AA & Big Book Related

The following article is from "Your Faith" magazine September 1939 and was provided by DickB who wrote: "It is an article which A.A. literature had said was lost. AAs speculated that Dr. Bob wrote the article. He didn't. He was interviewed by D. J. Defoe in September 1939 for "Your Faith" Magazine. And the interview disappeared from view for years and years as far as AAs were concerned. Yet in the interview, Dr. Bob told how he read the Bible with patients. He told how they came to trust God. He told how he had been cured by prayer. He spoke about the healings of Jesus Christ. And he was talking about the many drunkards whom he had been able to help once he himself prayed, turned to God for help, and was cured--a priceless article free of the editing and revision of others who might have doubted!"

D. J. Defoe, "C," in Your Faith magazine, September 1939, 84-88
http://silkworth.net/aahistory/drbob/drbob_interview_fm_0939.html

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Through Liquor, this physician had lost his practice, his reputation and his self-respect. Then one night in a gathering in a private home, he found the way of escape.

WHEN a doctor starts drinking, he's usually on the skids for keeps. His profession gives him so much privacy, so great exposure to temptation both from liquor and from drugs, and his need of a stimulant to lift him from depression becomes so extreme, that many a good doctor has dropped into oblivion for no cause other than his own thirst for drink.

Help for Today's Pastor, Minister, or Priest Who...

Has experience with alcoholics and addicts in his church and elsewhere; wants to be of help; has heard strange things about or has concerns about A.A.; and doesn't want expensive or expansive alternative programs? In fact, that servant wants his church active in a knowledgeable, effective, Christian recovery effort. And, here's what he or she can do.

Start with the Facts
Here is the early Akron A.A. Christian Fellowship program - as briefly summarized in A.A.'s own literature - which repeatedly evoked the comment, "Why this is First Century Christianity! What can we do to help?"

Actual Seven-Point Original Program

Why Take Them Before You Know What the A.A. Cofounders Said about Them?

Both Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, the cofounders of A.A., spoke explicitly on where the 12 Steps came from. In sum, they stated that the basic ideas came from: (1) the Bible; (2) Dr. William D. Silkworth; (3) Professor William James; and (4) Reverend Samuel M. Shoemaker, Jr.

As we will see in this article, that is not the whole story. But here's what A.A.'s cofounders said:

In his last major address to AAs, delivered in Detroit in 1948, A.A. cofounder Dr. Bob stated:

When we started in on Bill D., we had no Twelve Steps . . . we had no Traditions. But we were convinced that the answer to our problems was in the Good Book. To some of us older ones, the parts that we found absolutely essential were the Sermon on the Mount, the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, and the Book of James. [The Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous: Biographical Sketches: Their Last Major Talks (NY: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1972, 1975), 13.]

An Introductory Look at Silkworth as One of A.A.'s "Co-founders"

William Duncan Silkworth, Jr., was born in Brooklyn on July 22, 1873. His family remembers him as a deeply spiritual man, not interested in any particular denomination. But he was, they said, a devout Christian. For many years, he attended Shoemaker's Calvary Episcopal Church in New York.[1]

First of all, I don't!

But let's just say:

(1) That I'm thinking of drinking.

(2) That I'm really not "willing to go to any lengths" to prevent that from happening.

A few contemporary writers, biographers, and historians have done their best to distance A.A., AAs, and the fellowship newcomers from the Bible, God, His Son Jesus Christ, and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Some Christian critics load their writings with verses from the Bible and dire warnings to AAs and others. But seldom have they taken the time to learn, and rarely to quote, the clear-cut beliefs of the early AAs in the Creator, His Son Jesus Christ, the Bible, and even the Holy Spirit. Indeed, it is sad to see how quickly and emphatically the critics claim that the early A.A. pioneers did not believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, that they didn't emphasize Jesus Christ and him crucified, and that they did not emphasize a relationship with Jesus Christ.

These are ALL of the promises as stated in the book Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book (also known as "The Big Book").

The Promises of Step Two

Page 25:

• There is a solution.
• We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed.
• The great fact is just this, and nothing less: That we have had deep and effective spiritual experiences which have revolutionized our whole attitude toward life, toward our fellows and toward God's universe.

What the First, Original, Akron A.A. Program Was and Did

The way the first three AAs-Bill W., Dr. Bob, Bill D.-got sober before there was a "Big Book." See The Dick B. Christian Recovery Guide, 3^rd ed., 2010, pp. 57-59.

1. There were no Steps;

2. There were no Traditions;

3. There was no "Big Book";

4. There were no "drunkalogs" (of the kind seen today); and

5. There were no meetings (of the kinds seen today).

Instead, each of the first three AAs:

1. believed in God;

2. was a Christian;

3. asked God for deliverance; and

4. received the requested deliverance from God.

The Summary by Frank Amos, Published in DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers, page 131.

My Search for the Curious Nonsense "gods" Floating Around Recovery Talk

As many know by now, my searches for the history of A.A. began when a young man told me when I was three years sober that A.A. had come from the Bible. I told him I had never heard such a thing in the thousand or more meetings I had attended. He then suggested I read the A.A. General Service Conference-approved book, DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers; Which I did. And the young man was right.

Then, as many have also heard, I realized that A.A. had many roots. Some had never been researched. Some were scarcely known in the Fellowship. Some had systematically and intentionally been discarded; or, at best, they had been distorted.

Dr. Robert H. Smith was the cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous. He is affectionately called "Dr. Bob" by many AAs.