A Promise of Change

Guidance

While hospitalized at the Veterans Administration in San Francisco, I heard two messages from a man who had been phoning me daily (long distance) and listening to my woes. He said "Why don't YOU stop trying to program your life and ask God for guidance? And then you need to look at the biblical account of Peter's walking on the water."

"It was Jesus." I remonstrated, "not Peter, who was the water-walker."

"No," he said. "They both walked; and you should look up the verses about Peter." I did. I read Matthew 14:24-33. Then I began studying Scripture daily and discovered the Bible is filled with accounts of God's power to change people. By believing God's Word, I received deliverance through knowledge of what Jesus Christ had accomplished. The fear and guilt left and I truly began to entrust my life to God's care. I also saw the point of the "Peter-principle." When Jesus said to Peter, "Come," Peter believed in Jesus' power. He obeyed and miraculously, walked on the water.

About six years ago, a young AA friend -- now dead of alcoholism -- asked me if I knew that AA was based on the Bible. I did not and neither do most AA's today. That young man suggested I read Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers, which makes AA's biblical roots clear. I also discovered that the biblically-oriented Oxford Group had played a major role in the development of AA ideas, but the book contained no details.

Search for Facts

In an effort to learn more facts, I went to the AA International Conference in Seattle in 1990. Still no biblical roots, so I began four years of research, travels, and interviews. I started at AA's birthplace at Akron OH and learned from the family of AA cofounder, Dr. Bob, what he studied in the Bible, heard in the Oxford Group and recommended to the many alcoholics he personally helped.

I obtained the notebook which Dr. Bob's wife used with early AA's and their families as well as her Bible studies, the Christian books she was reading and the Oxford Group teachings she had heard. This led me to read thousands of pages of Oxford Group literature and to interview such venerable Oxford Group survivors as Garth Lean, Jim and Ellie Newton, and Willard Hunter. I put together the early AA picture -- what AA's themselves had read, how they prayed and surrendered, and what they did in their homes and meetings in Akron where they had achieved a high success rate. Then, because AA's other co-founder, Bill Wilson, had attributed most of AA's recovery ideas to Sam Shoemaker of the Oxford Group, I searched Shoemaker's Calvary Church archives, studied his personal journals and learned what Bill Wilson and Sam Shoemaker had actually done together.

I have used these historical materials as a vital adjunct to AA's Twelve Steps and basic textbook to help more than sixty men in their recovery. About 50% of them have recovered and maintained sobriety. Sadly, AA's early and highly successful experimental years with the Bible and the Oxford Group are virtually unknown to today's newcomers. Most in the recovery community do not know that the wording of AA's Twelve Steps, the language of its basic recovery text, and the talk in its meetings are filled with ideas that came from "A First Century Christian Fellowship" also known as the Oxford Group.

A Spiritual Lift

I believe AA's rich spiritual roots have been obscured. One hears in AA meetings that God is responsible for all sorts of bizarre misfortunes and misunderstood consequences. This is not God as God is described in the Bible or understood by the Oxford Group -- One who guides and provides. The vacuum has often been filled with what Sam Shoemaker described as "self-made religion, absurd names for God, and half-baked prayers."

I believe AA needs a spiritual lift just as I did. I believe my own recovery and the recoveries among the men I have sponsored give evidence of that fact. My books are aimed at giving the Twelve Step community and the public at large a fair shot at conquering alcohol and drugs through knowledge and application of Biblical truths which worked so well in the 1930's.