dickb
05-09-2009, 11:33 PM
:idea:A.A.’s Bill Wilson: A Christian Obscured from View
By Dick B.
© 2009 Dick B. All rights reserved
The Timeline of Bill Wilson Evidence
1. The East Dorset Congregational Church of East Dorset, Vermont—Wilson family church
Bill Wilson’s grandparents, the Wilsons, were among the founders of this church, and our examination of the church records and papers showed that the Wilson family owned Pew 15 in that church.
2. Bill Wilson’s paternal grandfather, William C. (“Willie”) Wilson—his conversion cure
Grandpa “Willie” was a long-time member of the East Dorset Congregational Church and a frequent participant in temperance and revival meetings. But Willie was beset with a ferocious drinking problem. Finally, he turned directly to God. He went to the top of nearby Mount Aeolus, cried out to God for help, and had a “white light” experience very similar to that which Bill Wilson had many years later at Towns Hospital. Grandpa Willie rushed down to the pulpit of the little East Dorset Congregational Church, announced that he had been saved, and never drank again—dying sober some 8 years later. This is an account Bill Wilson’s mother told over and over.
3. Bill Wilson’s parents Gilly and Emily—married in East Dorset Congregational Church
Bill’s father, Gilman (“Gilly”) Barrows Wilson, lived next door to the family church. Bill’s mother, Emily Griffith Wilson, lived next door to the church on the other side of the green. His mother, Emily Griffith, and her parents, Gardner T. (“Fayette”) Griffith and Ella A. Griffith, regarded the church as the family’s church. And Bill’s parents were married there .
4. Bill Wilson’s maternal grandparents (the Griffiths) regarded the East Dorset Congregational Church as the family church and attended it.
5. The recorded experiences Bill himself had at the family church and its events
Bill recalled his Sunday school teachings; his attendance at conversions during tent revivals, and people “witnessing” to such conversions; and he recalled attending temperance revival meetings; the accounts of his grandfather Willie’s conversion and cure of alcoholism; the East Dorset Congregational Church and perhaps the Manchester Congregational Church Sunday sermons; old-temperance pledges (and even his own frequent temperance pledges in the family Bible in his drinking years); and the hymns of his childhood and family. All these events have been virtually unmentioned until recent writings; yet all were part of Bill’s childhood religious training and experiences.
6. The recorded activities of Bill’s maternal grandfather, Fayette Griffith
Grandpa Fayette was a regular reader of the Bible. He read it with Bill Wilson and encouraged Bill’s own reading and Bible study. Bill’s family moved from East Dorset to Rutland, both towns in Vermont. But when marital problems arose, Bill and his sister were returned to East Dorset where they lived with the Griffiths. And Grandpa Fayette enrolled Bill in the Congregational Sunday school.
7. The religious training at Burr and Burton Academy in Manchester, Vermont (1909-1913)
Grandpa Fayette encouraged Bill’s attendance at the nearby Burr and Burton Academy. Bill took the required four-year Bible study course. Bill regularly attended the required daily chapel services where Scripture was read and sermons were delivered. Once each week, Bill attended the required church service at Manchester Congregational Church where Burr and Burton Academy owned a pew reserved for use by its students. Finally, Bill became president of the Burr and Burton YMCA; and Bill’s girl friend Bertha Bamford became president of the Burr and Burton YWCA. The two attended chapel together and participated in the “Y” activities. Shortly before graduation time, Bill’s girl friend unexpectedly died. Bill went into a deep depression, and he turned away from God and religion.
8. The dark drinking, depression, and detachment years.
After Bertha’s untimely death, Bill’s life changed to one of drunkenness and his continuing, recurring, severe depressions. There was also detachment from his Protestant upbringing and activities. He married Lois Wilson—a Swedenborgian--whose family introduced Bill to the tenets of that denomination with Lois herself busy getting Bill interested in the mystic aspects.
