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A Good Question by a Good Writer
By Dick B.
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Not too long ago, my
friend Mel B., who is a prolific writer for A.A. and Hazelden, graciously
thanked me for a copy of one of my books. Then he said: “Dick, I now have a
shelf of your books. Where does it all end?” That’s a good question. And the
answer lies in how it all began and what gave rise to the search. Actually,
Mel played a role in that beginning, along with A.A.’s former archivist Frank
Mauser (now deceased), Dr. Bob’s son Smitty, Willard Hunter (an Oxford Group
speaker), myself, and a small A.A. group that presented two large conferences
on early A.A. history in Marin County, California, in the early 1990's. Each
event was called “A Day in Marin.” And each went to the heart of A.A.’s
spiritual beginnings, with the foregoing men as speakers.
Where Our Spiritual Roots Were When the Search
Began
Much has been uncovered
and discovered about early A.A. in the last decade. But let’s start with what
we had about 1990.
About 1954,
Bill Wilson and his secretary Nell Wing began taping the remarks of our
founders and pioneers. In 1957, after A.A.’s St. Louis Convention was over and
Bill had finished having a manuscript edited by Father John C. Ford, Bill felt
it appropriate to publish that work as Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age: A
Brief History of A.A. Then, over a span of twenty-six years, in more than
150 articles, Bill wrote bits and pieces and fragments of history. And these
were later assembled and published by the AA Grapevine, Inc. in The
Language of the Heart. Dr. Bob died on November 16, 1950, and Bill W. died
on January 24, 1971. And much has been uncovered and discovered about early
A.A. since those dates.
Ernest Kurtz
received a Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization in 1978 and began to
study history after professional experience in both religion and psychology.
In 1979, Dr. Kurtz published Not-God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous.
In June, 1983, Bill Pittman completed a work in partial fulfillment of his
Bachelor of Science Degree at University of Minnesota; and by 1988, the work
was published as AA The Way It Began. Meanwhile, with Bill Wilson gone,
historical interest was stirring at A.A.’s General Services. Bill’s former
secretary Nell Wing phoned Clarence Snyder in Florida and said that New York
just didn’t know the oldtimers.. She asked permission to send an A.A. staff
person to interview Clarence, because, as she put it: “You know them.” And, of
course, Clarence did, having been one of the original 40 pioneers, a sponsee
of Dr. Bob’s, and the founder of A.A. in Cleveland where initial growth and
success rates had been phenomenal. Out of this venture came DR. BOB and the
Good Oldtimers (an A.A. “Conference Approved” book). It was published in
1980. Its sequel (a biography of Bill Wilson) was published by A.A. in 1984
with the title Pass It On.
John H., the 1990 Seattle Convention, and the
Gap
By the summer of 1990, I
had been sober a little over four years. I had been quite active in A.A.,
serving as a secretary, treasurer, general services representative, and in
other service jobs in various A.A. groups. I had sponsored a good many men in
their recovery, been to many area conventions, and had my appetite for history
thoroughly whetted. Here’s the reason.
Prior to 1990,
John H. (a young A.A. friend now dead of alcoholism) said to me: “Dick, did
you know that A.A. came from the bible?” John knew of my interest in the
Bible, and we both had the same A.A. sponsor. But I replied that I did not
know anything about A.A. and the Bible. I’d never heard such a thing. I said
knew nothing about that story and had never heard it from our mutual sponsor
or grandsponsor or in any meetings. So John said: “Read DR. BOB and the
Good Oldtimers.” And I did just that. And I became excited. To be sure,
Dr. Bob was quoted as saying that A.A.’s basic ideas came from their study of
the Bible. The DR. BOB book said that the Bible was stressed, and that
early A.A. was known as a “Christian Fellowship.” It said the early Akron
meetings had been described as “old fashioned prayer meetings.”
From that
historical piece, I hastened to read Pass It On and saw that early AAs
had wanted to call their society The James Club, because they favored reading
the Book of James. I picked up Bill Wilson’s A.A. Comes of Age, but was
surprised and disappointed to see no references to the Bible and very little
about the Oxford Group, from which a number of A.A.’s Bible ideas came.
With that, I
went to A.A.’s International Convention in Seattle. I expected to find there
the specifics. But alas, there were none. I wound up at an archives meeting
where the Bible was not mentioned; the Oxford Group was alluded to; and a
panel member had one book on the Oxford Group which he showed me after the
panel discussion was over. I kept hearing them talk of “Frank.” And I
discovered that “Frank” was the General Services archivist from New York. I
asked Frank what he had on Sam Shoemaker, a mentioned leader of the Oxford
Group. And Frank said he knew very little but would send me a list of
Shoemaker titles. Interestingly, he sent me material from Bill Pittman’s AA
The Way It Began and a short pamphlet by the Oxford Group’s Willard Hunter
and A.A.’s Mel B.
