A visit to my website alerted me to this work of your history department. It reminded me of the work of a professor at University of Virginia who was similarly interested in accurate AA history and even amended his site when I pointed out how much the real religious character, history, roots, and successes of early A.A. had been omitted.

Early AA was a Christian fellowship which relied on the Creator, insisted on acceptance of Christ, stressed resisting temptation by abstinence, emphasized Bible study and prayer and guidance to assure obedience to God, as well as Christian fellowship and witness. He who perceives the immense religious change from Christian fellowship to the “any god” “spirituality” that dominates the scene is he who gets the real picture.

AA had enormous success rates and cures at its beginnings. The histories and biographies of our Society are ignoring the change. Thus today’s meandering groups have wound up emphasizing “don’t drink” and “go to meetings” and seen success rates plummet from 75% to 93% down to 1 to 7% today. The real perception of the early AA story was forecast by Dr. Benjamin Rush – signer of the Declaration of Independence – who said that real cures of alcoholism had come from Christian healings. Those healings had been going on for centuries – something documented in my latest title (When Early AAs Were Cured. And Why (http://www.dickb.com/titles.shtml). This was echoed years after Dr. Rush’s oberservation by the clergymen who spoke at the Yale Summer School conclaves where, on the same lecture series – where the clergy were explaining religion’s true role Bill Wilson spoke with unusual frankness and clarity about the religious aspects that the Christian clergy were covering.

I appreciate your referral to my site – which covers all the religious roots (Bible, Shoemaker, Oxford Group, Anne Smith, Quiet Time, and religious literature) as well as the hybrid sources in new thought of “higher powers” and “Creative Intelligence” which crept into Wilson’s thinking and seem to have set the stage for today’s idolatry which, in AA and in scholarship and in treatment, has popularized the idea that an individual’s “higher power” can be a light bulb, a chair, “something,” “it,” a door knob, a radiator and all the other weird appellations that appear regularly.

I know we shall value the religious timeline that your site sets forth. And you may be sure that we will be listing it as an important resource for AA history.

Respectfully, Richard G. Burns, J.D. (Dick B.)

http://www.dickb.com/index.shtml

Writer, Historian, Retired attorney, Bible student, Active and recovered AA