9. Dr. William D. Silkworth, Jesus Christ, and the beginning of Bill’s recovery
Bill had three hospitalizations under the care of William D. Silkworth, M.D., chief psychiatrist at Towns Hospital in New York. On a downward drinking spiral, Bill heard a new solution from Dr. Silkworth at Bill’s third, and next to last hospitalization. Silkworth was a Christian; he was a friend of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale; and he attended both Dr. Peale’s church and the Calvary Episcopal Church in New York where Rev. Samuel M. Shoemaker, Jr. was rector. And on Bill’s third visit to Towns Hospital, Dr. Silkworth advised Bill that the Great Physician, Jesus Christ, could cure Bill of his alcoholism.
10. Bill went to the altar at Calvary Rescue Mission, where his friend Ebby Thacher had previously gone; and there Bill made a decision for Christ.
Rev. Sam Shoemaker’s Calvary Episcopal Church owned the Calvary Rescue Mission though it was managed by a group called “The Brethren.” Shoemaker wrote that Calvary Mission was the place where Christ changed lives. Bill Wilson went to the Mission seeking the same solution his friend Ebby Thacher had received there. The services were conducted by a leader who gave testimony; Scripture was read; hymns were played; and it was announced that “Jesus Saves.” Then came the altar call where Bill and a brother knelt to accept Christ. Mrs. Samuel M. Shoemaker was present, and she told me that Bill had then and there made his decision for Christ. Years later, Bill’s wife Lois told of Bill’s decision, speaking at a recorded talk in Texas of Bill. Lois said, “And he went up, and really, in great sincerity, did hand over his life to Christ.” Much earlier, Bill himself twice wrote in manuscripts and then subsequently wrote in his own autobiography, “For sure I’d been born again.” He also wrote his brother-in-law, Dr. Leonard Strong, “I’ve found religion.”
11. The trip to Towns Hospital and Bill’s calling on the Great Physician Jesus Christ for help
After his conversion to Christ at Calvary Rescue Mission, Bill wandered around drunk for several days. Finally, he thought, “If there is a Great Physician, I’d better call on him now.” He checked in to Towns Hospital for his fourth and last time. Shortly, he records that he actually decided to call on the Great Physician. And he immediately had a white light experience similar to that of his grandfather Willie’s years before. Bill sensed the presence of God and declared, “So this is the God of the Scriptures.” Bill wrote: “With me, the original experience was so prodigious, the preview of destiny so intense, that I have never had any difficulty with doubts since that time. Even at my worst, and that has often been **** bad, the sense of the presence of God has never deserted me. That has pulled me though some awful jams. . . Never has there been any question about the ultimate destiny of us all, or of God’s justice and love.” And—after conversing with Dr. Silkworth, Bill’s wife, and a reading of William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience—Bill was convinced he had had such a conversion experience. Like his grandfather Willie, Bill never drank again.
12. Bill’s early evangelistic efforts to spread the news that the “Lord” had cured him.
Almost immediately upon his discharge from Towns Hospital in December of 1934, Bill was alive with witnessing. As his wife’s biographer wrote, Bill went about with a Bible under his arm telling people that could be healed if they gave their lives to God. Bill went into the dregs of the Bowery, into flea bag hotels, into Towns Hospital, into Oxford Group meetings, into the Calvary Rescue Mission, and wherever he could find drunks—carrying his message of cure. His initial efforts immediately attracted the attention of Rev. Sam Shoemaker, who began recommending others for Bill to help. Bill joined processionals from Calvary Church itself, where Rev. Shoemaker in full-vestment marched with people from the church and mission to Madison Square were they witnessed from “soap boxes.” The processional, with Bill Wilson among the members, was witnessed by L. Parks Shipley, Sr., and reported by him to me. The members carried a sign, “Jesus Christ changes lives.” Throughout, Bill was carrying his message: “. . . 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.” But Bill was not an effective messenger. His message alone did not “gel,” as Dr. Bob put it.
