery from and cure of alcoholism and addiction in the
faith-centered arena—whether that arena rests on:
·
The power, promises, or instructions
of God;
·
The “Great Physician;”
·
The Bible;
·
“Divine healing” or “divine aid”
(terms Bill Wilson and/or the Big Book used);
·
Alcoholics Anonymous;
·
“Conservative” Christians still
talking about both Jesus Christ and the Bible, and about the cure and
overcoming of booze, in the same breath; and
·
Disputing that 12 Step programs
could possibly have or admit, or be in the same rooms with Christians who
“were” sinners and yet continued in walking after the flesh.
There
is no need here to name these disruptive people and viewpoints. You can find
them easily tooting their horns on the internet and in frequent articles. But
it’s beneficial to Christians, believers, and active AAs to recognize the red
flags of warning about the methods and verbiage of their messages of disruption
and unbelief in the power of God to heal. And their banners seem often to be
somehow sanctified by their claims as advocates or practitioners of: (1)
“liberal” Protestantism; (2) “Modernists;” (3)
a limited Roman Catholic distaste, even today, among several of those
who dodge the fire by calling themselves of the Catholic “tradition” and
therefore opposed to A First Century Christian Fellowship, of “Christians;” (4)
“defenders” against “heretical” or hell-bound AAs; or (5) just plain humanists,
agnostic, or atheists traveling on the broad highway while trying to reframe
recovery today as secular, “scientific,” and “spiritual, but not religious.”[28]
But
the early A.A. Christians—and those today who (in the words of Billy Sunday,
follow Paul’s promise in Romans 10:9-10, that those shall be saved confessing
with their mouth that Jesus is Lord and believing in their heart that God
raised Jesus from the dead)—saw a different picture of First Century
Christianity at work in the century from 1850 to 1950. One example of what
these believers saw was that of the Rev. Joseph H. Odell, D.D., formerly pastor
of the Second Presbyterian Church of Scranton, who reversed his position and
said this of Billy Sunday’s huge successes:
“Produced results!” Everyone understood the phrase. . . . As
the result of the “Billy” Sunday campaigns—anywhere and everywhere—drunkards
became sober, thieves became honest, multitudes of people engaged themselves in
the study of the Bible, thousands confessed their faith in Jesus Christ as the
Saviour of the world. . . .[29]
Those who voiced additional
compelling lectures about religious success in overcoming alcoholism were the
voices of Rev. Francis W. McPeek, pp. 277-85; Rev. Roland H. Bainton, pp.
287-98; Edward G. Baird, p. 219; Dwight Anderson, pp. 362-72; Rev. Francis W.
McPeek, “The Role of Religious Bodies in
the Treatment of Inebriety in the United States,” pp. 404-14; Rev. Otis R.
Rice, “Pastoral Counseling of Inebriates,” pp. 437-69; W.W. [Bill Wilson], “The
Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous,” pp. 461-73. Thus Rev. McPeek stated in his
lecture on religious bodies:
This has been a brief and highly selective survey of a
century’s efforts among religious people to bring the healing power of God into
the lives of those who suffer from inebriety. Certain things may be held as
conclusive. Towering above them all is this indisputable fact: It is faith in
the living God which has accounted for more recoveries from the disease than
all other therapeutic agencies put together. . . . Highbrows and bums, rich
men and poor, judges and carpenters, prisoners and clergymen—they
have all . . .
Henry
Moorhouse and Ira Sankey conducted a week-long campaign in St. Johnsbury at the
end of October 1877,[30]
just before Dr. Bob was born on August 8, 1879. Many of the other well-known
evangelists were not only linked together in friendship, but also in a chain of
evangelism and revival involving the rescue missions, the Young Men’s Christian
Association, and other evangelists including Moody, Sankey, Clark, Williams,
Booth, Folger, Sunday, Willitts, Meyer, Drummond, and others..
Roger
Bruns pointed out in his book, Preacher:
From the earliest days of American Protestantism,
revivalists held fast to the belief that the universe was neatly divided
between God and Satan, the elect and the damned, the pure and the despoiled.
From Jonathan Edwards to Charles Finney to Lyman Beecher to
Dwight Moody, Bible-clutching evangelists preached the complete authority of
the Scriptures, the necessity of personal conversion, and a life free of vice.
Personal and evangelical Protestantism taught a close
relationship between men and women and their God, challenging the sinner to
renounce the ways of the devil and to repent.
Personal salvation and moral responsibility—these were the
demands on the faithful.[31]
Elmer
Towns and Douglas Porter wrote in The Ten
Greatest Revivals Ever:
The Layman’s Prayer revival which began in 1857 deeply
influenced America. . . . Across the ocean, the 1859 awakening in Britain
raised a host of evangelists, missionaries, and social reformers. . . .
Existing mission, Bible, Sunday school, and tract societies
in both Britain and America flourished, with new workers revived or converted
during the awakening.
New societies were formed to promote home missions,
establishing Sunday schools and churches throughout both nations. The YMCA, the
Salvation Army, the China Inland Mission, the Christian Brethren, and the
Christian and Missionary Alliance were just a few of the many ministries and
denominations born early in this awakening.[32]
William
T. Ellis’s book on Billy Sunday stated:
Professor William James, the philosopher, contended that
there was “scientific value to the stories of Christian conversions; that these
properly belonged among the data of religion, to be weighed by the man of
science.”[33]
Valued and needing to be weighed,
said Professor William James. This while a few recovery revisionists jest about
the “cure” of alcoholism, faith-centered treatment, and the role of God, His
Son Jesus Christ, and the Bible in recovery. And those few today might do well
to take note of the respect shown of Professor James of Harvard long before
there was an A.A. and well after the many Christian organizations and
evangelists had helped thousands and thousands of drunks recover. Even today, a
few history buffs appear to laugh away the moribund significance of what they
derisively call those “golden days,” (as they like to characterize them) , and
then simply shove all the forgoing records aside as the investigative efforts
of amateurs, hobbyists, naive zealots bent on “Christianizing” an A.A. that is
hardly headed toward Christian dogma, creeds, or rituals today.
Then
there is the dramatic account of the Healing Movement:
[A. J.] Gordon began including
healing in his ministry after he observed an opium addict delivered and a
missionary’s cancerous jaw healed instantaneously through the prayers of
concerned believers during Dwight L. Moody’s revival meetings in Boston in 1877.
These meetings revitalized the life
of Clarendon Church, which Gordon pastored, and brought reformed drunkards and
all kinds of commoners into the ranks of this affluent church.[34]
Once again, a few secularly-oriented writers today fail to
mention or evaluate the recovery efforts and successes of specific people and
entities such as Jerry McAuley, the Water Street Mission, S. H. Hadley, Calvary
Mission in New York (operated by Rev. Sam Shoemaker’s Calvary Church), and
testimonies by healers such as A. J. Gordon, Ethel Willitts, and James Moore
Hickson—who gained wide notice for healing drunkards, just as did organizations
like the Salvation Army and the Young Men’s Christian Association. These are
discussed at some length in our title, Dr.
