background of AA in terms of its religious roots and goals.

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12 Steps to Another Gospel?

Part One

Tyndale House Publishers advertises their Life Recovery Bible with these words: Imagine having Abraham, King David, and the Apostle Paul in your 12-step group. The ad continues: Like you, they found recovery by trusting in a power greater than themselves. Besides presenting a psychological, 12-step biased character profile of Abraham, David, and Paul, this adulterated version of the Bible includes fascinating 12-step notes on almost every page, recovery themes at the beginning of each book, 12-step devotions, serenity prayer devotions, and much, much more. The ad assures the reader that every study help has been written by a biblical scholar who has personally experienced the 12 steps.

When Christians seek to combine the ways of the world with Christianity they end up with a distorted gospel at least, but more often it ends up being another gospel and another form of sanctification. Twelve-Step programs originated with Alcoholics Anonymous. Now they are embraced and followed religiously by numerous other groups, including Al-Anon, Adult Children of Alcoholics, and Co-dependents Anonymous. Churches have housed AA meetings for years and now many leading Christians are promoting various Twelve-Step programs. We wonder if they have explored the history of AA’s Twelve Steps and the implications of programs centered around any unspecified higher power. The following excerpt from our book 12 Steps to Destruction: Codependency/Recovery Heresies gives a brief background of AA in terms of its religious roots and goals.

Alcoholics Anonymous Religion.

The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, originally written by Bill Wilson, came from his own personal experience and world view. Step One, We admitted we were powerless over alcoholthat our lives had become unmanageable, expresses the relief he experienced when his doctor convinced him that his heavy drinking was caused by an allergy over which he was powerless.

Thus, when Wilson completed his drying out treatment, he thought his problem was solved. He had been relieved of guilt for moral failure and had been diagnosed as having a disease. The cure was simple. Just don’t take another drink. Nevertheless, his confidence in his newly found sobriety did not last long. In spite of his belief that his excessive drinking was not his fault, but rather due to an allergy, Wilson felt doomed.

During this bleak time Wilson received a phone call from an old drinking buddy, Ebby Thatcher. They hadn’t seen each other for five years and Thatcher seemed like a new man. When Wilson asked him why he wasn’t drinking and why he seemed so different, Thatcher replied, I’ve got religion. He told Wilson that when he had prayed God had released him from the desire to drink and filled him with peace of mind and happiness of a kind he had not known for years.¹

Wilson was uncomfortable with Thatcher’s testimony. Yet he desired Thatcher’s freedom from alcohol. Wilson drank for several more days until he reached a point of great agony and hopelessness (the full intensity of Step One). He then returned to the hospital for detoxification treatment.

Wilson’s Conversion.

Wilson’s religious experience occurred at the hospital. He deeply desired the sobriety his friend had, but Wilson still gagged badly on the notion of a Power greater than myself. Up to the last moment Wilson resisted the idea of God. Nevertheless, at this extreme point of agony, alone in his room, he cried out, If there is a God, let Him show Himself! I am ready to do anything, anything!²

Because Wilson believed he was helplessly afflicted by a dread disease, he cried out to God as a helpless victim, not as a sinner. He had already been absolved from guilt through the doctor’s allergy theory. Thus he approached God from the helpless stance of a victim, suffering the agony of his affliction, and commanded God to show Himself. Here is Wilson’s description of his experience:

Suddenly, my room blazed with an indescribably white light. I was seized with an ecstasy beyond description. Every joy I had known was pale by comparison. The light, the ecstasyI was conscious of nothing else for a time.³

He saw an internal vision of a mountain with a clean wind blowing through him. He sensed a great peace and was acutely conscious of a Presence which seemed like a veritable sea of living spirit. He thought, This must be the great reality. The God of the preachers. He said:

For the first time, I felt that I really belonged. I knew that I was loved and could love in return. I thanked my God, who had given me a glimpse of His absolute self. Even though a pilgrim upon an uncertain highway, I need be concerned no more, for I had glimpsed the great beyond^.4

The experience had a profound effect on Wilson. From that point on he believed in the existence of God and he stopped drinking alcohol. Thus, Steps Two and Three read: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity, and Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.⁵ (Emphasis in original.)