13. Then came Bill’s trip to Akron, his six-hour meeting with Dr. Bob, and the beginning of their work together where the Akron Christian fellowship was founded June 10, 1935.
The two men developed a program they called a “Christian Fellowship.” It was focused on the messages in the Book of James, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew chapters 5-7), and 1 Corinthians 13. All members were required to believe in God and to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. The members and their families studied the Bible, held old-fashioned prayer meetings, sought God’s guidance, held morning Quiet Times with Anne Smith at the Smith home, read Christian literature, and sought out new alcoholics to help. By November 1937, some 40 members had attained varying degrees of sobriety; and there was a documented 75% success rate among the “seemingly-hopeless,” “medically-incurable” alcoholics who had really tried. The members kept address books and rosters of sobriety, and they knew each other so well that there was no doubt as to the success figures. Before long, when asked the reason for the miraculous events, Bill Wilson pointed to a painting of Jesus Christ at Gethsemane and said, “There it is.”
14. The basic elements of the original Akron A.A. Christian fellowship program were radically changed.
Belief in Almighty God, acceptance of Jesus Christ, study of the Bible, the holding of old fashioned prayer meetings, Quiet time, and the distribution of Christian books and devotionals were not a part of the new order. Instead, Bill Wilson crafted a life-changing program that Bill learned primarily from the teachings of Rev. Sam Shoemaker. The major changes occurred just before the printers manuscript of the Big Book went to press. 400 pages of Christian and Bible materials were thrown out. And the revised “practical program of action” embodied in the Twelve Steps were embodied in the First Edition of Alcoholics Anonymous (the “Big Book”), published by a private corporation in 1939.
One Bill W. biographer wrote this: “Bill may have included some heavily Christian wording in his early drafts of the Big Book, but he had not forgotten his own feelings about God during the last years of his drinking. As the arguments continued over the references to God in the Twelve Steps and throughout the manuscript, Bill could empathize with both sides. The term God is used in the Twelve Steps and throughout the Big Book, but open-ended, even deliberately vague references, such as "higher power" or a "power greater than ourselves" or to ‘God as we understand Him’ are also used."
All mention of the Bible, as such, was removed from the draft manuscripts of the Big Book. All Christian precepts, as such, went unmentioned in the proposed drafts. The ideas of Bible study, prayer meetings, surrenders to Jesus Christ, and even Quiet Time were eliminated. The concept of God as we understood Him was introduced into the language of two of the Twelve Steps. Even then, vestiges of the belief in the power of the Creator remained, but were obscured. The word “God” and references to Him, along with the Biblical expressions Creator, Maker, Father, and Spirit, still remain. In fact, they are mentioned without qualification over 400 times. But it was Bill’s wife Lois who explained how the Christian character of the program was eliminated from the basic text because: “It was agreed that the program should be a universal one because not all drunks are Christians.
15. Of particular importance is Bill’s 1943 inscription in a First Edition of the Big Book
which was given to an important Christian leader, Dr. Jesse M. Bader. The inscription in Bill’s own hand reads as follows:
“To my friend
Dr. Jesse M. Bader
Yours in Christ
Bill Wilson
1/13/43”
Today, there are tens of thousands of Christians in A.A. who are unaware of the Christian beginnings of A.A. and of its early successes achieved through the power and love of God.
Unwarranted attempts to suppress their beliefs, their statements, and their practices are apparent in A.A. General Services Conference-approved literature and statements. The supposed authority is based on claims that other literature is not “Conference Approved,” or that one should read only “Conference Approved” literature, or that A.A. is “spiritual, but not religious,” or that an A.A. can fashion his own concept of a “god” which can be the group, a tree, a chair, a light bulb, Something, Somebody, or nothing at all. Often the Twelve Traditions, which were not any part of the original program or the Big Book program of 1939 are used as authority for opposing the mention in meetings of God, the Creator, the Bible, Jesus Christ, religion, or church. But such was never the case in early A.A. In fact, Dr. Bob stated specifically that the basic ideas of the program came from the study of the Bible. He also declared in his story in the Big Book, “Your Heavenly Father will never let you down!”