Bob of Alcoholics Anonymous[35]; by the Yale Summer School of Alcohol
Studies; and by the noted religious scholar and writer Dr. Howard Clinebell.
See also the many footnotes of the Guidebook that accompanies these videos in
the “Bill W., Dr. Bob, and the Cure of Alcoholism: The Rest of the Story” class
by Dick B. and Ken B.
Though
the numbers of such evangelists are many, the following deserve special
attention with reference to the First Century Christian origins of the
Christian Recovery Movement and the influence on A.A.’s founders:
As
we are documenting in our videos, some of the evangelists mentioned above
actually held campaigns in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, where Dr. Bob was born and
raised.
The “Great Awakening” of 1875 in St.
Johnsbury, Vermont
This
event caught the attention of pastors, churches, denominations, organizations,
newspapers, and writers. The transformation of communities—particularly St.
Johnsbury—involved the conversion of one-third of the population, the erection
of new churches, and a change in the attitude of citizens.
The
accounts are so lengthy and numerous that we leave the important description of
them to the pages of Dick B. and Ken B., Dr.
Bob of Alcoholics Anonymous: His Excellent Training in the Good Book as a
Youngster in Vermont.[45]
Jerry McAuley.
Jerry McAuley founded the first rescue mission in the United States in 1872.[46] He was known in his days as the “Apostle to the Outcast.”[47]
McAuley’s
rescue mission was originally known as “Helping Hand for Men,” and later became
known as known as “The (Old McAuley) Water Street Mission.”[48]
A
great Bible teacher, Dr. Arthur T. Pierson once said: “If you would like to
feel as if you were reading a new chapter of the Acts of the Apostles it would
be well for you to visit the old Jerry McAuley Water Street Mission.”[49] Jerry carried on his work for ten years at Number 316 Water
Street. He finally concluded that this was a worked-out mine, and located a mission
at No. 104 West Thirty-Second Street known as the Cremorne Mission. Jerry
secured the lease and started the Cremorne Mission at that spot on January 8,
1882.[50]
McAuley—and
his successor superintendent at the mission, Samuel Hopkins Hadley (also known as
“S. H. Hadley”)—focused (in colloquial language) on “soup, soap, and
salvation.” J. Wilbur Chapman, Hadley’s biographer, wrote: “If you will
multiply many times this story of the genuine conversion of a poor lost man,
you will have the life story of S.H. Hadley, the man who during his Christian
life possibly led more drunkards to Christ
than any other man of his generation,” p. 24. Chapman said of S.H. Hadley’s
brother Colonel H.H. Hadley that the Colonel “has the distinction of having
founded more rescue missions than any other man in the world,” p. 43. Chapman
concluded the S.H. Hadley biography by saying: “In the years of service in
Water Street not less than seventy-five thousand persons have announced their
intentions to live better lives. Not all of these have stood firm in the new
faith, of course, but it is safe to say that the percentage has been as large
as, if not larger than, would be the case following an ordinary revival.,”
p. 288.
The Hadley biography also shows the
close ties of S. H. Hadley to the Evangelists F. B. Meyer and Dwight Moody; the
ties of one of his sailor drunks to the
founding of six Christian Endeavor groups, and Hadley’s favorite as 1
Corinthians 13.
At
the time of the “great compromise” in A.A. just before its Big Book was
published in April 1939, Bill W.’s use of unmodified word God in the original draft of Steps Two, Three, and Eleven was
changed. The unappointed “committee of four” (i.e., Bill W., Bill’s business
partner and “sponsee” Henry P., Fitz M., and secretary Ruth Hock):
·
In Step Two, removed the original
word God and replaced it with the
phrase “a Power greater than ourselves.”
·
In Step Three, added the modifying
phrase “as we understood Him”
following the originally-unmodified word God.
·
In Step Three, added the modifying
phrase “as we understood Him”
following the originally-unmodified word God.[51]
Bill
W. said the compromise was to open a “broad highway” and was “the great
contribution” of the atheists and agnostics. But Bill also said that his “committee
of four” compromisers had declined to include what A.A. had learned from the
churches and the missions.[52]
But the following quote is from the
S. H. Hadley biography, on page 172-73. It provides, a good idea of what
Bill—himself a mission convert--learned at the very Calvary Mission which was
actually an outgrowth of New York’s famous Water Street Mission, founded in the
last century by Jerry McAuley. First, however, note that A.A. author and
historian Mel B. wrote the following about the relationship of the McAuley
mission work and Sam Shoemaker’s Calvary Mission. Mel stated:
McAuley was succeeded at the Water Street Mission by S. H.
Hadley. His example of recovery from alcoholism was cited in William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience (a
seminal book that profoundly influenced Bill Wilson).
Hadley’s son Harry, who also had a religious conversion
experience, was seeking an opportunity to start a rescue mission when he met
Sam Shoemaker. The result of their collaboration was Calvary Mission, which
helped thousands of men, including Ebby Thacher.[53]
Here are the Hadley biography
remarks about S. H Hadley, his mission, and the Calvary Mission approach and
activities that Bill was talking about:
The secret of Mr. Hadley’s wonderful success . . . can be
summed up in the fact that his religion was not a creed, not a catechism, not a
summary of Christian doctrines, not an observance of church duties, but a firm
realization of Christ as a person, with whom he had conscious communion, and
from he had received blessings as clearly as from the hand of a friend. Yet
there was not the slightest tinge of fanaticism in his religious life . . .
But instead of being elated by his success, of affected by
popularity he attained, he became increasingly humble, and his utter dependence
upon God was daily more manifest.
And this spirit he sought with all earnestness to impress
upon the Mission converts. Their help, their only help, he insisted, was God.
Anything else would fail them. They must pray. They must read their Bibles.
They must maintain constant communion with Jesus. They must be deeply
religious. They must rest with absolute faith on the promises of God. If they
trusted in God, their old appetites, lusts, desires, temptations, no matter how
powerful in the old life, would no longer have dominion over them. [These
biblical ideas can be found used almost verbatim in A.A. literature by Bill W.,
Dr. Bob, and Bill D.]
In this way he [Hadley] made religion a real thing. He had
no place for theories in his Mission. God, heaven, hell, sin, Christ,
salvation, the power of prayer, the indwelling of the Holy spirit, grace for
even the most abandoned and degraded, were tremendous verities with him, and he
made them the essentials of his ministry.
S.
