What did A.A. learn from
the Oxford Group and why did they leave them?
Answer
AA's first step was
derived largely from my own physician,
Dr. Silkworth,
and my sponsor Ebby
and his friend, from Dr. Jung of Zurich. I refer
to the medical hopelessness of alcoholism - our
'powerlessness' over alcohol.
The rest of the Twelve Steps stem
directly from those Oxford Group teachings that
applied specifically to us. Of course these
teachings were nothing new; we might have
obtained them from your own Church. They were,
in effect, an examination of conscience,
confession, restitution, helpfulness to others,
and prayer.
I should acknowledge our great
debt to the Oxford Group people. It was
fortunate that they laid particular emphasis on
spiritual principles that we needed. But in
fairness it should also be said that many of
their attitudes and practices did not work well
at all for us alcoholics. These were rejected
one by one and they caused our later withdrawal
from this society to a fellowship of our own -
today's Alcoholics Anonymous.
Perhaps I should specifically
outline why we felt it necessary to part company
with them. To begin with, the climate of their
undertaking was not well suited to us
alcoholics. They were aggressively evangelical.
They sought to re-vitalize the Christian message
in such a way as to "change the world." Most of
us alcoholics had been subjected to pressure of
evangelism and we never liked it. The object of
saving the world - when it was still very much
in doubt if we could save ourselves - seemed
better left to other people. By reason of some
of its terminology and by exertion of huge
pressure, the Oxford Group set a moral stride
that was too fast, particularly for our newer
alcoholics. They constantly talked of Absolute
Purity, Absolute Unselfishness, Absolute
Honesty, and Absolute Love. While sound theology
must always have its absolute values, the Oxford
Groups created the feeling that one should
arrive at these destinations in short order,
maybe by next Thursday! Perhaps they didn't mean
to create such an impression but that was the
effect. Sometimes their public "witnessing" was
of such a character to cause us to be shy. They
also believed that by "converting" prominent
people to their beliefs, they would hasten the
salvation of many who were less prominent. This
attitude could scarcely appeal to the average
drunk since he was anything but distinguished.
The Oxford Group also had
attitudes and practices which added up to a
highly coercive authority. This was exercised by
"teams" of older members. They would gather in
meditation and receive specific guidance for the
life conduct of newcomers. This guidance could
cover all possible situations from the most
trivial to the most serious. If the directions
so obtained were not followed, the enforcement
machinery began to operate. It consisted of a
sort of coldness and aloofness which made
recalcitrant's feel they weren't wanted. At one
time, for example, a "team" got guidance for me
to the effect that I was no longer to work with
alcoholics. This I could not accept.
Another example: When I first
contacted the Oxford Groups, Catholics were
permitted to attend their meetings because they
were strictly non-denominational. But after a
time the Catholic Church forbade its members to
attend and the reason for this seemed a good
one. Through the Oxford Group "teams", Catholic
Church members were actually receiving specific
guidance for their lives; they were often
infused with the idea that their Church had
become rather horse-and-buggy, and needed to be
"changed." Guidance was frequently given that
contributions should be made to the Oxford
Groups. In a way this amounted to putting
Catholics under a separate ecclesiastical
jurisdiction. At this time there were few
Catholics in our alcoholic groups. Obviously we
could not approach any more Catholics under
Oxford Group auspices. Therefore this was
another, and the basic reason for the withdrawal
of our alcoholic crowd from the Oxford Groups
notwithstanding our great debt to them.
(N.C.C.A. 'Blue Book', Vol. 12, 1960) .
Another Answer
The first A.A. group had
come into being but we still had no name. Those
were the years of flying blind, those ensuing
two or three years. A slip in those days was a
dreadful calamity. We would look at each other
and wonder who might be next. Failure! Failure!
Failure was our constant companion.