16. AAs, Twelve Step fellowships, churches, clergy, and professionals need to learn the
foregoing facts. Their evidentiary value lies in the following: (1) There is a pressing
importance today for Christians in the recovery arena to learn that they are not alone, that their beliefs and practices are the same as those held by the Christians Dr. Robert H. Smith and William G. Wilson who founded the A.A. recovery movement. (2) These same Christians need to know that their early fellowship itself was a Christian fellowship. (3) They need to know that there is nothing prohibitive in their present-day beliefs, principles, and practices that parallel those of the co-founders and of the early program. (4) They need to learn that the A.A. program today has been substantially changed and revised, that the facts about the Christian roots have been eliminated from view, and that there are those publishing literature and vocalizing in the fellowship today who are fostering a program of unbelief, of suppression of religious expressions, and intimidating those who rightfully tell in their own language and from their own point of view how they established their relationship with God. (5) They need to recognize how important it is to know that those who followed the early program achieved a documented 75% to 93 % success rate among those who really tried. (6) And they need to know that the diversity of religious and non-religious beliefs, the anti-Christian talk, and the provocative idolatry in literature and in meetings has no authority or governance, or control over any present-day efforts to recover today, wherever that recovery takes place, employing the same successful methods used by the early Christian fellowship of A.A. itself. Suppression of free belief and expression have no place in saving the lives of alcoholics, addicts, and those with life-controlling problem who want to recover today with the power of God. Without that knowledge, the freedom of alcoholics, addicts, and those with other life-controlling problems to believe, speak, and practice what the early AAs did and what they may choose to do will be in grave jeopardy. As will the very lives of believers.
Gloria Deo
dickb@dickb.com; http://dickb.com
By Dick B.
© 2009 Dick B. All rights reserved
The Timeline of Bill Wilson Evidence
1. The East Dorset Congregational Church of East Dorset, Vermont—Wilson family church
Bill Wilson’s grandparents, the Wilsons, were among the founders of this church, and our examination of the church records and papers showed that the Wilson family owned Pew 15 in that church.
2. Bill Wilson’s paternal grandfather, William C. (“Willie”) Wilson—his conversion cure
Grandpa “Willie” was a long-time member of the East Dorset Congregational Church and a frequent participant in temperance and revival meetings. But Willie was beset with a ferocious drinking problem. Finally, he turned directly to God. He went to the top of nearby Mount Aeolus, cried out to God for help, and had a “white light” experience very similar to that which Bill Wilson had many years later at Towns Hospital. Grandpa Willie rushed down to the pulpit of the little East Dorset Congregational Church, announced that he had been saved, and never drank again—dying sober some 8 years later. This is an account Bill Wilson’s mother told over and over.
3. Bill Wilson’s parents Gilly and Emily—married in East Dorset Congregational Church
Bill’s father, Gilman (“Gilly”) Barrows Wilson, lived next door to the family church. Bill’s mother, Emily Griffith Wilson, lived next door to the church on the other side of the green. His mother, Emily Griffith, and her parents, Gardner T. (“Fayette”) Griffith and Ella A. Griffith, regarded the church as the family’s church. And Bill’s parents were married there .
4. Bill Wilson’s maternal grandparents (the Griffiths) regarded the East Dorset Congregational Church as the family church and attended it.