While this experience included God as Bill Wilson understood him, there is no mention of faith in the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ and salvation from sin based upon Jesus’ death and resurrection. Rather than attempting to understand his experience in the light of the Bible, Wilson turned to William James’s book The Varieties of Religious Experience.

Philosopher-psychologist William James (1842-1910) was intrigued with mystical, existential experiences that people reported to him. He contended that such experiences were superior to any religious doctrine.⁶ He did not care about the religious persuasion of mystics as long as they achieved a personal experience. James says:

In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed. In Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, in Whitmanism, we find the same recurring note, so that there is about mystical utterances an eternal unanimity. . . .⁷

It is easy to see how such a description fit Bill Wilson’s experience. The mystical experiences reported by James also followed calamity, admission of defeat, and an appeal to a higher power. The official AA biography of Wilson says:

James gave Bill the material he needed to understand what had just happened to himand gave it to him in a way that was acceptable to Bill. Bill Wilson, the alcoholic, now had his spiritual experience ratified by a Harvard professor, called by some the father of American psychology!⁸ (Emphasis in original.)

Most people assume that the founders of Alcoholics’ Anonymous were Christians. After all, Wilson talks about God, prayer, and morality. On the other hand, Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is absent from his spiritual experience. There is no mention of Jesus Christ providing the only way of salvation through paying the price for Bill Wilson’s sin. Wilson’s faith system was not based on Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Nor is there any mention of Jesus Christ being Lord of his life.

Not only is there clear evidence that Bill Wilson did not embrace Jesus Christ as His Lord and Savior and as the only way to the Father, but Wilson was also heavily involved in occult activities in his search for spiritual experiences. These are the roots of Alcoholics Anonymous rather than Christianity. Part Two of this article discusses Wilson’s spirituality and occult practices.

Notes:
1 Pass It On: The story of Bill Wilson and how the A.A. message reached the world. New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1984, pp. 111, 115.
2 Ernest Kurtz. Not-God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous. Center City, MN: Hazelden Educational Services, 1979, p. 19.
3 Pass It On, op. cit., p. 121.
4 Ibid.
5 Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1952, 1953, 1981.
6 William James. The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). New York: Viking Penguin Inc. 1982, p. xxiv.
7 Ibid., p. 419.
8 Pass It On, op. cit., p. 125.

PsychoHeresy Awareness Ministries, 4137 Primavera Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93110
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12 Steps to Another Gospel?

Part Two

The Higher Power and the Occult.

Bill Wilson and Bob Smith, the cofounders of AA, embraced and promoted a variety of spiritual experiences. Both men practiced spiritualism and believed in the validity and importance of contacting and conversing with the dead (necromancy, which the Bible forbids).¹ The AA biography of Wilson says:

It is not clear when he first became interested in extrasensory phenomena; the field was something that Dr. Bob and Anne Smith were also deeply involved with. Whether or not Bill initially became interested through them, there are references to séances and other psychic events in the letters Bill wrote to Lois [Wilson’s wife] during that first Akron summer with the Smiths, in 1935.²

Wilson and his wife were also conducting regular séances in their own home as early as 1941. They were engaging in other psychic activities as well, such as using an Ouija board.³

Wilson also acted as a medium or what is now referred to as a channeler. He would lie on a couch in a passive receptive manner and receive messages (in a manner similar to that of the occultist Edgar Cayce) while another person would write them down. His wife described it this way:

Bill would lie down on the couch. He would get these things. He kept doing it every week or so. Each time, certain people would come in. Sometimes, it would be new ones and they’d carry on some story. There would be long sentences; word by word would come through.⁴

It is interesting to note that in 1938, between the séances at the Smiths’ and Wilson receiving messages while in a prone position in the 40s, Wilson wrote the AA Twelve Steps. He was lying in bed thinking. The official AA biography of Wilson describes it this way:

As he started to write, he asked for guidance. And he relaxed. The words began tumbling out with astonishing speed. He completed the first draft in about half an hour, then kept on writing until he felt he should stop and review what he had written. Numbering the new steps, he found that they added up to twelvea symbolic number; he thought of the Twelve apostles, and soon became convinced that the Society should have twelve steps.⁵

Whether creating the Twelve Steps involved occultic activity, Wilson and Smith’s commitment to spiritualism was intrinsically tied to their creation of and leadership in AA.