H. Hadley’s son, Henry
Harrison Hadley II (also known as “Harry Hadley”)--named after S. H. Hadley’s
brother, Colonel Henry Harrison Hadley--collaborated with Rev. Sam Shoemaker in
opening the Calvary Mission on 23rd Street in Manhattan in 1926 and became its
first superintendent. That whole Hadley—Mission—Calvary Mission—Wilson link is
covered extensively in Dick B., The
Conversion of Bill W., 80-107. You can learn the facts from the lips and
writings of Sam Shoemaker, L. Parks Shipley, Sr., Mrs. Samuel Shoemaker,
Shoemaker’s assistant ministers John Potter Cuyler and W. Irving Harris,
Calvary Mission brother Billy Duval, Mel B., William James, Bill Wilson, Lois
Wilson, Bill Pittman, and Fitz M.
Taylor (“Tex”) Francisco—who took over
as superintendent of Calvary Mission in 1933—was the superintendent of the
Calvary Mission when Bill W.’s “sponsor,” Ebby Thacher, made his personal
surrender—accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior—there November 1, 1934.[54]
Tex was still the superintendent when
Bill W. accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior there about December 7,
1934, just before Bill entered Towns Hospital for his fourth and final visit on
December 11, 1934.[55]
Records
in such descriptive books as J. Wilbur Chapman, S.H. Hadley of Water Street, tell of the tens of thousands of
down-and-outers that went through Water Street Mission and were helped, if not
healed.
Records
of Calvary Mission, where both Ebby Thacher and Bill Wilson accepted Christ,
also report on the thousands helped in that endeavor at Calvary Mission which
was owned by Rev. Samuel M. Shoemaker’s Calvary Episcopal Church in New York.[56]
“General”
William Booth founded an organization in July 1865 in England— an early name
for which was “The Christian Mission”—that became known as “The Salvation Army”
in 1878. Booth sent an official group to the United States in 1880 to pioneer
work for the organization.[57]
The
Salvation Army’s work with drunkards, derelicts, and criminals in the slums
became popularized in Harold Begbie’s Twice-Born
Men—a book owned, circulated, and widely-read by Oxford Group people and by
the Akron AAs.[58]
The
effectiveness and techniques of the Salvation Army are well discussed by Dr.
Howard Clinebell of the Claremont School of Theology.[59] Also in one of the lectures given at the Yale Alcohol
Studies in 1945—an event in which Bill Wilson was one of the participating
lecturers.[60]
The
Rev. Dr. Francis E. Clark founded this society at the Williston Congregational Church
in Portland, Maine, on February 2, 1881. During its National Convention convened
July 9 and 10, 1885, at Ocean Park, Maine, the society was incorporated under
the laws of Maine as “the United Society of Christian Endeavor.”[62]
At
that convention, Mr. Van Patten of Burlington, Vermont, was chosen President. This
Christian society, aimed at young people in the church, spread throughout the
world and reached a peak membership of around 4.5 million members.
A
Christian Endeavor Society started in North Congregational Church, St.
Johnsbury, in 1887 (when Dr. Bob was about eight years old), and Dr. Bob said
he was actively involved in it “from childhood through high school.”[63]
Christian
Endeavor’s ideas and regimen produced a thoroughly observed, reported,
organized, and followed program of:
The
Christian Endeavor program closely paralleled the original Akron A.A. program
founded by Bill W. and Dr. Bob in 1935.[71]
Let
us also look at “A First Century Christian Fellowship” and aspects of its
influence on early A.A. Dr. Frank N. D. Buchman, a Lutheran minister, and a
couple of associates founded the organization in the autumn of 1922.[72] In September 1928, the press in South Africa affixed the
label “the Oxford Group” to a group of Oxford University students involved with
“A First Century Christian Fellowship” who were traveling by train in South
Africa, and the name stuck.
In
the Oxford Group’s earliest days, Group leader Sherwood Sunderland Day wrote a
little pamphlet succinctly summarizing the principles of the Oxford Group.[73] Day wrote at the beginning of his pamphlet that the
principles of the Oxford Group were the principles of the Bible.
And if you read my [Dick B.’s] comprehensive book, The Oxford Group and Alcoholics Anonymous,[74] you will see two major points:
1.
The Oxford Group’s 28 principles
that impacted on A.A., and the specific language used in hundreds of Oxford
Group writings [some 500 that Dick B. acquired, studied, and reported], each
rested on the Oxford Group biblical principles that Bill W. later incorporated
into the Big Book.
2.
Oxford Group writer after Oxford
Group writer—many of whose books were read by early AAs—quoted the Bible in
support of those 28 principles that later impacted on Bill’s language and
approach to the Big Book.
It
was Bill Wilson himself who said: “I am always glad to say privately that some
of the Oxford Group presentation and emphasis upon the Christian message saved
my life.”[75]
Bill
W.’s wife, Lois, was even clearer on what the Oxford Group and its First
Century Christianity had done for A.A. and for her Bill. Lois wrote:
Alcoholics Anonymous (yet to be formed at that time) owes a
great debt to the Oxford Group.[76]
The next few months were a happy time for Bill. He had the
companionship of his alcoholic friends, the spiritual inspiration of the Oxford
Group and the satisfaction of being useful to those he worked with.[77]
The Oxford Group precepts [as Lois
characterized them] were in substance:
·
Surrender your life to God;
·
Take a moral inventory;
·
Confess your sins to God and another
human being;
·
Make restitution;
·
Give of yourself to others with no
demand for return;
·
Pray to God for help to carry out
these principles.
·
There were also four “Absolutes”:
absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness and absolute love,
moral standards by which every thought and action should be tested.[78]
And Lois W. wrote in her memoir:
God, through the Oxford Group, had accomplished in a
twinkling what I had failed to do in seventeen years.[79]
Gloria Deo
[1] T. D. Seymour Bassett, The Gods of the Hills: Piety and Society in
Nineteenth Century Vermont (Montpelier, VT: Vermont Historical Society.
Inc., 2000)
[2] Edward Taylor Fairbanks, The Town of St. Johnsbury, Vt: A Review of
One Hundred Twenty-Five Years to the Anniversary Pageant, 1912 (General
Books, ISBN 9780217374903); John M. Comstock, The Congregational Churches of Vermont and Their Ministry 176 2-1942
Historical and Statistical (St. Johnsbury, VT: The Cowles Press, 1942).
[3] Dr. Bob’s mother supported these
financially.
[4] The Young Men’s Christian
Association was vibrant at the time of Dr. Bob’s youth (1879-1898),
particularly in St. Johnsbury with its donated Y.M.C.A. building near Dr. Bob’s
boyhood home, the local General Secretary who appeared on the scene, the reading
room, the lectures and activities North Congregational Church and St. Johnsbury
Academy which Bob attended, Bible studies, and religious meetings such as the “Great
Awakening” of 1875 in St. Johnsbury. Dr. Bob’s father, Judge Walter P. Smith,
was President of the St. Johnsbury YMCA from 1895 until at least 1897 while his
son Bob was attending St. Johnsbury Academy down the street (1894-1898). See
Dick B., Dr. Bob of Alcoholics Anonymous,
61, 90, 114-19.