5. The recorded experiences Bill himself had at the family church and its events
Bill recalled his Sunday school teachings; his attendance at conversions during tent revivals, and people “witnessing” to such conversions; and he recalled attending temperance revival meetings; the accounts of his grandfather Willie’s conversion and cure of alcoholism; the East Dorset Congregational Church and perhaps the Manchester Congregational Church Sunday sermons; old-temperance pledges (and even his own frequent temperance pledges in the family Bible in his drinking years); and the hymns of his childhood and family. All these events have been virtually unmentioned until recent writings; yet all were part of Bill’s childhood religious training and experiences.
6. The recorded activities of Bill’s maternal grandfather, Fayette Griffith
Grandpa Fayette was a regular reader of the Bible. He read it with Bill Wilson and encouraged Bill’s own reading and Bible study. Bill’s family moved from East Dorset to Rutland, both towns in Vermont. But when marital problems arose, Bill and his sister were returned to East Dorset where they lived with the Griffiths. And Grandpa Fayette enrolled Bill in the Congregational Sunday school.
7. The religious training at Burr and Burton Academy in Manchester, Vermont (1909-1913)
Grandpa Fayette encouraged Bill’s attendance at the nearby Burr and Burton Academy. Bill took the required four-year Bible study course. Bill regularly attended the required daily chapel services where Scripture was read and sermons were delivered. Once each week, Bill attended the required church service at Manchester Congregational Church where Burr and Burton Academy owned a pew reserved for use by its students. Finally, Bill became president of the Burr and Burton YMCA; and Bill’s girl friend Bertha Bamford became president of the Burr and Burton YWCA. The two attended chapel together and participated in the “Y” activities. Shortly before graduation time, Bill’s girl friend unexpectedly died. Bill went into a deep depression, and he turned away from God and religion.
8. The dark drinking, depression, and detachment years.
After Bertha’s untimely death, Bill’s life changed to one of drunkenness and his continuing, recurring, severe depressions. There was also detachment from his Protestant upbringing and activities. He married Lois Wilson—a Swedenborgian--whose family introduced Bill to the tenets of that denomination with Lois herself busy getting Bill interested in the mystic aspects.
9. Dr. William D. Silkworth, Jesus Christ, and the beginning of Bill’s recovery
Bill had three hospitalizations under the care of William D. Silkworth, M.D., chief psychiatrist at Towns Hospital in New York. On a downward drinking spiral, Bill heard a new solution from Dr. Silkworth at Bill’s third, and next to last hospitalization. Silkworth was a Christian; he was a friend of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale; and he attended both Dr. Peale’s church and the Calvary Episcopal Church in New York where Rev. Samuel M. Shoemaker, Jr. was rector. And on Bill’s third visit to Towns Hospital, Dr. Silkworth advised Bill that the Great Physician, Jesus Christ, could cure Bill of his alcoholism.
10. Bill went to the altar at Calvary Rescue Mission, where his friend Ebby Thacher had previously gone; and there Bill made a decision for Christ.
Rev. Sam Shoemaker’s Calvary Episcopal Church owned the Calvary Rescue Mission though it was managed by a group called “The Brethren.” Shoemaker wrote that Calvary Mission was the place where Christ changed lives. Bill Wilson went to the Mission seeking the same solution his friend Ebby Thacher had received there. The services were conducted by a leader who gave testimony; Scripture was read; hymns were played; and it was announced that “Jesus Saves.” Then came the altar call where Bill and a brother knelt to accept Christ. Mrs. Samuel M. Shoemaker was present, and she told me that Bill had then and there made his decision for Christ. Years later, Bill’s wife Lois told of Bill’s decision, speaking at a recorded talk in Texas of Bill. Lois said, “And he went up, and really, in great sincerity, did hand over his life to Christ.” Much earlier, Bill himself twice wrote in manuscripts and then subsequently wrote in his own autobiography, “For sure I’d been born again.” He also wrote his brother-in-law, Dr. Leonard Strong, “I’ve found religion.”
