“A New Way Out” is a concept I have been sharing with people lately which shows emphatically that the same power and love of God that enabled the recovery and cure of early A.A. members in Akron is available today to those who suffer.
Early A.A. first favored the name “The James Club.” [See DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers (New York, NY: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1980), 71. 213.] The older members strongly believed that the Book of James, the Sermon on the Mount, and 1 Corinthians 13 were the parts of the Bible that were absolutely essential to their program. [See DR. BOB, 96.] In fact, the Book of James was a favorite with early AAs. [See DR. BOB, 71.]
As the First Edition of Alcoholics Anonymous (the A.A. “Big Book”) was being readied for publication, the “James Club” title was discarded. [See DR. BOB, 213.] At first, the title “The Way Out” was favored by a considerable majority of the pioneers. [See Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age (New York, NY: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1957), 165.] Most were Akron AAs. [See “Pass It On” (New York, NY: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.), 203.] Bill Wilson favored the name “Alcoholics Anonymous.” [See “Pass It On,” 203.] Bill W. asked John Henry Fitzhugh Mayo to research the popularity of the latter two titles—i.e., “The Way Out” and “Alcoholics Anonymous”–at the Library of Congress. “Fitz” found that there were already 25 books entitled “The Way Out” and another 12 entitled “The Way.” [See “Pass It On,” 203; and Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, 166.] None was called “Alcoholics Anonymous.” The name “Alcoholics Anonymous” was then adopted for the basic text. [See Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, 166.]
But the idea of a “way out” and of a “pathway to a cure” did not immediately die out—a fact underlined by the title and cover proposed in an early draft of the Big Book cover. That draft cover contained the name “Alcoholics Anonymous” and then added “Their Pathway to a Cure.” See the excellent reproduction on the cover of Alcoholics Anonymous: Their Pathway to a Cure. A “First – First” Double Anniversary Limited Edition of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous (Nashville, TN: Broad Highway Publishing Company, LLC, n.d.).
which themselves are great and marvelous, and which together make up a mighty work which only God could conceive and carry out, and which, like all His works, depends only and entirely on His purpose and power and not on anything in the work or its result.