A regular participant in what they referred to as their spook sessions said:

I was a problem to these people, because I was an atheist, and an atheist is, by definition, a materialist. . . and a materialist is, by definition, someone who does not believe in other worlds. Now these people, Bill and Dr. Bob, believed vigorously and aggressively. They were working away at the spiritualism; it was not just a hobby. And it related to A.A., because the big problem in A.A. is that for a materialist it’s hard to buy the program.⁶

Many Ways to God?

Wilson’s interest in spiritual matters was all-inclusive, all except faith in Jesus as the only way. For a while Wilson seriously considered becoming a Catholic. He described his relation to the church this way:

I’m more affected than ever by that sweet and powerful aura of the church; that marvelous spiritual essence flowing down by the centuries touches me as no other emanation does, butwhen I look at the authoritative layout, despite all the arguments in its favor, I still can’t warm up. No affirmative conviction comes.⁷

Wilson did not want to attach AA to any one faith. The official AA biography of Wilson declares:

Bill felt it would be unwise for A.A. as a fellowship to have an allegiance to any one religious sect. He felt A.A.’s usefulness was worldwide, and contained spiritual principles that members of any and every religion could accept, including the Eastern religions.⁸ (Emphasis added.)

Wilson could not have believed in the faith once delivered to the saints because he did not believe Jesus’ words when He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me (John 14:6). Wilson complained, The thing that still irks me about all organized religions is their claim how confoundedly right all of them are. Each seems to think it has the right pipeline.⁹ (Emphasis added.) Obviously, according to Wilson, Jesus is not the only pipeline to God.

The Wide Gateway of AA.

When Wilson first formulated the Twelve-Steps, Step Two was: Came to believe that God could restore us to sanity.¹⁰ Wilson had had a religious experience he thought was God. Therefore, such a statement seemed natural. However, he met with opposition from those who were close to him in the AA movement. Thus he changed the wording of Step Two: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Wilson believed that those concessions regarding references to God were:

. . . the great contribution of our atheists and agnostics. They had widened our gateway so that all who suffer might pass through, regardless of their belief or lack of belief.¹¹(Italics his, bold added.)

And indeed the gate is wide. The Power greater than ourselves can be anybody or anything that seems greater than the person who takes Step Two. It can be a familiar spirit such as Carl Jung’s Philemon. It could be any deity of Hinduism, Buddhism, Greek mythology, or New Age channeled entities. It could be one’s own so-called higher self. It could even be the devil himself.

The extreme naiveté of Christians comes through when they confidently assert that their higher Power is Jesus Christ. Since when did Jesus align Himself with false gods? Since when has He been willing to join the Pantheon or the array of Hindu deities? Jesus is not an option of one among many. He is the Only Son, the Only Savior, and the Only Way. All Twelve Step programs violate the declarations of the Reformation: Only Scripture; Only Christ; Only Grace; Only Faith; and Glory to God Only. Instead they offer another power, another gospel, another savior, another source, another fellowship, another tradition, another evangelism, and another god. Jesus’ majesty and His very person are violated by joining Him together with the gods of the wide gate and the broad way. Jesus emphatically stated that His gate is strait and His way is narrow. He is the only way to life, while all other ways lead to destruction (Matthew 7:13-14).

Notes for Twelve Steps to Another Gospel?
1 Pass It On: The story of Bill Wilson and how the A.A. message reached the world. New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1984, pp. 156, 275.
2 Ibid., p. 275.
3 Ibid., p. 278.
4 Ibid., pp. 278-279.
5 Ibid., p. 198.
6 Ibid., p. 280.
7 Ibid., p. 281.
8 Ibid., p. 283.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid., p. 198.
11 Ibid., p. 199.