The bottom
line, however, was: At an international convention of A.A. held 55 years after
A.A. began, I could find no details about A.A. and the Bible, what the Oxford
Group believed, what its relationship to A.A. was, or how A.A. came to base
its Steps on Oxford Group practices. I could find nothing on Shoemaker’s role
other than laudatory statements by Bill that Sam should be listed as a
“co-founder” of A.A. and a wellspring of its spiritual ideas. The literature
early AAs read was mentioned in small part, but there was nothing on what that
literature contained or that it was primarily Christian. There was nothing at
all on what Anne Smith had contributed or on the journal she shared with AAs
and their families. And there was nothing specific about “quiet time,” except
a mention in a 1938 report that Quiet Time was a “must” in the program and
that it was observed in the early meetings and homes and also by individuals.
The “Agenda” Began to Crystalize
I am sure my interest in
our spiritual roots proceeded from various crucibles. (1) At eight months of
sobriety, I had been in the VA psychiatric ward in San Francisco and was going
nowhere, except to A.A. meetings and group therapy. I was filled with fear. I
shook like a leaf. I was sufficiently brain damaged that even I could tell I
didn’t know what I was talking about. And on and on. I was “sick.” So, at the
urging of my older son and his wife, I began studying the Bible. Things on the
love of God, the healing power of God, the forgiveness of God, and the
deliverance that could come because of what Jesus Christ had accomplished for
those who chose to accept him as Lord and believe that God had raised His on
from the dead. The result was almost instantaneous. The fear left. I began
seeking God’s guidance instead of trying to program my future, events that lay
ahead, and the rest of my life. Peace arrived at last. In other words, reading
the Bible and believing what it said had resulted in my deliverance, just as
it had for early AAs (but I didn’t know about the early AAs yet). (2) I had
been an attorney, a very good one, trained at Stanford, Case Editor of their
Law Review, a practitioner for 35 years, and an experienced researcher. But I
had become a drunk and had resigned from the bar in disgrace after having
seizures in A.A. and being hospitalized in a treatment center. Nonetheless, my
zeal for research and discovery had apparently survived. (3) I was having
difficulty understanding why people were talking about a “higher power”
instead of talking about God as the Twelve Steps and Big Book and early AAs
had done. I saw Bible words and phrases quoted verbatim (but without
acknowledgment) in A.A.’s Big Book. I saw Bible words like Creator, Maker,
Father, Father of Lights, Spirit. Bible phrases like “love thy neighbor as
thyself,” “faith without works is dead,” “Thy will be done,” and so on. (4)
Most of all, as my mind returned, I wanted to get away from the nonsense that
was common fare in the meetings I attended: Absurd names for God like “Ralph.”
Half-baked prayers” Self-made religion with people saying they didn’t like
their church; they didn’t like to hear about the Bible; and that it was
against the Traditions to mention Jesus Christ. As a solution, they said that
A.A. was their religion. (5) Finally, I wanted to help the people I sponsored,
help them with the truth about God, and help them understand the rock on which
I felt recovery and A.A. itself must have been founded. But I had to know the
facts..
And the “Agenda” Was. . . .
What it boiled down to for
me was simple. I wanted to know if A.A. really took its basic ideas from the
Bible. And if it did, I wanted to know what those ideas were. I could see that
the facts were not to be found in A.A. Conference Approved literature or in
the meetings I attended or the Conference Speakers I heard. I had read Nan
Robertson’s Inside AA. That book indicated that there were archives to
be seen, founding families that could be interviewed, and significant
historical places that could be visited. That too became a part of the agenda.
Without interviews, no facts; and (as a lawyer) I had interviewed dozens of
witnesses. But there was more. Early writings and talks had to be studied for
references to the Bible, to Christian literature, to the Oxford Group, to Sam
Shoemaker and to Quiet Time. That meant travel and research. More important, I
realized from Bill Pittman’s book and from a reference or two in Dr. Kurtz’s
book that there was plenty of Oxford Group and Shoemaker and other spiritual
literature that had never been examined, analyzed, or made available to AAs.