11. The trip to Towns Hospital and Bill’s calling on the Great Physician Jesus Christ for help
After his conversion to Christ at Calvary Rescue Mission, Bill wandered around drunk for several days. Finally, he thought, “If there is a Great Physician, I’d better call on him now.” He checked in to Towns Hospital for his fourth and last time. Shortly, he records that he actually decided to call on the Great Physician. And he immediately had a white light experience similar to that of his grandfather Willie’s years before. Bill sensed the presence of God and declared, “So this is the God of the Scriptures.” Bill wrote: “With me, the original experience was so prodigious, the preview of destiny so intense, that I have never had any difficulty with doubts since that time. Even at my worst, and that has often been **** bad, the sense of the presence of God has never deserted me. That has pulled me though some awful jams. . . Never has there been any question about the ultimate destiny of us all, or of God’s justice and love.” And—after conversing with Dr. Silkworth, Bill’s wife, and a reading of William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience—Bill was convinced he had had such a conversion experience. Like his grandfather Willie, Bill never drank again.
12. Bill’s early evangelistic efforts to spread the news that the “Lord” had cured him.
Almost immediately upon his discharge from Towns Hospital in December of 1934, Bill was alive with witnessing. As his wife’s biographer wrote, Bill went about with a Bible under his arm telling people that could be healed if they gave their lives to God. Bill went into the dregs of the Bowery, into flea bag hotels, into Towns Hospital, into Oxford Group meetings, into the Calvary Rescue Mission, and wherever he could find drunks—carrying his message of cure. His initial efforts immediately attracted the attention of Rev. Sam Shoemaker, who began recommending others for Bill to help. Bill joined processionals from Calvary Church itself, where Rev. Shoemaker in full-vestment marched with people from the church and mission to Madison Square were they witnessed from “soap boxes.” The processional, with Bill Wilson among the members, was witnessed by L. Parks Shipley, Sr., and reported by him to me. The members carried a sign, “Jesus Christ changes lives.” Throughout, Bill was carrying his message: “. . . 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.” But Bill was not an effective messenger. His message alone did not “gel,” as Dr. Bob put it.
13. Then came Bill’s trip to Akron, his six-hour meeting with Dr. Bob, and the beginning of their work together where the Akron Christian fellowship was founded June 10, 1935.
The two men developed a program they called a “Christian Fellowship.” It was focused on the messages in the Book of James, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew chapters 5-7), and 1 Corinthians 13. All members were required to believe in God and to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. The members and their families studied the Bible, held old-fashioned prayer meetings, sought God’s guidance, held morning Quiet Times with Anne Smith at the Smith home, read Christian literature, and sought out new alcoholics to help. By November 1937, some 40 members had attained varying degrees of sobriety; and there was a documented 75% success rate among the “seemingly-hopeless,” “medically-incurable” alcoholics who had really tried. The members kept address books and rosters of sobriety, and they knew each other so well that there was no doubt as to the success figures. Before long, when asked the reason for the miraculous events, Bill Wilson pointed to a painting of Jesus Christ at Gethsemane and said, “There it is.”
14. The basic elements of the original Akron A.A. Christian fellowship program were radically changed.
Belief in Almighty God, acceptance of Jesus Christ, study of the Bible, the holding of old fashioned prayer meetings, Quiet time, and the distribution of Christian books and devotionals were not a part of the new order. Instead, Bill Wilson crafted a life-changing program that Bill learned primarily from the teachings of Rev. Sam Shoemaker. The major changes occurred just before the printers manuscript of the Big Book went to press. 400 pages of Christian and Bible materials were thrown out. And the revised “practical program of action” embodied in the Twelve Steps were embodied in the First Edition of Alcoholics Anonymous (the “Big Book”), published by a private corporation in 1939.
One Bill W. biographer wrote this: “Bill may have included some heavily Christian wording in his early drafts of the Big Book, but he had not forgotten his own feelings about God during the last years of his drinking. As the arguments continued over the references to God in the Twelve Steps and throughout the manuscript, Bill could empathize with both sides. The term God is used in the Twelve Steps and throughout the Big Book, but open-ended, even deliberately vague references, such as "higher power" or a "power greater than ourselves" or to ‘God as we understand Him’ are also used."