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AA: Christian or Occult Roots?

Christians continue to insist that Alcoholics Anonymous is compatible with Christianity because of its so-called Christian roots. That is because of its early connection with the Oxford Group, which is now called Moral Re-Armament (MRA). The founders of AA were involved in the Oxford Group movement during the early days, but there is no record of either Bill Wilson or Bob Smith professing Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord or as the only way to the Father. Neither is there a record of them believing or teaching that the only way of salvation is by grace through faith in the finished work of Christ on the cross.

Frank Buchman, a Lutheran minister, began a movement which he originally called A First Century Christian Fellowship. In 1928 the name of the movement changed to the Oxford Group. The other leader of the movement, who was influential in the development of AA, was Samuel Shoemaker, rector of an Episcopal church. The thrust of the movement was experience rather than clear biblical doctrine.

Buchman explained that he never touched any doctrine in any of his meetings, as he did not want to upset or offend anyone.¹ (Emphasis in original.) By keeping his doctrinal beliefs to himself, Buchman was able to appeal to people of all religious persuasions.

The following is Wilson’s description of the Oxford Group:

The Oxford Group was a nondenominational evangelical movement, streamlined for the modern world and then at the height of its very considerable success. . . . They would deal in simple common denominators of all religions which would be potent enough to change the lives of men and women.² (Emphasis added.)

However, there is some evidence that the founders of AA did have opportunity to hear the Gospel,³ but instead of receiving Christ as Lord and Savior and experiencing freedom in Christ and victory over sin through faith in Christ alone, Wilson and Smith took only what they wanted from the Oxford Group. Here we will examine three aspects of what AA borrowed: guidance, surrender, and moral principles.

Occult Guidance

Members of the Oxford Group practiced what they called guidance by praying and then quieting their minds in order to hear from God. Then they would write down whatever came to them.⁴Examples of such guidance are in the book God Calling, edited by A. J. Russell of the Oxford Group.⁵ The book was written anonymously by two women who thought they were hearing from God, but who passively received messages in the same way spiritists obtain guidance from demons.

Members of the Oxford Group primarily found their guidance from within rather than from a creed or the Bible. Buchman, for instance, was known to spend an hour or more in complete silence of soul and body while he gets guidance for that day.⁶

J. C. Brown in his book The Oxford Group Movement says of Buchman:

He teaches his votaries to wait upon God with paper and pencil in hand each morning in this relaxed and inert condition, and to write down whatever guidance they get. This, however, is just the very condition required by Spiritist mediums to enable them to receive impressions from evil spirits. . . and it is a path which, by abandoning the Scripture-instructed judgment (which God always demands) for the purely occult and the psychic, has again and again led over the precipice. The soul that reduces itself to an automaton may at any moment be set spinning by a Demon.⁷ (Emphasis his.)

Dr. Rowland V. Bingham, Editor of The Evangelical Christian says:

We do not object to their taking a pad and pencil to write down any thoughts of guidance which come to them. But to take the thoughts especially generated in a mental vacuum as Divine guidance would throw open to all the suggestions of another who knows how to come as an angel of light and whose illumination would lead to disaster.⁸ (Emphasis his.)

In a very real sense their personal journals became their personal scriptures. Wilson practiced this passive form of guidance, which he originally learned through the Oxford Group. He and Smith were also heavily involved in contacting and conversing with so-called departed spirits from 1935 on. This is necromancy, which the Bible forbids. During the same period of time, Wilson was practicing spiritism in a manner similar to channeling.⁹ Thus, Wilson combined the Oxford Group practice of guidance with spiritism or channeling, and this appears to be the process he used when writing the Twelve Steps:

As he started to write, he asked for guidance. And he relaxed. The words began tumbling out with astonishing speed.¹⁰

Wilson was accustomed to asking for guidance and then stilling his mind to be open to the spiritual world, which for him involved various so-called departed spirits. Wilson does not identify any specific entity related to the original writing of the Twelve Steps, but he does give credit to the spirit of a departed bishop when he was writing the manuscript for Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, which constitutes Wilson’s commentary on how all of the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions are to be understood, interpreted, and practiced.