[5] News about the travels of Moody
and Sankey, and the texts of Moody’s sermons, filled St. Johnsbury’s local
newspaper, the St. Johnsbury Caledonian, for a number of years just before Dr.
Bob was born.
Ken B. reviewed all of the available
issues of the St. Johnsbury Caledonian
newspaper on microfilm from about 1869 until at least August 1875 during the
second research trip Dick B. and Ken B. made to St. Johnsbury in June 2008.
[6] On September 12, 1875, Colonel
Franklin Fairbanks of St. Johnsbury assisted Moody with an afternoon service in
Northfield, Massachusetts. See “The Revivalists at Northfield, Mass,.” New York Times, Springfield, Mass.,
Sept. 12; Published September 13, 1875 : http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9406E3DC1F39EF34BC4B52DFBF66838E669FDE
; accessed 2/16/12.
[7] Henry Moorhouse, the famous
young English evangelist, assisted by Ira D. Sankey, held meetings in St.
Johnsbury during the last week in October 1877. See John MacPherson, Henry Moorhouse, the English Evangelist
(London: Morgan and Scott, 1881), 80.
[8] Congregationalist Colonel
Franklin Fairbanks also joined with other state religious leaders, including
Baptist Jacob J. Estey of Brattleboro and Methodist Samuel Huntington of
Burlington, in signing “an appeal to support Moody’s evangelistic campaign” in
Burlington, Vermont, during most of October 1877.
Moody arrived in Burlington on Saturday
morning, October 6, 1877. See T. D. Seymour Bassett, The Gods of the Hills: Piety and Society in Nineteenth-Century Vermont
(Montpelier, VT: Vermont Historical Society, 2000), 193-95.
The Moody and Sankey campaign in Vermont
concluded Thursday evening, November 1, 1877. See “Revivals in New-England,” New York Times, dated Nov. 2, and
published November 3, 1877. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9402E0D8103FE63BBC4B53DFB767838C669FDE
; accessed 2/17/12.
[9] Dr. Bob was active in Christian
Endeavor as a youth through his family’s church, North Congregational Church,
St. Johnsbury. See Alcoholics Anonymous,
4th ed. (New York City, NY: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services,
Inc., 2001), 172. See also: Dick B. and Ken B., Dr. Bob of Alcoholics Anonymous: His Excellent Training in the Good
Book as a Youngster in Vermont (Kihei, HI: Paradise Research Publications,
Inc., 2008), 143-87. Furthermore, these videos have shown and will show how
many of the persons, leaders, and evangelists of those days were not only
friends and colleagues, but also much involved in the same organizations and
groups that were impacting on Vermont and A.A.’s co-founders in their Christian
upbringing and later as adults. These people were Dwight L. Moody, Ira Sankey,
F. B. Meyer, Amos Wells, Billy Sunday, Francis Clark, Colonel Franklin
Fairbanks, Robert E. Speer, S. H. Hadley, J. Wilbur Chapman, A. J. Gordon, and
General William Booth. Their paths crossed many times in Congregationalism, the
Young Men’s Christian Association, Christian Endeavor, revivals, temperance
meetings, the work of rescue missions, and even The Great Awakening of 1875 in
St. Johnsbury.
[10] John M. Comstock, The Congregational Churches of Vermont and
Their Ministry, 1762-1942. Historical and Statistical. (St. Johnsbury, VT:
The Cowles Press, Inc., 1942), 9: “The rapid settlement of Vermont did not
begin until the close of the French and Indian War. . . . Settlers now came in
rapidly from the longer settled parts of New England. These were nearly all of
Puritan stock, and so naturally Congregationalists. The first of the new
settlements was at Bennington, and there the first church of our order and the
first Protestant church in the state was organized in 1762, the next year after
the beginning of the town.”
[11] See Dick B. and Ken B., Dr. Bob of Alcoholics Anonymous.
[12] See Dick B., The Conversion of Bill W.; and Dick B.
and Ken B., Bill W. and Dr. Bob: The
Green Mountain Men of Vermont.
[13] In The Castle in the Pasture: Portrait of Burr and Burton Academy (Manchester,
VT: Burr and Burton Academy, 2005), the text and research were by the Academy
archivist Frederica Templeton). The early portion of this book names the many
Congregationalists who were leaders and founders—The Reverend William Jackson,
pastor of the Congregational Church in Dorset. The Reverend Lyman Coleman was
the first principal when the seminary opened during a wave of religious
revivalism. Both graduates of Yale College and Yale Divinity School, Reverend
James Anderson (pastor of the First Congregational Church in Manchester Village
for 29 years) was a founding trustee and Secretary until 1878; Reverend Dr.
Joseph Dresser Wickham was principal of Burr Seminary until 1862 and nearly
thirty years a president of its Board of Trustees. Dr. Wickham was succeeded as
president of the Board of Trustees by Reverend Parsons Pratt, long-time pastor
of the Dorset Congregational Church. School Rules and Regulations required:
Prompt attendance at Daily Prayers, Church and Bible Service on the Sabbath. In
the early years, students and faculty marked the end of the school year with
Anniversary Exercises at the Congregational Church and an address by a visiting
clergyman, pages 1 to 50.
[14] This information was conveyed to
us in interviews and reviews of records with archivist Frederica Templeton.
[15] See also Robert J. Wilson and
Ann Lewis, The First Congregational
Church Manchester, Vermont, 1784-1984 (Manchester,
VT: Bicentennial Steering Committee of the First Congregational Church of
Manchester, Vermont, 1984)
[16] See Dick B. and Ken B., Dr. Bob of Alcoholics Anonymous, 153-54.
[17] “The story of our founding” at
The Y/YMCA Web site: http://www.ymca.net/history/founding.html
; accessed 2/15/12.
[18] Edward T. Fairbanks, The Town of St. Johnsbury, Vt: A Review of
One Hundred Twenty-Five Years to the Anniversary Pageant 1912 (St.
Johnsbury, Vt.: The Cowles Press, 1914), 316-17.
[19] Dick B., and Ken B., Dr.
Bob of Alcoholics Anonymous, 67-68, 97, 119, 125-28, 171, 247-62.
[20] “The Great Awakening” in St.
Johnsbury, Vermont, began on February 6, 1875, just a few months before Dwight
L. Moody and Ira D. Sankey arrived back in America on August 14, 1875,
following their two-year tour of the United Kingdom and Ireland. Dr. Bob was
born on August 8, 1879, and graduated from St. Johnsbury Academy in 1898. He
then left Vermont to attend Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Bill
W. was born on November 26, 1895. Bill turned his back on God during his senior
year at Burr and Burton Academy after the young woman he was in love with,
Bertha Bamford, died on November 18, 1912. The many evangelists who conferred
widely reported healings, particularly of alcoholics and addicts were: (1)
Dwight L. Moody, A. J. Gordon, F. B. Meyer, Billy Sunday, Chapman, Allen
Folger, James Moore Hickson, Just as Dr. Silkworth had told Bill Wilson that
the “Great Physician” could cure him, many of these same evangelists used that
expression to refer to Jesus said that the Great Physician could cure the
believer (Willitts,, 66, 104, 151, 209-10,
215; Hickson, 70; Meyer, The
Secret of Guidance, 91. See Dick B., The
Conversion of Bill W. 62-66.
