The topic of "How AA Really Started" at the 2000 South Bay Roundup

And I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Jay. And God's doing for me today what I couldn't do for myself because it's 4:30 on a Friday afternoon, and I've yet to have a cocktail, and that is bizarre. I have the fortune to be in a room today that has at least 5 people that if they weren't at my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous 21 years ago, they were in the first ten meetings that I was at. And I just am absolutely thrilled that that would be my life.

I have had the great fortune to love books and love history since I was a little kid. And when I got sober, one of the things that I was interested in was what the heck is this thing that we call Alcoholics Anonymous and where does it come from and all of that. So what I've done with the help of my spectacular bride Adele, my daughter Jessica and, the patience and and forbearance of a lot of friends and and family is to put together a series of talks to share with you the things that I love the most, absolutely the most when it comes to talking about this thing that we call Alcoholics Anonymous. And just to jerk everybody's chains and to try and get a little attendance, what we did for the first talk was we called it the big book, divine inspiration or guided plagiarism. One of the interesting things about the source material that we're going to discuss today or that I'm going to discuss, later on there'll be time for questions, is to talk about what it was that the men and women who were in the Oxford Group that Bill and Bob came through were reading and talking about.

And what it is that I'd like to share with you today is specific instances of the information that was bestsellers, that were on The New York Times bestseller list, It was stuff that was being read in the meetings. It was stuff that was being read at home in their quiet time and their guidance. And to really show you that this language that we have in the big book is all part of a spiritual continuum. You know, we're gonna be fortunate enough they finally got around to putting the 4th the 4th edition of the big book is gonna come out again, you know, and it's this time, it's taken them 26 years instead of every 15 years to get a to get a book going to show the, to reflect the members of the fellowship, but they're going to keep the original 164 pages, the, the doctor's nightmare and the, the appendixes and some of the other stories. But I really think that it's good to show what kind of a continuum that we're in.

So the divine inspiration or guided plagiarism was just a little hook to get you all in here. Let's start with this first. Alcoholism, a moral weakness. That's basically what people thought it was up until about the mid 1800s. And the only thing that folks had to combat it basically was either you got locked up at home or you went to an insane asylum or if you were lucky, you got religion.

And one of the fun things that happened was I was up at the Mission Santa Barbara and I bought a bible from a buddy of mine who's a book binder that was from 1905 and tucked in it was this temperance pledge that says, we hereby solemnly promise god helping us to abstain from all distilled, fermented, and malt liquors, including wine and beer, to employ all proper means to discourage the use of and the traffic in the same. What an order. I can't go through with it. The Oxford Group was a group of men and women who were trying to grow along spiritual lines by doing certain spiritual exercises. And the spiritual exercises that they laid out in a book called What is the Oxford Group, gives their 4 steps to changing any man or woman.

The first step is the sharing of our sins and temptations with another Christian life given to God and to use sharing as witness to to help others still unchanged to recognize and acknowledge their sins. So what we're talking about here is first doing an inventory, first doing a 4th step and the sharing that they're talking about is laying out all of it, all of it. And what the Oxford group did is, is that they had groups of men and women, they had stag groups, women only, They had men only groups. They had businessmen's groups. They had claret groups where people could get together and talk about the things that they wished were not true about themselves the most, and they could share it in confidence.

One person talking with another. And by doing this, what they did is, is they would purge their self to the point that they could actually with confidence surrender the second step, surrender our life past, present and future into God's keeping and direction. So first they're doing what we'd call steps 45, then they're able to do 3. That way you can't be stuck on 3. Okay.

Their third step was restitution to all whom we have wronged directly or indirectly. Once you have made yourself clear with your maker, what do you do? You take that power and you go out and you look the people in the eyes whose trust you've violated, those people that you've harmed, and you make amends in whatever way is necessary. And then having done these things, this is what they had to share, was that after having done these things, listening to step 4 their step 4 is listening to, accepting, relying on god's guidance, and carrying it out in everything we do or say, great or small. They believed and they experienced.

And if you read our book, my opinion is is that if you do the 11th step, the answer will come on how to go about your day. Now one of my favorite stories in Alcoholics Anonymous is the story of how the steps got written. Bill and the guys, it's 1937, Bill and the guys are sitting around on, Clinton Street. They're drinking coffee. They're talking about science.

Science is what's hot. Science is what's selling. Science is what's gonna make this book a bestseller because we need a bestseller. We need money. We need money and we need members.

And so we're gonna we're gonna do a book that's scientific. And what we'll do is is we'll approach alcoholism as a disease, a scientifically treatable disease and then once we're in, then we'll kind of lay the god stuff on. And they're talking like this and all of a sudden from the kitchen there's a big crash, Lois goes running out into the living room and she just tosses everybody out of the out of the living room. And she gets up in front of Bill and their their size difference was quite great, and she looked up at him and she said, mister, you're gonna get drunk. What?

And she said, you've forgotten the god that got you sober. And he, she and she went upstairs crying, and he'd never seen her that upset. And there at Clinton Street, underneath the stairs was a little room where he had a cot and there was that's where he kept his tablet where what he would do is write his daily guidance. And he got the tablet down and he laid down and he wrote out these steps that he had gotten from the Oxford group. 1, that they admitted hopelessness.

2, that they got honest with self. 3, that they got honest with another. 4, that they made amends, 5, they help others without demand, and 6, they prayed to god as you understand it. God as you understand it. What happened in that next 40 minutes is that this was broken out into our 12 steps and one of my favorite lines in Alcoholics Anonymous is, is he said he stopped at 12 because 12 was good enough for the guy from Galilee, so 12 was good enough for me.

