The Further Burial of Akron Program
Ideas
in the Words of Bill’s New Twelve Steps
By Dick B.
© 2015 Anonymous. All
rights reserved
This is not a Twelve Step or a Big Book study. My title Twelve Steps for You covers the diverse
origins of each of the Twelve Steps, examining each, step by step. The Big Book
has been extensively studied and well-reviewed by such venerable AAs as Joe McQ.
and Charlie P. in their Seminars, tapes, and books. What’s been missing is an
understanding of the fact that Bill Wilson was commissioned to write a basic
text conveying the program details that were so successful in Akron by 1938.
Instead, Wilson and his partner Hank Parkhurst, formed a corporation, drew up a
stock prospectus, outlined a completely new and different recovery procedure,
and sold the ultimate product as “the steps we took.” This despite the fact
that there were no steps, that the predecessor Oxford Group had no steps, and
that no steps were ever taken by anyone in early 1939—the date the Big Book was
published.
As a starting point, we can look at Bill’s six word-of-mouth
steps and the variant presentations of them. But it is important to highlight
the things in the ultimate draft of Twelve Steps that completely changed A.A.’s
ideas on what it took to recover. The draft threw Dr. Jung’s “conversion” into
a barrel and reworded it a “spiritual experience.” Here are the highlights (See
‘Pass It On,’ 198-99):
·
The idea that AAs were somehow “powerless”
replaced the original concept that they were simply “licked.” Powerless led
more neatly to Bill’s “Power.” Being licked had been a prelude to a cry to God
for help out of the mire.
·
The idea that AAs “came to believe” replaced the
original concept that they either believed or they didn’t. And “Power greater
than themselves” replaced the word “God” to appease two or three atheists and
fit the step into Bill’s “Power” progression.
·
The Third Step redefined “sin,” characterized it
as “self-centeredness,” and put a spin on the surrender as being a surrender of
self instead of a surrender to God—the kind of surrender involved in a real
conversion.
·
The Fourth through Seventh Steps involved action
to eliminate offensive manifestations of self, rather than adopting the
Biblical solution of receiving the spirit of God, walking by the Spirit, and
disdaining walk by the flesh. Note the significance of this change in terms of
the “cure” concept. “Self” can’t be eliminated; hence never “cured.” Walking in
obedience to God’s will is always possible and an attainable condition to cure.
·
The restitution aspects of the Eighth and Ninth
steps retained the Biblical ideas of agreeing with our adversary quickly,
righting wrongs through restoration or reconciliation, and cleansing hands as
suggested in James 4:7-10.
·
The Tenth and Eleventh Steps shifted attention
from a daily walk with the Creator to a daily effort to eliminate
self-centeredness plus newly minted defects of character—resentment,
self-seeking, dishonesty, and fear. They ignored the Four Absolute standards of
Jesus that were so important to AAs and used in Akron—unselfishness, purity,
honesty, love.
·
The Twelfth Step twisted “conversion” to
“spiritual experience” which later add-on provided no way to a new man, a new
power of the Holy Spirit, and a new relationship with God. Quite frankly, no
more dramatic shift in emphasis from God to self can be found elsewhere in the
action steps. The Twelfth Step emphasized an experience allegedly produced by
action instead of a new creature, in Christ, produced by the Creator in the
miracle a new birth. Its message therefore shifted to some undefined experience
resulting from the steps taken, rather than a demonstration of what God does
for man that man cannot do for himself. It spoke of principles but simply left
them unspecified even though, in early A.A., the principles were taken from the
Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, the Book of James, and 1 Corinthians
13, and other parts of the Bible.
As Bill’s Depressions Progressed,
Diversionary Programs Multiplied
Clarence Snyder and
Cleveland A.A. Perhaps it all started constructively in May, 1939 when
Clarence Snyder took the Bible, the Oxford Group Four Absolutes, the Big Book,
and the Twelve Steps to Cleveland and made hay with the old and the new,
retaining strong ties to both. Cleveland’s groups grew from one to thirty in a
year. The success rate soared to 93%. And Clarence developed guides to taking
the steps and sponsorship. [See Three Clarence Snyder Sponsee Old-timers and
Their Wives: Our A.A. Legacy to the Faith
Community: A Twelve-Step Guide for Those Who Want to Believe, comp. & ed.
by Dick B. (Winter Park, FL: Came to Believe Publications, 2005).]
Dr, Bob, Sister
Ignatia, and St. Thomas Hospital: In 1940, Akron began to be focused on
hospitalization and Twelfth-stepping as part of the work by Dr. Bob and Sister
Ignatia at St. Thomas Hospital in Akron. This work retained the important
hospitalization of old. But Sister Ignatia added some new approaches, and both
Dr. Bob and Anne Smith were moving toward their declining years in energy and
effort. The Ignatia story is well covered in Mary C. Darrah. Sister Ignatia: Angel of Alcoholics
Anonymous. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1992; and, while it cannot be
said that the A.A. program thereby changed, it does seem that a stint with Bob,
Ignatia, and St. Thomas might have inclined St. Thomas patients to believe they
had completed their rehabilitation even though Akron Group Number One was still
meeting, and Dr. Bob was still active.