[21] Allen Folger, Twenty-Five Years as an Evangelist
(Boston: James H. Earle & Company, 1905), p. 198- 99 “this young man. . .
in despairing tone, said, ‘Did you know that I was a drunkard and only
twenty-two years of age? . . . . I have been engaged in selling drugs. . . .
Silently asking God’s guidance I said, If you must go to these places you can
take Christ with you to the worst place on earth, only trust entirely in him. .
. . The last service he was there again, and when the invitation was given he
was at once on his feet and said to me, ‘Mr. Folger, I am trying to live a
Christian life. . . Later he came over apparently rejoicing in the Lord, and I
heard of him afterwards as doing well.”
[22] Billy Sunday: William T. Ellis, Billy Sunday, 31-32, 39, 66, 94; Rachel
M. Phillips, Billy Sunday (Ohio;
Barbour Books, 2001), 115-16, 148,,
[23] “A. J. Gordon and Dwight L.
Moody; Boston 1877.” And then there is the dramatic account of the Healing
Movement: [A. J.] Gordon began including healing in his ministry after he
observed an opium addict delivered and a missionary’s cancerous jaw healed
instantaneously through the prayers of concerned believers during Dwight L.
Moody’s revival meetings in Boston in 1877. These meetings revitalized the life
of Clarendon Church, which Gordon pastored, and brought reformed drunkards and
all kinds of commoners into the ranks of this affluent church. Richard M. Riss, A Survey of 20th-Century Revival Movements in North America
(Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1988), 22. For further understanding of Gordon’s
role, see A. J. Gordon, The Ministry of
Healing: Miracles of Cure in All Ages (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1881);
and Scott M. Gibson, A. J. Gordon: American Premillennialist (Lanham, MD:
University Press of America, 2001).
[24] James Moore Hickson, Heal The Sick (London: Methuen &
Co., Ltd., 1925) –a book that was owned and circulated among early AAs by Dr.
Bob; pp. 39-40, 82-83, 88, 118-19, 172, 240-41, 265.
[25] Ethel R. Willitts, Evangelist, Healing in Jesus Name (Crawfordsville,
IN: Ethel R. Willitts, 1931), 122, 156,
[26] Bob Holman, F.B. Meyer: “If I Had a Hundred Lives, they should be at Christ’s
disposal.” (Great Britain: Christian Focus Limited, 2007), p. 2, “F. B.
Meyer was one of the great influences of the evangelical world in the latter 19th
and early 20th century. He helped launch the then-unknown D. L.
Moody for his first evangelistic mission in the UK, was himself a famous
Holiness preacher on both sides of the Atlantic. He was one of the outstanding
Bible teachers of his day;” p. 29: “In
Meyer’s church, Moody and Sankey began their triumphant British tour;” p. 31:
There was a lifelong friendship between Meyer and Moody; p. “Meyer soon
perceived that for ex-prisoners, alcoholics and delinquents, conversion was
necessary but not always sufficient. Often they also needed jobs and
accommodation;” p. 67: Meyer knew George Williams, a trustee at Meyer’s church,
a leading evangelical, and played a large part in the founding of Young Men’s
Christian Association—bringing drunken youths off the streets into Bible study
at Williams’s home; pp. 93, 146, 156, 181: As with Moody, and Billy Sunday,
Christian Endeavor, the YMCA, and support for missions played a large role in
their outreach work. In his book The
Secret of Guidance (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2010); p. 155: Meyer’s
influence on Dr. Frank Buchman as to guidance and “quiet time,” was both
recognized and substantial. P. 70: Also see Meyer’s intense interest in General
Booth’s Salvation Army Book and the work it describes.
[27]See Alcohol, Science and Society: Twenty-nine Lectures with Discussions as
given at the Yale Summer School of Alcohol Studies (New Haven: Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol,
1945). Lecture 1, page 12, states this: “Practically everybody who talks about
the rehabilitation of the alcoholic mentions the role of religion. The Rev.
McPeek will give you a historical sketch of the role of religion in the
treatment of inebriety.”
[28] See Richard L. Gorusch,
“Assessing Spiritual Variables in Alcoholics Anonymous Research,” Research on Alcoholics (New Brunswick,
NJ: Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies, 1993): “alcoholics’ concept of God
differs so widely from Christian culture
that they are supposed to have been a part of Christianity that stresses
forgiveness and love, not judgment and vengeance. . . Alcoholics have a non-Christian
view of God.” pp. 310-11. See also Martin and Deidre Bobgan, 12 Steps to Destruction (Santa Barbara,
CA: East Gate Publishers, 1991): p. 104. “Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is
absent from Wilson’s spiritual experience. There is no mention of Jesus Christ
providing the only way of salvation. . . . Nor is there any mention of Jesus
Christ being Lord of his [Bill W.’s] life.” See
also The Collected Ernie Kurtz
(Wheeling, WV: The Bishop of Books, 1999), pp. 17: “The same mail brings me
pages from a Californian who, immersed in the study of books read by Dr. Bob
Smith and other Oxford Group members, demonstrates (again to his satisfaction
more than to mine), that every idea in Alcoholics Anonymous derives directly
from the King James Version of the Bible;” p. 29: “: . . . in the A.A. modality
of storytelling, one is “saved,” but not completely. Salvation—sobriety—remains
operative only so long as one makes it available to others by telling the story
of one’s own;” Compare Linda A. Mercadante, Victims
& Sinners: Spiritual Roots of Addiction and Recovery (Louisville, KY:
Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), p.
180: “Grace is not primarily the energy to improve behavior. It is not
primarily an infusion of willpower, or a control battle that God wins. Nevertheless
it “works” to turn a person away from destructive behaviors we label addiction.
. . . In other words, grace is the heart of God, welcoming u back home;” see
William James, The Varieties of Religious
Experience (Vintage Books/The Library of America, 1990), “The only statistics I know of, on the
subject of duration of conversions, are those collected for Professor Starbuck
by Miss Johnston. They embrace only a hundred persons, evangelical
church-members, more than half being Methodists;” In Elwood Worcester, Samuel McComb,
Isador H. Coriat, Religion and Medicine:
The Moral Control of Mental Disorders (NY: Moffat, Yard & Company,
1908), see p. 190-91: “We often hear men say, ‘Faith belongs to religion;
knowledge is the mark of science; the
weakness of religion is its uncertainty; the strength of science is its firm
standing on the bed-rock of observation and experiment.’ Yet as Professor Royce
has abundantly shown, the whole structure of science rests upon a body of great
faiths, or beliefs, which must be trusted but cannot be proved. . . . It is no
reproach to religion to say that it is based on faith, for if this is a
weakness, it is one it shares with science. But not with science only. Our
ordinary life is grounded in faith. . . . When he is overtaken with some
sickness, he speedily forgets his rationalism, calls in the doctor and swallows
his medicine in faith. . . .”