When he wrote the essays on each of the twelve steps, he sent some to Ed Dowling, a Roman Catholic priest, to evaluate. In his accompanying letter of July 17, 1952, Wilson says, But I have good help of that I am certain. Both over here and over there.¹¹ Then he explains that one spirit from over there that helped him called himself Boniface. Wilson says:

One turned up the other day calling himself Boniface. Said he was a Benedictine missionary and English. Had been a man of learning, knew missionary work and a lot about structures. I think he said this all the more modestly but that was the gist of it. I’d never heard of this gentleman but he checked out pretty well in the Encyclopedia. If this one is who he says he isand of course there is no certain way of knowingwould this be licit contact in your book?¹²

Dowling responds in his letter of July 24, 1952:

Boniface sounds like the Apostle of Germany. I still feel, like Macbeth, that these folks tell us truth in small matters in order to fool us in larger. I suppose that is my lazy orthodoxy.¹³

One can see the stretch of years during which Wilson received messages from disembodied spirits. The official biography of Bill Wilson says, One of Bill’s persistent fascinations and involvements was with psychic phenomena. It speaks of his belief in clairvoyance and other extrasensory manifestations and in his own psychic ability.¹⁴This was not a mere past-time. It was a passion directly related to AA.¹⁵ The manner in which Wilson would receive messages not of his own making was definitely channeling.¹⁶The records of these sessions, referred to as Spook Files, have been closed to public inspection.¹⁷

Satan can appear as an angel of light and give guidance that may sound right because it may be close to the truth or contain elements of truth. A discerning Christian would avoid any guidance that comes through occult methods. Therefore, this aspect of the Oxford Group, further contaminated by spiritism, cannot constitute any Christian root condoning Christians using and promoting AA.

Surrender

Step Three of AA is Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. While many in the Oxford Group placed their faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, there was much leeway given. Shoemaker, a leader of the Oxford Group, says that the true meaning of faith is self-surrender to God. He further explains:

Surrender to whatever you know about Him, or believe must be the truth about Him. Surrender to Him, if necessary, in total ignorance of Him. Far more important that you touch Him than that you understand Him at first. Put yourself in His hands. Whatever He is, as William James said, He is more ideal than we are. Make the leap. Give yourself to Him.¹⁸

Aside from capitalizing the H, which Christians do to refer to the God of the Bible, Him could refer to any god of one’s own making. The reference to the psychologist William James emphasizes Shoemaker’s faith in the power experience over the truth of God.¹⁹

Shoemaker believed that people would come to know God by experiencing Him through surrender and through following certain moral principles. He says, The new life begins by utter self-dedication to the will of God. All of us can do that, and must.²⁰

One can see how surrender to a god of one’s own creation found its way into the Twelve Steps of AA. When a person is not clear about the Gospel, who Jesus is and what He did to save sinners, he is not presenting a Christian message. AA picked up the idea of surrender, but without Christ and without the whole counsel of God.

Surrendering to anyone but the God of the Bible constitutes idolatry. AA is another religion with its own forms of piety, including surrender to a nebulous higher power. This pious surrender does not constitute a Christian root that can justify Christians using and promoting AA.

Moral Principles and Their Source

In describing itself as an organization, this is what MRA (formerly called the Oxford Group) says about itself:

MRA is a world wide network of women and men who have started with themselves to bring the changes they want to see around them.²¹

Here’s how they start with themselves:

To start with yourself, you measure how you are now living by absolute moral standards of honesty, purity, unselfishness and love. (For Christians these are in the Sermon on the Mount; they are also found in other major religions.)²²(Parenthesis in original.)