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Enter four new influences. Their respective works are
covered elsewhere, but each brought substantial changes to A.A. itself:
(1) Father Ed
Dowling, S.J., entered the scene in late 1940; he communicated with Bill
for the next twenty years. Their subject matter: Bill’s “second conversion”
when he did a “fifth step” with Dowling, Dowling’s view of the significance
of the Exercises of St. Ignatius, and a steady flow of letters. [See Robert
Fitzgerald. The Soul of Sponsorship:
The Friendship of Fr. Ed Dowling, S.J., and Bill Wilson in Letters
(Center City, Minn.: Hazelden, 1995).] But, by 1942, Bill had gone into a
deep, severe, almost immobilizing thirteen year depression. And still other
leaders and programs were, for whatever reason, attempting to fill the gap.
(2) Richmond Walker had a spotty past as
a recycled drunk. He gained an interest in the Oxford Group and its
literature as early as 1934. He joined the Oxford Group in 1939 to get sober,
but didn’t succeed for much over two years. But he gained extensive knowledge
of Oxford Group ideas In May of 1942, he entered A.A. and was involved in
three very influential literary works. He worked with a devotional titled God Calling, which had been edited by
Oxford Group writer A.A. Russell. In 1945, a Massachusetts A.A group
published Walker’s For Drunks Only
which was filled with Oxford Group ideas, A.A. principles, and sobriety
suggestions. He offered it to A.A. for publication and was declined. In 1948,
Walker worked with God Calling and
converted it to a recovery devotional that has sold in the millions, though
also declined by A.A. itself. That devotional is titled Twenty-Four Hours Book.
(3) Father Ralph
Pfau: Ralph was the first Roman Catholic priest to get sober in
Alcoholics Anonymous (he came in on November 10, 1943), and under the pen
name which he chose to use, Father John Doe, he wrote his 14 Golden Books
back in the 1940’s and 50’s and early 60’s. They are still being read and
used by A.A.’s today: Spiritual Side (1947), Tolerance (1948), Attitudes
(1949), and others. They were coming out once a year at the beginning. Then
Pfau changed his writing and published three much longer books, including Sobriety
and Beyond (1955).
(4) Ed Webster: In
1946, in Minneapolis, Ed Webster published The Little Red Book under
the sponsorship of the A.A. Nicollet Group. Its title was "An
Interpretation of the Twelve Steps." Ed had the help and support of Dr. Bob, who
gave numerous suggestions for wording various passages. Ed also wrote Stools
and Bottles (1955), Barroom Reveries (1958) and Our Devilish
Alcoholic Personalities (in 1970, just a year before his death).
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Bill’s Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions:
When Bill finally pulled out of his depression, Anne Smith was dead, Dr. Bob
was dead, the reigns of A.A. were becoming the property of New York, and Bill
had set about writing a whole new program in his book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. It was heavily edited by two
Roman Catholic Jesuit priests who purportedly sought to eliminate Oxford Group
thoughts from its content. Bill also introduced a second edition of the basic
text and adopted “spiritual awakening” as the target of the steps—leaving
conversion, religious experience, and spiritual experience in the dust bin. He
completely replaced “conversion” with a psychological conclusion that, for most
AAs, a mere personality change sufficient to overcome the “disease” of
alcoholism was all that was required for recovery.
Finally, recovery centers and literature substantially
pre-empted doctrinal literature publication and distribution. But, as all the
foregoing developments occurred, the A.A. success rates became observably more
and more dismal—dropping from its original rate of at least 75% to about 5%.
And these changes—one and all—provide solid reasons for returning to,
re-examining, and learning early ideas and history.
AA OF AKRON rides again
through its four later pamphlets
commissioned by Dr. Bob
I don’t think anything surprised me more as an AA from the
West Coast than finding the four AA OF AKRON pamphlets on sale at the Akron
A.A. Intergroup Office--pamphlets originally commissioned by Dr. Bob. They had
apparently been around for years. They were filled with the kind of Akron A.A.
I’ve described above. They quoted the Bible, recommended prayer, discussed the
importance of God, and did so in the context of the Twelve Steps. Yet how in
the world did these gems come into being when their contents were virtually
unknown where I came from? They seemed at first to be the product or property
of some “clandestine A.A.” until I learned what I know today—that they closely
resembled the Frank Amos summary of early A.A.
I can’t say and do not know how much research has been done
on their origins. But this much has been suggested. Dr. Bob felt that the
program in the Big Book was not easy for “blue collar” AAs to deal with. He
asked Evan W. to prepare some practical guides. And four emerged. For those who
have become acquainted with early A.A. in Akron, there’s not a surprise in them
even though two of the four I own were republished, respectively in 1989 and
1993, while the other two bear were republished in October, 1997.