[29] William T. Ellis, Billy Sunday: The Man and His Message
(Chicago, Moody Press, 1959), 94.
[30] See John MacPherson, Henry Moorhouse, the English Evangelist
(London: Morgan and Scott, 1881), 80. See also: The New York Times. Published: November 3, 1877.
[31] Roger A. Bruns, Preacher: Billy Sunday and Big-time American
Evangelism (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 134-35.
[32] Elmer Towns and Douglas Porter, The Ten Greatest Revivals Ever: From
Pentecost to the Present (Ann Arbor, MI: Servant Publications, 2000), 136.
[33] William T. Ellis, Billy Sunday: The Man and His Message (Chicago:
Moody Press, 1959), 136.
[34] Richard M. Riss, A Survey of 20th-Century Revival
Movements in North America (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1988), 22. For
further understanding of Gordon’s role, see A. J. Gordon, The Ministry of Healing: Miracles of Cure in All Ages (London:
Hodder and Stoughton, 1881); and Scott M. Gibson, A. J. Gordon: American Premillennialist (Lanham, MD: University
Press of America, 2001).
[35] Dick B. and Ken B., Dr. Bob of Alcoholics Anonymous: His
Excellent Training in the Good Book as a Youngster in Vermont (Kihei, HI:
Paradise Research Publications, Inc., 2008).
[36] Elmer Towns and Douglas Porter, The Ten Greatest Revivals Ever: From
Pentecost to the Present (Ann Arbor, MI: Servant Publications, 2000):
Finney was converted in 1821 (p. 100). In what became known as “The General
Awakening” period ending in 1830, Finney had taken his ministry to New York
where some 100,000 people were converted (p. 104). Finney had previously
conducted his early meetings throughout rural New England (p. 98). He was known
as the “Father of Modern Revivalism,” became known as the originator of the
altar call and the “anxious seat” for those expected to come to Jesus Christ
(p. 102). Kenneth O. Brown, Holy Ground:
The Camp Meeting Family Tree (Hazleton, PA: Holiness Archives, 1997):
Finney used a huge tent in Oberlin, Ohio in 1835. And he, along with Dwight
Moody, Billy Sunday, Oral Roberts, and Billy Graham became famed for what was
called “Tabernacle revivalism” (pp. 64-65). Roger A. Bruns, Billy Sunday and Big Time American
Evangelism (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001): His
most famous sermon was “Sinners Bound to Change Their Own Hearts” (p. 67). He
often pointed out sinners in the audience, challenging them personally to
forsake their evil ways and to follow Christ (p. 68). He had a vision of a
mighty force of reformed Christians purifying the nation of sin and sordidness;
and he took the revivalist impulse and mass conversion efforts from rural
settings into the cities (p. 69). Many read his handbook on revivalism (p. 70).
[37] Much can be said about the
famous English evangelist, F. B. Meyer. That is probably one of the reasons
that he touched so many of the lives that impacted on early A.A through
evangelists and revivals. Bob Holman, F.B.
Meyer: “If I Had a Hundred Lives” (Great Britain: Christian Focus
Publications, Ltd., 2007): He was one of the great influences in the
evangelical world in the latter 19th and 20th century. He
helped launch the then unknown Dwight L. Moody for his first evangelistic
mission in the UK, was himself a famous Holiness preacher on both sides of the
Atlantic, played a role in the Welsh revival of 1904, and was an outstanding
Bible teacher of his day (p. 2). He believed the Bible as God’s revelation;
that conversion depended upon belief in heart and mind; that mankind was justly
condemned for sin but God’s infinite love resulted in Jesus coming to earth and
that his death is accepted by Infinite justice as the basis for reconciliation
between man and God (p. 21). At the invitation of Dwight Moody, he went to the
U.S. to speak at the well-established Northfield Conference (p. 65). He was
asked to head Christ Church, and negotiated for the post with George Williams,
a trustee at Christ Church who had played a large part in the founding of the
Young Men’s Christian Association (p. 67). He believed the Sunday diet was not
sufficient for Christian growth; and he introduced the Monday prayer meeting,
held a service and sermon at noon on Thursdays, and conducted a Bible reading
on Friday evening. And he launched a Young Men’s Christian Association program
(pp. 76-77). He also took a close interest in the Young People’s Society of
Christian Endeavor and eventually became president of the Central South London
Christian Endeavor Union (p. 93). His evangelism resulted in many conversions
(p. 98). He spent a great deal of time serving others. On Saturday afternoons,
he would talk to and spend time with young men at the YMCA in central
London. At 7 p.m., he would conduct the
worker’s prayer meeting. On Sundays he would usually preach at three services,
and also participate in one or more of the meetings for children and young
people (p. 104). He traveled to the United States at least 20 times; and in
1898 he went to Washington, D.C., opened the Senate with prayer, and had a talk
with President McKinley (p. 125). He also became President of the World’s
Sunday School Association (p. 126). He had much to do with the early life of
Oxford Group founder Frank Buchman. Buchman went to Britain the seek Meyer. In
1912, Meyer came to the Penn State College campus and told Buchman to listen
more to God than the phones and to work personally rather than organizing large
meetings. Buchman was much influenced by Meyer’s books, especially his Secret of Guidance (p.155). F. B. Meyer
was president of the National Union of Christian Endeavor and the National Sunday
School Association (p. 181). He met Moody’s partner, Ira Sankey, and it was
Moody who taught Meyer how to win people to Christ (p. 30). Meyer reckoned that
in nine cases out of ten, drink had contributed to the crimes which landed men
in prison (p. 38). He worked with homeless boys and youngsters who had been in
prison (p. 43). Meyer told a group of young men: “A man must not only believe
in Christ for final salvation, but must trust him for victory over every sin,
and for deliverance from every care” (p. 47). Meyer also spoke at a large
meeting along with General William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army (p.
195).
[38] Towns and Porter, The Ten Greatest Revivals Ever: In 1859,
Dwight L. Moody was elected president of the Illinois Sunday School Association.
He established a prayer meeting, called the “Illinois Band,” which included
such prominent Americans as H. J. Heinz and John Wannamaker—their goal being to
bring Christ to the world (p. 119). Moody became an evangelist, went to
England, returned to America preaching to huge crowds, but was cut down by the
Chicago fire and many deaths that accompanied it. Moody began making
invitations for conversion which he called “Instantaneous Conversion,”
explaining how people could be saved immediately by accepting Christ” (p.131).