People are told to make a list and then give all you know of yourself to all you understand of God, and ask God’s help to put right those things beyond your own power to change. So far there is no information about which god one is to choose, since one can follow any religion or no religion.

While some in MRA may read the Bible, as they did in its early Oxford Group days, the primary source of knowledge is the inner voice. Here are the instructions given in the MRA brochure:

Take time to listen every day to the inner voice, write down your thoughts, and obey those that conform to these standards.²³

Even though a follower of MRA attempts to follow moral standards from the Bible or the moral teachings of any other religion, his primary light is that inner voice and his primary goal is self-improvement. No cross is necessary; no shed blood is required. Like AA, MRA is a religion of works. Here is what MRA says about its religious affiliation:

It has always been a Christian based, interfaith work. It brings together people of all backgrounds and cultures in a program of effective change using principles that are accepted by every major faith.²⁴

Aside from the words Christian based, that definition sounds like a description of AA. But how can it be truly Christian based when it is without the cross and without a Lord Jesus Christ, who said, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me (John 14:6)? Rather than faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified, MRA is a religion of self-improvement and subjective mysticism.

One can indeed see the similarity between the Oxford Group (MRA) and Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Both allow Christians to participate as long as they do not preach Christ and Him crucified or dare to say that He is the only way to the Father. Both appeal to an unidentified god, both rely on mysticism, and both aim for self-improvement. What AA got from the Oxford Group was clearly not Christianity. There are no Christian roots. Because the central core doctrines of Christianity are absent, AA constitutes a counterfeit religion, not a neutral organization with Christian roots.

(For more information about AA, see 12 Steps to Destruction by Martin and Deidre Bobgan.)

1. William C. Irvine. Heresies Exposed. New York: Loizeaux Brothers, Inc., 1921, p. 54.
2. Wilson quoted in Pass It On: The story of Bill Wilson and how the A.A. message reached the world. New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1984, pp. 127,128.
3. Samuel M. Shoemaker. Courage to Change: The Christian Roots of the 12-Step Movement. Bill Pittman and Dick B., eds. Grand Rapids, MI: Fleming H. Revel/Baker Book House Company, 1994, pp. 11-24.
4. Ibid., p. 198.
5. A. J. Russell, ed. God Calling. New York: Jove Publications, 1978.
6. William C. Irvine. Heresies Exposed. New York: Loizeaux Brothers, Inc., 1921, pp. 58,59.
7. J. C. Brown quoted by Irvine, ibid., p. 49.
8. Rowland V. Bingham quoted by Irvine, ibid., p. 50.
9. Pass It On, op. cit., pp. 275-283.
10. Ibid., p. 198.
11. Robert Fitzgerald, S.J. The Soul of Sponsorship: The Friendship of Fr. Ed Dowling, S.J. and Bill Wilson in Letters. Center City, MN: Hazelden Pittman Archives Press, 1995, p. 59.
12. Ibid., p. 59.
13. Ibid., p. 59.
14. Pass It On, op. cit., p. 275.
15. Ibid., p. 280.
16. Ibid., pp. 278,279.
17. Ernest Kurtz. Not God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous. Center City, MN: Hazelden Educational Materials, 1979, p. 344.
18. Shoemaker, op. cit, p. 44.
19. See Bobgan & Bobgan. 12 Steps to Destruction: Codependency/Recovery Heresies. Santa Barbara, CA: EastGate Publishers, 1991, pp. 88,89.
20. Ibid., p. 46.
21. What is MRA? Moral-Re-Armament, 1885 University Ave. W. #10, St. Paul, MN 55104.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.

PsychoHeresy Awareness Ministries, 4137 Primavera Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93110
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How Alcoholics Anonymous Doctrines Compare with Scripture

by Debbie Dewart, M.A.

AA ~ The Broad Road of AA

To us, the Realm of the Spirit is broad, roomy, all inclusive; never exclusive, or forbidding.... Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 46.

Bible ~ The Narrow Road of Christ

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it (Matt 7:13-14).

