That source is found in the 64 page journal I was able to obtain from A.A. And I do so because it had a direct daily impact on Bill Wilson, Dr. I stress this source because it either covered or actually taught most of A.A.’s Oxford Group, Shoemaker, and Bible ideas in detail in the 1930’s, long before the Big Book was published. I do so because no one has been told much about it in A.A. Now the last principal source is the one I keep harping on. It’s all in my title, Dick B., New Light on Alcoholism: God, Sam Shoemaker, and A.A., 2d ed. Strikingly also, I learned that Bill had actually asked Shoemaker to write the Twelve Steps, and Shoemaker declined. Twelve years of reading Shoemaker’s books, examining the Stepping Stones archives, seeing Shoemaker’s personal journals and his papers at the Episcopal Church Archives in Texas have made those points quite clear to me.
And you’ll find them in Bill’s acknowledgments in letters and talks about Shoemaker’s importance. You’ll find the corresponding words, language, and ideas in Shoemaker’s writings. You’ll find Shoemaker ideas and language sprinkled throughout the Big Book and the Steps. Frank Buchman, and prolific Oxford Group writer. Then there’s the matter of Reverend Sam Shoemaker, rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in New York, chief lieutenant of Oxford Group founder Dr. Most don’t know that, but you can see the traces in pages 12 to 15 of the Big Book. They came from Ebby’s Oxford Group experience. If you will read my title Turning Point, you will see that Ebby Thacher (Bill’s “sponsor”) passed along to Bill in much detail the basic ideas of the Twelve Steps. But the major ideas were present in 1934. Remember, however, that there were no Steps in Calvary Church, in the Oxford Group, or in pioneer A.A. Over the years, Wilson himself began conceding this point but not detailing it. Sam Shoemaker and from the Oxford Group writings. Pittman concluded (and he was correct) that the Twelve Step program came from Rev. Many years later, Bill Pittman put his finger on the button when he wrote AA The Way It Began.
He often added that everything in the program was borrowed-from medicine, religion, and experience. Where, then, did the Twelve Steps really come from?īill Wilson said many times in many ways that nobody invented A.A. The three Bible segments were Jesus’s sermon on the mount (Matthew, Chapters Five to Seven), the entire Book of James, and 1 Corinthians 13. BOB and the Good Oldtimers and Dick B., The Good Book and The Big Book Why Early A.A. He specifically pointed to three Bible segments he said old timers considered “absolutely essential” (See DR. He said the basic ideas came from the pioneers’ study of the Bible. Bob said he didn’t write the Twelve Steps or have anything to do with the writing of them. And there never have been any steps in the Oxford Group at all, though there are twenty-eight Oxford Group principles that impacted on the Steps as Bill finally wrote them in a brief period of meditation in late 1938 (See Dick B., The Oxford Group and Alcoholics Anonymous).
There were no “six steps” either in the Oxford Group or in early A.A. There were no Steps in the Oxford Group in 1935. There were no Steps in Akron Number One’s program. Nor did the Twelve Steps arise from any earlier steps of any kind at all. Amos said there were seven basic points, and they bear no resemblance to the Steps Bill Wilson wrote (See Dick B., God and Alcoholism). program there as it was reported to Rockefeller by Frank Amos in 1938. And to show how they can help you, as they did me, to see what the Twelve Steps are really about or at least were, when Bill Wilson first penned them.įor sure, the Twelve Steps did not come from Akron or the early A.A. The reflections in this article, however, are just designed to remind us all of some principal historical roots of the 12 Steps. Therefore, if you put these and other thoughts together, you may find why the rapidly disappearing spiritual roots of A.A. and other 12 Step groups toward universalization, toward idolatry, toward treatment language, and toward meeting emphasis rather than upon the original spiritual program of recovery.
That is true! Still others seem dismayed that it will slow the onrush of A.A. Some are troubled that this rebirth of history interest speaks of an A.A. And the search engines have really done the subject a great service as well.īut what good can this interest in history do? Some charge we have become obsessed with early A.A. Our Fellowship members pour into our web sites asking for information or sending us comments. is an active, recovered member of the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.Īuthors seem recently to have pounced on12 Step and A.A.
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