I returned home from Akron now
endowed with a more becoming humility and less
preaching and a few people began to come to us,
a few in Cleveland and Akron. I had got back
into business briefly and again Wall Street
collapsed and took me with it as usual. So I set
out West to see if there was something I could
do in that country. Dr. Bob and I of course had
been corresponding but it wasn't until one late
fall afternoon in 1937 that I reached his house
and sat in his living room. I can recall the
scene as though it were yesterday and we got out
a pencil and paper and we began to put down the
names of those people in Akron, New York and
that little sprinkling in Cleveland who had been
dry a while and despite the large number of
failures it finally burst upon us that forty
people had got a real release and had
significant dry time behind them. I shall never
forget that great and humbling hour of
realization. Bob and I saw for the first time
that a new light had begun to shine down upon us
alcoholics, had begun to shine upon the children
of the night.
That realization brought an
immense responsibility. Naturally, we thought at
once, how shall what we forty know be carried to
the millions who don't know? Within gunshot of
this house there must be others like us who are
thoroughly bothered by this obsession. How shall
they know? How is this going to be transmitted?
Up to this time as you must be
aware, A.A. was utterly simple. It filled the
full measure of simplicity as is since demanded
by a lot of people. I guess we old timers all
have a nostalgia about those halcyon days of
simplicity when thank God there were no founders
and no money and there were no meeting places,
just parlors. Annie and Lois baking cakes and
making coffee for those drunks in the living
room. We didn't even have a name! We just called
ourselves a bunch of drunks trying to get sober.
We were more anonymous than we are now. Yes, it
was all very simple. But, here was a new
realization, what was the responsibility of the
forty men to those who did not know?
Well, I have been in the world of
business, a rather hectic world of business, the
world of Wall Street. I suspect that I was a
good deal of a promoter and a bit of a salesman,
rather better than I am here today. So I began
to think in business man's terms. We had
discovered that the hospitals did not want us
drinkers because, we were poor payers and never
got well. So, why shouldn't we have our own
hospitals and I envisioned a great chain of
drunk tanks and hospitals spreading across the
land. Probably, I could sell stocks in those and
we could damn well eat as well as save drunks.
Then too, Dr. Bob and I recalled
that it had been a very tedious and slow
business to sober up forty people, it had taken
about three years and in those days we old
timers had the vainglory to suppose that nobody
else could really do this job but us. So we
naturally thought in terms of having alcoholic
missionaries, no disparagement to missionaries
to be sure. In other words, people would be
grubstaked for a year or two, moved to Chicago,
St. Louis, Frisco and so on and start little
centers and meanwhile we would be financing this
string of drunk tanks and began to suck them
into these places. Yes, we would need
missionaries and hospitals! Then came one
reflection that did make some sense.
It seemed very clear that what we
had already found out should be put on paper. We
needed a book, so Dr. Bob called a meeting for
the very next night and in that little meeting
of a dozen and a half, a historic decision was
taken which deeply affected our destiny. It was
in the living room of a nonalcoholic friend who
let us come there because his living room was
bigger than the Smith's parlor and he loved us.
I too, remember that day as if it were
yesterday.
So, Smithy and I explained this
new obligation which depended on us forty. How
are we to carry this message to the ones who do
not know? I began to wind up my promotion talk
about the hospitals and the missionaries and the
book and I saw their faces fall and straight
away that meeting divided into three significant
parts. There was the promoter section of which I
was definitely one. There was the section that
was indifferent and there was what you might
call the orthodox section.
The orthodox section was very
vocal and it said with good reason, "Look! Put
us into business and we are lost. This works
because it is simple, because everybody works at
it, because nobody makes anything out of it and
because no one has any axe to grind except his
sobriety and the other guy's. If you publish a
book we will have infinite quarrels about the
damn thing. It will get us into business and the
clinker of the orthodox section was that our
Lord, Himself, had no book.
Well, it was
impressive and events proved that the orthodox
people were practically right, but, thank God,
not fully right. Then there were the indifferent
ones who thought, well, if Smitty and Bill think
we ought to do these things, well, its all right
with us. So the indifferent ones, plus the
promoters out voted the orthodoxy and said "If
you want to do these things Bill, you go back to
New York where there is a lot of dough and you
get the money and then we'll see."
Well, by this time I'm higher
than a kite you know. Promoters can stay high on
something besides alcohol. I was already taking
about the greatest medical development, greatest
spiritual development, greatest social
development of all time. Think of it, forty
drunks. (Chicago, Ill., February 1951)