All mention of the Bible, as such, was removed from the draft manuscripts of the Big Book. All Christian precepts, as such, went unmentioned in the proposed drafts. The ideas of Bible study, prayer meetings, surrenders to Jesus Christ, and even Quiet Time were eliminated. The concept of God as we understood Him was introduced into the language of two of the Twelve Steps. Even then, vestiges of the belief in the power of the Creator remained, but were obscured. The word “God” and references to Him, along with the Biblical expressions Creator, Maker, Father, and Spirit, still remain. In fact, they are mentioned without qualification over 400 times. But it was Bill’s wife Lois who explained how the Christian character of the program was eliminated from the basic text because: “It was agreed that the program should be a universal one because not all drunks are Christians.
15. Of particular importance is Bill’s 1943 inscription in a First Edition of the Big Book
which was given to an important Christian leader, Dr. Jesse M. Bader. The inscription in Bill’s own hand reads as follows:
“To my friend
Dr. Jesse M. Bader
Yours in Christ
Bill Wilson
1/13/43”
Today, there are tens of thousands of Christians in A.A. who are unaware of the Christian beginnings of A.A. and of its early successes achieved through the power and love of God.
Unwarranted attempts to suppress their beliefs, their statements, and their practices are apparent in A.A. General Services Conference-approved literature and statements. The supposed authority is based on claims that other literature is not “Conference Approved,” or that one should read only “Conference Approved” literature, or that A.A. is “spiritual, but not religious,” or that an A.A. can fashion his own concept of a “god” which can be the group, a tree, a chair, a light bulb, Something, Somebody, or nothing at all. Often the Twelve Traditions, which were not any part of the original program or the Big Book program of 1939 are used as authority for opposing the mention in meetings of God, the Creator, the Bible, Jesus Christ, religion, or church. But such was never the case in early A.A. In fact, Dr. Bob stated specifically that the basic ideas of the program came from the study of the Bible. He also declared in his story in the Big Book, “Your Heavenly Father will never let you down!”
16. AAs, Twelve Step fellowships, churches, clergy, and professionals need to learn the
foregoing facts. Their evidentiary value lies in the following: (1) There is a pressing
importance today for Christians in the recovery arena to learn that they are not alone, that their beliefs and practices are the same as those held by the Christians Dr. Robert H. Smith and William G. Wilson who founded the A.A. recovery movement. (2) These same Christians need to know that their early fellowship itself was a Christian fellowship. (3) They need to know that there is nothing prohibitive in their present-day beliefs, principles, and practices that parallel those of the co-founders and of the early program. (4) They need to learn that the A.A. program today has been substantially changed and revised, that the facts about the Christian roots have been eliminated from view, and that there are those publishing literature and vocalizing in the fellowship today who are fostering a program of unbelief, of suppression of religious expressions, and intimidating those who rightfully tell in their own language and from their own point of view how they established their relationship with God. (5) They need to recognize how important it is to know that those who followed the early program achieved a documented 75% to 93 % success rate among those who really tried. (6) And they need to know that the diversity of religious and non-religious beliefs, the anti-Christian talk, and the provocative idolatry in literature and in meetings has no authority or governance, or control over any present-day efforts to recover today, wherever that recovery takes place, employing the same successful methods used by the early Christian fellowship of A.A. itself. Suppression of free belief and expression have no place in saving the lives of alcoholics, addicts, and those with life-controlling problem who want to recover today with the power of God. Without that knowledge, the freedom of alcoholics, addicts, and those with other life-controlling problems to believe, speak, and practice what the early AAs did and what they may choose to do will be in grave jeopardy. As will the very lives of believers.
Gloria Deo
dickb@dickb.com; http://dickb.com