Moody was a leader of the Young Men’s Christian Association, the American
Sunday School movement, and also was editor of Christian Endeavor’s pamphlet, The Golden Rule. He brought to America
such famous evangelists as F. B. Meyer and Henry Drummond, and was a friend of
evangelist Allen Folger. Moody’s ideas were very much appropriated by Oxford
Group founder Dr. Frank N. D. Buchman and found their way into early A.A.
thinking. See J. Wilbur Chapman, The Life
and Work of Dwight Lyman Moody (1837-1899), http//www.bible
believers.com/moody/index.html. See also: Riss, A Survey, 14-29; Towns and Porter, The Ten Greatest Revivals, 119, 130-38; and Mark O. Guldseth, Streams (Fritz Creek, AK: Fritz Creek
Studios, 1982).
[39] As to Sankey, see: (1) J. Wilbur
Chapman, The Life and Work of Dwight L.
Moody (Boston, MA: Geo. M. Smith, 1900); and (2) Edgar J. Goodspeed, The Wonderful Career of Moody and Sankey in
Great Britain and America (NY: Henry B. Goodspeed & Co., 1876). See
also Dick B. and Ken B., The Dick B.
Christian Recovery Guide, 3rd ed. (Kihei, HI: Paradise Research
Publications, Inc., 2010).
[40] As to Henry Drummond, see George
Smith, The Life of Henry Drummond
(London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1899); and James Young Simpson, Henry Drummond (Edinburgh: Oliphant,
Anderson & Ferrier, 1901). Dr. Bob owned, read, studied, and circulated
among AAs a large number of Drummond’s books. Dick B., Dr. Bob and His Library, 3rd ed. (Kihei, HI: Paradise
Research Publications, Inc. 3rd ed.,
[41] John MacPherson, Henry Moorhouse, the English Evangelist
(London: Morgan and Scott, n.d.).
[42] As to K. A. Burnell and H. M.
Moore, see Record of Christian Work, Vol.
18, April 1899, No. 4, 170-71. As to Burnell, Moody, and Sankey, see The Advance, September 21, 1905, 318-19.
[43] Allen Folger, Twenty-five Years as an Evangelist (Springfield,
MO J. H. Earle & Company, 1915). Folger was deeply involved with the Young
Men’s Christian Association evangelism with more than 700 meetings in New
England. He was involved with the Young Men’s Christian Association there (pp.
153, 215); with Moody and Sankey (p. 70); with healings (pp. 186-87);with the
problems of addiction and drinking people (p. 318); with conversion and
salvation (pp. 322-31, 289); with Vermont (p. 245); with revivals (p. 144); and with hundreds of
meetings (p. 334).
[44] Billy was a baseball star, who
was converted to God through Jesus Christ, was trained in the Young Men’s
Christian Association, preached, converted thousands, was involved in Christian
Endeavor, and was a champion of “personal work.” His definition of conversion
was a complete surrender to Jesus Christ. He said: The plan of salvation is
presented to you in two parts. Believe in your heart and confess with your
mouth [Romans 10:9].
[45] Dick B. and Ken B., Dr. Bob of Alcoholics Anonymous: His
Excellent Training in the Good Book as a Youngster in Vermont (Kihei, HI:
Paradise Research Publications, Inc., 2008).
[46] D. Samuel Hopkins Hadley, Down in Water Street: A Story of Sixteen
Years Life and Work in Water Street Mission, A Sequel to the Life of Jerry
McAuley (NY: Fleming H. Revell, n.d.), 39.
[47] J. Wilbur Chapman, S. H. Hadley of Water Street (NY:
Fleming H. Revell Company, 1906), 17.
[48] Jerry McAuley: “Helping Hand for Men” (mission)
(renamed) “McAuley Water Street Mission”:
“The
New York City Rescue Mission was founded in 1872 by Jerry McAuley as the
Helping Hand for Men located at 316 Water Street near the foot of the Brooklyn
Bridge. Jerry McAuley was a drunk and a
river thief who was sentenced to Sing Sing Prison for 15 years. He came to the Lord Jesus Christ in prison by
the reading of the Bible. His life was
so changed, that he received a pardon from the Governor of New York and was
released after serving 7 years of his sentence.
Following his release from prison he met his wife, a former prostitute
who had come to know the Lord as Savior.
They were married and served the Lord together in ministering to the
homeless men of the city. Following the death of Jerry McAuley, the [Helping
Hand for Men] mission was renamed the McAuley Water Street Mission. A water fountain dedicated to the memory of
Jerry McAuley was erected at Greeley Square in Manhattan. His life has had an impact that is still felt
today. The current mission [The New York City Rescue Mission], which is the
fifth mission since the original mission, is located at 90 Lafayette Street in
Manhattan. The Village Lane Bible Chapel
has ministered at the mission on the first Monday of the month for over twenty
years. The following are several
pictures of the mission.” [Source: “New York City Rescue Mission”:
http://www.vlbc.org/nyc_rescue_mission.htm; accessed 2/9/2014]
[Source:
“New York City Rescue Mission”: http://www.vlbc.org/nyc_rescue_mission.htm;
accessed 2/9/2014]
[49] Hadley, Down in Water Street, 2.
[50] Hadley, Down in Water Street, 45. And
now as to Cremorne: “Two or three hundred well dressed men and women,
sympathizers and the regenerated, attended the anniversary meeting of Jerry
McAuley’s Cremorne Mission, yesterday afternoon. Gen. Clinton B. Fisk, the Rev.
Drs. R. S. MacArthur and R. R. Booth, the Rev. Lindsay Parker, and Mrs. Maria
McAuley occupied the platform and made brief addresses. Gen. Fisk said that no
report could be made of the fruits of the mission work, but it was known in the
hearts of thousands of men and women who had been raised from the gutter to a
self-respecting life. The good work was being carried on by Sister Maria, Jerry
McAuley’s widow, whom nobody named without a blessing. Dr. MacArthur made a
feeling allusion to the memory of Jerry McAuley. He had even made better men of
the ministers, said Dr. Booth. Six or eight persons of both sexes, well clad
and well to do in appearance, testified to their reformation from sin and
drunkenness through appeals made in the mission hall. Mrs. Maria McAuley, known
to hundreds of regenerated outcasts as Sister Maria, said that she remembered
the time when she lived in a wretched room on Cherry-street without God or
hope; there was a bed of straw in one corner, and drink was her daily curse. As
tears fell down her cheeks she concluded, ‘God only knows how it hurts the
flesh to tell the story, but it’s my duty.’ . . .” [Source: “Cremorne Mission Work,” in The New York Times, January 4, 1886: http://mcaf.ee/h4ylg;
accessed 2/9/2014 {109311820.pdf}]
“The
year was 1872; the month, October, and the couple, Jerry and Maria McAuley.
They named their mission house, at 316 Water Street, the Helping Hand for Men.
It is reputed the first such rescue mission in New York-- . . .