AA ~ Contempt for Sound Doctrine

Any number of alcoholics are bedeviled by the dire conviction that if they ever go near AA, they will be pressured to conform to some brand of faith or theology. As Bill Sees It, p. 201.

Bible ~ Sound Doctrine

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine… (2 Tim 4:3-4).

AA ~ God-as-you-understand-Him: Any Name We suggest that you find a substitute for this destructive power, alcohol, and turn to a Higher Power, regardless of the name by which you may identify that power. We suggest that you turn your will and your life over to God, as you understand Him. The Clergy Ask About Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 9.

Bible ~ Jesus Christ: No Other Name

Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved (Acts 4:12).

AA ~ Powerlessness

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable (Step 1).

Bible ~ Power in Christ

No believer can claim to be powerless: I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me (Philip 4:13).

AA ~ Spiritual Awakening

Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps… (Step 12).

Bible ~ Spiritually Dead in Sin

Man is spiritually dead, not asleep. He needs resurrection, not awakening. Even when we were dead in sins, [God] hath quickened us [made us alive] together with Christ (Eph 2:5).

AA ~ The Big Book: AA’s Bible

Portions of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, are read religiously at every AA meeting, much like Scripture readings at Christian worship services.

Bible ~ Sufficient for Life & Godliness

His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue (2 Peter 1:3).

AA ~ Leadership: Trusted Servants

Our leaders are but trusted servants. They do not govern (Tradition 2).

Bible ~ Leadership: Elders

AA’s leaders and individual sponsors usurp the role God has ordained for church elders to shepherd and feed the flock of God which is among you (1 Peter 5:2).

AA ~ The Moral Inventory

Step 4 requires a searching and fearless moral inventory, essentially a detailed catalogue of past sins to be confessed to some other person to whom such confession is not biblically due.

Bible ~ No Condemnation

As Christians, our sins are fully covered by the blood of Christ. We confess our sins, as appropriate, to God and to those actually sinned against. New believers are nowhere in Scripture required to make a detailed list of all past sins. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:1).

AA ~ Birthdays

AA members celebrate annual birthdays based on the date of their last drink. They practice a secular regeneration.

Bible ~ Regeneration by the Holy Spirit

Christians celebrate their new birth in Christ.

AA ~ The Goal: Sobriety

The goal of AA is abstinence from alcoholic beverages (sobriety). Other sins, such as sexual immorality, are commonly tolerated so long as the AA member isn’t drinking.

Bible ~ The Goal: Sanctification

For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son (Rom 8:29).

AA ~ Fellowship/Unity: A Common Sin

AA’s fellowship is built around the common sin of drunkenness. Personal recovery depends upon AA unity (Tradition 1).

Bible ~ Fellowship/Unity: A Common Salvation There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all (Eph 4:4-6).

AA ~ Carrying the Message

Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs (Step 12).

Bible ~ Christian Evangelism

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world (Matt 28:19-20).

AA ~ Incurable Disease

AA’s literature is permeated with the dogma, taught faithfully to newcomers, that once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. There is no cure offered, only continual abstinence from all alcoholic beverages.

Forgiven Sin

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God (1 Cor 6:9-11).

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Editor's note: Twelve-Step programs continue to grow in popularity both outside and inside the church. Many pastors and Christian leaders have bought into the idea that these originated from a Christian foundation. That shows how broad the term Christian has become-so broad as to include any deity as you understand him, her, or it and so wide as to include the occult, as well as the mentality of psychotherapeutic theories. In other words, most twelve-step programs are mixtures, rather than the pure doctrine and practice of Scripture. Our book 12 Steps to Destruction: Codependency Recovery Heresies contains valuable information regarding the unbiblical nature of the original Alcoholics Anonymous Twelve Steps and of the many programs built on these foundations. Debbie Dewart has given us permission to include her 13-page paper titled A Response to the 12 Steps in a Christian Setting with each order placed for 12 Steps to Destruction.

(PAL V8N2 * March-April 2000)

PsychoHeresy Awareness Ministries, 4137 Primavera Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93110
www.psychoheresy-aware.org