Treat yourself to this A.A. program material. Program
principles and practices that were not written
by Bill W., that square with the
A.A. that Frank Amos summarized, that frequently quote the Bible—just as Dr.
Bob did, and that I described in detail above. And let’s look at the general
ideas in each of the pamphlets, one by one:
Spiritual Milestones in Alcoholics Anonymous
At the outset, this pamphlet asks and answers the following:
But, asks the
alcoholic, where can I find a simple, step-by-step religious guide? The Ten Commandments give us a set of Thou Shalts and
Thou Shalt Nots; the Twelve Steps of AA
give us a program of dynamic action; but what about a spiritual guide? Of
course the answer is that by
following the Ten Commandments and Twelve Steps to the letter we automatically lead a spiritual life,
whether or not we recognize it.
Then the pamphlet says: “Here, however, is a set of
suggestions, couched in the simplest of language:
1 –
Eliminate sin from our lives.
2 – Develop
humility
3 –
Constantly pray to God for guidance.
4 –
Practice charity.
5 –
Meditate frequently on our newly found blessings, giving honest thanks for
them.
6 – Take
God into our confidence in all our acts.
7 – Seek
the companionship of others who are seeking a spiritual
life.
And the explanatory discussions of these seven points
frequently mention God, Christianity, the Bible, and prayer. The pamphlet gives
several illustrations of how men have found God. It concludes with the Prayer
of St. Francis of Assisi.
A Manual for Alcoholics Anonymous.
This guide picks up the trail where Spiritual Milestones left off. It addresses the newcomer,
hospitalization, sponsors, visiting the hospital, and what the newcomer must do
on his discharge. He is told to read the Bible and give particular attention to
the Sermon on the Mount, Book of James, 1 Corinthians 13, and the Twenty-third
and Ninety-first Psalms. The guide suggests a prayer life for each and every
day. Then it describes the thrill of helping someone else. Citing Matthew 6:34
of the Sermon on the Mount, it suggests day by day time progress and acquiring
health “one day at a time.” It quotes Step Twelve as a “Spiritual Experience,”
not the “Awakening” Bill was soon to substitute as the result of taking the
steps.
Second Reader for Alcoholics Anonymous
Its primary topic is, WHAT IS THERE IN AA FOR ME BESIDES
SOBRIETY. And the article discusses four items: “Work, Play, Love, and
Religion”—substituting A.A. for the latter. It contends that the good active AA
is practicing Christianity whether he knows it or not. It devotes a paragraph
to the Bible accounts that children loved for years: The Lord’s Prayer, David
and Goliath and Samson, Adam and Eve in the Garden, the Prodigal Son, and the
Good Samaritan. And it lays out some very practical and purposeful ways of
sharing a story in A.A. meetings.
A Guide to the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous
With this fourth pamphlet, Akron AA completes the circuit of
A.A. activity. It offers the following as a simplified, condensed form of the
complete program:
·
We honestly admitted we were powerless over
alcohol and sincerely wanted to do something about it. In other words, we
admitted we were whipped and had a genuine desire to QUIT FOR GOOD.
·
We asked and received help from a power greater
than ourselves and another human. (NOTE: In almost all cases that power is
called God. It is, however, God as WE UNDERSTAND HIM. . . .)
·
We cleaned up our lives, paid our debts, righted
wrongs.
·
We carried our new way of life to others
desperately in need of it.
The pamphlet discusses each of the Twelve Steps
individually. It concludes with these rules for living.
·
Remember that you an alcoholic, and but one
drink away from drunkenness again.
·
Remember that you are completely dependent on
God as you understand Him.
·
Remember to keep your thinking straight.
·
Remember that a wrong act will play on your mind
until you either do something to rectify it or get drunk.
·
Remember that defects will creep into your life
if given half a chance.
·
Remember that if only through gratitude, we must
help others in order to help ourselves.
Is It Any Wonder!
Just look at the road traveled in A.A. between 1935 and
1955. Just look at how the early Akron A.A. precepts perished a little more
along each step of the road. And then ask if it’s any wonder that today’s
people don’t even know their history, and perhaps don’t even want to know it.
But our educational target is the child of God in A.A.—the
Christian, the believer, if you wish—who is awash in authoritative talk about
spirituality, higher powers, powerlessness, personality changes, and
experiences. It is he who needs to be reached with the simplicity of the early
Christian Fellowship program. He has as much at stake in that program as any
other person in A.A. It concerns his life, his freedom, and his happiness which
were spiraling down the tube in his drinking years. And he has as much need and
right as any person in A.A. to know that his own beliefs—when used to deliver
him from the power of darkness—were the very beliefs that delivered early AAs
from the curse of alcoholism. It was alcohol that was the enemy and the key.
And the early pioneers found out how to defeat that enemy and turn the lock with
the help of Almighty God.