Meanwhile,
McAuley also had moved uptown. In 1882, Jerry left Water Street (succeeded by
S. H. Hadley) to start the Cremorne Mission near Times Square. Who knows whether
his grandmother's pious prayers, that he had once derided, may have played
their part in the recesses of half- forgotten memory, readying him to receive
the message of "new life" carried to him "up the river" by
Orville "the Awful," a Sing Sing chapel message that helped turn his
young life around and led him to help turn around the lives of countless
others, first at the Water St. Mission and later at the Cremorne Mission. . . .
Maria
succeeded him at the Times Square area mission after he died Sept. 18, 1884.
Newspapers of the era reported that Rev. Thomas DeWitt Talmage's reconstructed
Brooklyn Tabernacle (aka Central Presbyterian Church) was so packed with people
attending McAuley's funeral that the crowd overflowed onto the sidewalk --
quite a turnout considering that the 5,000-seat Gothic style facility was
regarded as one of the largest Protestant churches, if not the largest, in the
country at the time.”[Source: “Tombs & Sing Sing Ex-Inmate Became Rescue
Mission Pioneer”: http://www.correctionhistory.org/html/chronicl/mcauley/mcauley.html;
accessed 2/9/2014]
[51] Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, 166-67.
[52] Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, 17, 162-64, 166-67.
[53] Mel B., Ebby, p. 65. Also, Mel B., New
Wine: The Spiritual Roots of the Twelve Step Miracle (Center City, MN:
Hazelden, 1991), 52-53.
[54] Mel B., Ebby: The Man Who Sponsored Bill W. (Center City, Minn.: Hazelden,
1998), 65
[55] Dick B. and Ken B., The Dick B. Christian Recovery Guide, 3rd
ed., 8-11. See also: Dick B., The
Conversion of Bill W.
[56] See Dick B., Turning Point: A History of Early A.A.’s
Spiritual Roots and Successes, 423; The
Akron Genesis of Alcoholics Anonymous, 157-58.
[57] “History of the Salvation Army”:
http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/www_usn_2.nsf/vw-dynamic-arrays/816DE20E46B88B2685257435005070FA?openDocument&charset=utf-8
; accessed 2/15/12.
[58] See the review of elements of
Salvation Army as they relate to A.A.: http://mauihistorian.blogspot.com/2012/01/salvation-army-influence-on-and.html
.
[59] Howard Clinebell, Understanding and Counseling Persons with
Alcohol, Drug, and Behavioral Addictions, rev. and enl. ed. (Nashville,
Abingdon Press, 1998).
[60] The techniques of the Salvation
Army were summarized and given high praise in: Francis W. McPeek, “The Role of
Religious Bodies in the Treatment of Inebriety in the United States,” Lecture
26 of the Yale Alcohol Studies Lectures of 1945, in Alcohol, Science and Society: Twenty-nine Lectures with Discussions as
Given at the Yale Summer School of Alcohol Studies (New Haven: Quarterly
Journal of Studies on Alcohol, Journal of Studies on Alcohol, Inc., 1945). Rev.
McPeek stated: “Much work was done in city missions and particularly by the
Salvation Army. The Army, however, has focused its efforts on the conversion
experience and has made use of its own facilities and of other community
resources when these were needed in aftercare. . . . Generally speaking, the
Salvationists have capitalized on the same techniques that have made other
reform programs work: (1) Insistence on total abstinence; (2) Reliance upon
God; (3) the provision of new friendships among those who understand; (4) the
opportunity to work with those who suffer from the same difficulty; and (5)
unruffled patience and consistent faith in the ability of the individual and in
the power of God to accomplish the desired results” [pp. 414-15].
[61] The resources and literature are covered at
great length in Dick B. and Ken B., Dr. Bob of Alcoholics Anonymous.
[62] Francis E. Clark, World Wide Endeavor: The Story of the Young People’s
Society of Christian Endeavor from the Beginning and in All Lands (Philadelphia,
PA: Gillespie & Metzgar, 1895), 160.
[63] Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed., 172.
[64] Dr. Bob of Alcoholics Anonymous, 145, 148-50, 161-63.168, 170,
174-75, 177-8, 180, 183-84.
[65] Dr. Bob of Alcoholics Anonymous, 145, 147-50. 161, 174, 177, 178, 183-84
[66] Dr. Bob of Alcoholics Anonymous, 147. 150-51, 161-63, 171, 175,
177, 181-2.
[67] Dr. Bob of Alcoholics Anonymous, 147, 150-51, 161-63, 168, 170,
172,, 175-78, 183.
[68] Dr. Bob of Alcoholics Anonymous, 150-51, 163, 172-73, 176. 181-82.
[69] Dr. Bob of Alcoholics Anonymous, 146-50, 161, 183-4.
[70] Dr. Bob of Alcoholics Anonymous, 150-51, 163, 168, 181-82.
[71] Dick B. and Ken B., The Dick B. Christian Recovery Guide, 3rd
ed., 18; Dick B. and Ken B., Dr. Bob of
Alcoholics Anonymous, 143-67.
[72] Garth Lean, Frank Buchman: A Life (London: Constable, 1995), 97.
[73] Sherwood Sunderland Day, The Principles of the Oxford Group
(Great Britain: The Oxford Group, n.d.).
[74] Dick B., The Oxford Group & Alcoholics Anonymous: A Design for Living That
Works, new, rev. ed. (Kihei, HI: Paradise Research Publications, Inc.,
1998).
[75] “Pass It On,” p. 171.
[76] Lois Remembers, 92.
[77] Lois Remembers, 98.
[78] Lois Remembers, 92. These Oxford Group Four Absolutes derived
directly from a foundational book by Robert E. Speer, The Principles of Jesus: Applied to Some Questions of Today (NY:
Fleming H. Revell, 1902). Some writers have erroneously spoken of them as
having been derived from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. For further elaboration on
the biblical sources for the four absolutes, see how varied those alleged
sources are. Start with the proposition that they were not taken directly from
verses in Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. Note that Robert E. Speer cited several
Bible sources other than just those in Matthew 5, 6, and 7. Note too that
history has done the sources a bad turn. Shoemaker attributed them to the
Sermon. Henry B. Wright added a whole series of Bible verses for each absolute;
and those verses came not just from various Gospel verses, but also from many
in the church Epistles. Finally, AAs began writing pamphlets simply making up
their own interpretations of the absolutes. Therefore the student of the four
absolutes can best start learning by looking at the variations and then making
up his own mind from the evidence, rather than from the opinions. See Speer’s
book. Then see Henry Burt Wright, The
Will of God and a Man’s Lifework as re-written in “General Books” and dated
2009. Then see this reprint’s discussion on pages 79-105. Then see Dick B., The Oxford Group & Alcoholics Anonymous:
A Design for Living that Works, 2d ed., pages 56-57, 310-11
[79] Lois Remembers, 99.
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