So reading many thousands of pages became part of the agenda. Again what was
the main agenda? To see if A.A. ideas came from the Bible; and, if they did,
what those ideas were and how they impacted on the Steps, the Big Book, and
the Fellowship. And if the facts could be documented, then to make sure that
they were made available to AAs themselves, to Al-Anons, to clergy, to the
treatment community, to the government, and to non-profits. But the
dissemination part had to wait on the research and travel and then on the
writing. And, as a lawyer often finds when he begins to seek and unearth
evidence, the real truth is often vast and surprising and often badly
distorted by previous investigations and prejudices.
The Pleasant Surprises
I found, from many years
of law practice, that if the truth is diligently sought, it usually can be
unearthed. Moreover, lots of new truths emerge. That’s the case whether you
are looking at raw evidence, interviewing witnesses, or searching collateral
leads. It’s also true when you are searching for the “purple cow” precedent
case that will show what the law actually is or should be in your case. Many
many times, I have had a hunch that turned into a lead that turned into a case
or a fact that won the day. That’s what’s good about the law. When you’re not
drinking too much! Anyway, the quest for A.A. history and Bible sources had
all the same ingredients as preparation for a major legal case, and there was
to be no disappointment.
For example, I
had read in DR. BOB that our co-founder had given away all of his
spiritual books (very large in number). But when I went to Akron and visited
Dr. Bob’s daughter Sue Windows, I was greeted by her trips to the attic to
bring down Dr. Bob’s books. And the books had Dr. Bob’s name inscribed by him
in them along with the date he had obtained them. Dr. Bob’s son and
daughter-in-law came up with an equal number of books they had. And then I
could see that Dr. Bob had read the Bible, books about the Bible and Jesus
Christ and prayer and healing and love, and so on. I read those books. Charlie
Bishop published my Dr. Bob’s Library, and Ernie Kurtz wrote the
Foreword.
Then, from
Kurtz’s book, I found a reference to a notebook Dr. Bob’s wife had kept. I
contacted Dr. Bob’s daughter, my friend Bill Pittman, my friend Frank Mauser,
and Bill’s secretary Nell Wing. My objective was to see and study Anne Smith’s
notebook. I submitted a letter to the Trustees of A.A. through Frank with a
supporting letter from Sue. And I obtained Anne’s journal. I was aghast. Anne
had written this journal between 1933 and 1939. She had recorded all the Bible
ideas, Oxford Group and Shoemaker ideas, the Quiet Time practices, the Bible
verses, and even the literature early AAs were reading. Later, through my
friend Dennis C., an A.A. historian, I was to learn that Anne had shared this
journal with AAs and their families every morning at the Smith home. Sue
Windows said the AAs came there for “spiritual pablum.” After more interviews
and reading, I discovered that Anne was called “Mother of A.A.” and for good
reason. Her journal contained the heart of the program before it was committed
to writing.
Next, I
tackled the Oxford Group. I read and read. I was put in touch with all the
early Oxford Group people who were active when Bill and Bob were in the Oxford
Group. And I put together twenty-eight ideas that came from the Oxford Group
and could be found in A.A. Later, I found dozens of actual phrases in A.A.
that paralleled those in the Oxford Group. I got the lead to those phrases
from Pass In On. I got the phrases from the Oxford Group people I
interviewed. And I documented them from Oxford Group books. Bill Pittman
published my first Oxford Group/AA book for me and also my first Anne Smith
book. Endorsements from Dr. Bob’s kids and from Oxford Group people were easy
to come by because they all wanted the facts known.
I’ll not go
into all of the search. But I interviewed all the Seiberling children, T.
Henry Williams’ daughter, and Sam Shoemaker’s wife and daughters to find out
what actually took place at those early meetings and the facts about the
contributions of Henrietta, T. Henry, Sam Shoemaker, Anne Smith, Dr. Bob, and
Bill’s Oxford Group circle in New York. I went to the Akron newspapers for
1933 when it all began. Lo and behold. The entire story was emblazened in the
papers with the very kinds of expressions by Oxford Group people in Akron that
AAs themselves use all the time: self-centeredness, meditation, resentment,
fear, and so on.
In other words
a simple agenda in 1990 to learn if A.A .came from the Bible and what it had
borrowed from the bible turned into a major, ten-year quest that unearthed
spiritual sources, ideas, practices, and literature that AAs had never heard
of for decades. Yet these sources in some cases were codified in the A.A.
program. And because they were not known, different expressions and complete
distortions emanated from them: God became a tree. Religious became spiritual.
Bible became “books.” Quiet Time became “meditation.” Revelation became
“intuition.” And the Serenity Prayer (which begins with the word “God”) became
“acceptance.”