And it took about 40 minutes and the steps as we know them pretty much were written and the guys came back and one of the guys that was there was Jim Burwell. And when Bill said, look guys, I'm not this is not for discussion. We're going to this is what we're going to put in is how this program works. And Burwell said, well, they all said, well, it looks good to us, Bill. But Burwell said, why don't you just put god as you understand him in the second step or when you refer to god?

And what, what it is that happened is that Bill said that per Lewis' direction, in the second step, he referred to god, and in the 3rd, he called him by name, and he referred to him through the rest of the steps. When I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I was sweating 3 days sober at a noon meeting and and a little old woman with I was stuck to an Aga hide couch and a little old woman with a bun in her hair. She said, oh, you're a new young man, aren't you? And, how can you tell? And, and she said, I can tell you the secret of Alcoholics Anonymous in 4 words, find God or die.

And you know when they pull the cross out in the old Hammer Vampire movies, you know, it was one of those, not that, but this is what our book says. So what it is that I've done is, is I've put together some of the vignettes from our book, and compared it to the books that the guys were reading in those days. And one of the wonderful things that we have is we have a friend by the name of Dick Burns and there are a lot of other people, there's Mel B, a lot of folks that are really serious archivists. I mean, these are real life historians who go and spend like 100 of hours leafing through Sam Shoemaker's daily journal from 1933 on to try and find every listing of where Bill Wilson was. And they know the books from Bill's library and from Doctor.

Bob's library and from some of the other early members. And one of the books that was most popular with the Oxford group was I Was A Pagan by VC Kitchen. And I Was A Pagan is the story of Kitchen getting sober. And he was sober in the Oxford Group, He was not drinking in the Oxford group and his spiritual confessor, his spiritual adviser, his teacher that took him through those four steps was Sam Shoemaker with the Calvary Chapel in New York. So see if this rings a bell.

The Oxford group had a power I did not have. They said, if I would pay the same price, comply with the same conditions, and go through the same series of exceedingly simple steps. And the corresponding line that I found in the book that I enjoyed written 5 years later was lack of power that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live and it had to be a power greater than ourselves. BC Kitchen was part of the businessman's team of, the Oxford Group.

Now here's his mentor, Sam Shoemaker, in his book, this is from 1927 now, children of the second birth. One of the things that I thought because I was never taught and I never looked was that this concept of god as you understand him was something unique to something Burwell piped up with in that meeting on Clinton Street. I had no idea that in the Oxford Group, what it was that they were trying to transmit was is that the spiritual experience is exactly that. It is an experience. It is an experiment.

It is something that can happen if you only try it. So here he says to god as you understand him, so they prayed together opening their minds to as much of God as he understood, removing first the hindrance of self will, surrendering as much as he could of himself as he could to as much of Christ as he understood. In the beginning, we know only a little about ourselves, about who we are, about what our stories are. But as we go along, what it is that we find is is that we we know more and more about who we are. And it is my fervent prayer that what happens each day is is that I'm able to actually see the hand of god moving in my life.

Something that I could never do before I got sober. So in the big book, on page 47, 5 years later, they say, when therefore we speak to you of god, we speak of your own conception of god. We used our own conception no matter how limited it was because it was their experience. This wasn't their opinion that no matter how little you believe that if you continued to do these things, that indeed your experience and understanding of god would grow. One of the fun things about reading the source material is is that the the 3rd step prayers, the surrender prayers are a lot more fun because they're not as formal.

And this is Kitchens' prayer from the Oxford group. Again, I was a pig in 1934. He said, I surrender thee my entire life, oh god. I've made a mess of it trying to run it by myself. You take it, the whole thing, and run it for me according to your will and plan.

I can understand that. You know, but but, you know, the way that Bill wrote about it 5 years later was, god, I offer myself to thee to build with and to do with as thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do thy will. What's happened is, is that a lot of this Oxford Group material has been lost, the copyrights have expired and it's gone into the public domain. And Bill Pittman who is one of our AA historians and archivists has put out through hazel done this, what is the Oxford Group and I really recommend it to anybody who's interested in where it is that we come from.

And I'll refer to it a lot on page 41, talking about, I don't know about you guys, but when it comes to sponsoring people or or sitting in another meeting hearing somebody talk about being stuck on the 3rd step, this is what the Oxford Group believed about step 3. It's a simple decision put into a simple language spoken aloud to god in front of a witness at any time in any place that we have decided to forget the past in God and to give our future into his keeping, nothing more need be added, nothing can be taken away. The Oxford Groupers believe that it was really important that you do this in front of another person who was a changed person. Because as they said, sometimes when you sign a contract, the signature of the witness is more important than the signature of the guy who signed in the contract. And so in AA, we, in the big book, we talk about we found it desirable to take the spiritual step with an understanding person.

The wording of course is quite optional, so long as we voiced it without reservation. The Oxford group guys had great titles to their books. I mean, if you wanted to sell a book in 1927, AJ Russell had a great one. Right? For sinners only.

And it sold like hotcakes. It sold like hotcakes. All kinds of people grabbed it. Now in here he's referring to Frank Buckman and Frank Buckman was the founder of the Oxford Group. And tomorrow when I talk about the Oxford Group, I'll go into him in more detail, but he was an American.

He was a Lutheran minister from Pennsylvania, who in 1907 in Keswick, England was sitting after a year of going around Europe preaching and not having any success at all, was sitting listening to a woman who was a Salvation Army preacher, and what came loud and clear was is that he was the problem, that he was the problem, that it was his ego that was getting in the way of him being of maximum usefulness to God and to his fellows. And so the answer that he would give to people because when you're running across somebody who's really doing something and this man did a lot. In fact, I have to recommend this book On the Tail of the Comet by Garth Leans. It's really thick and it's a really fast read. It's the biography of Frank Buckman and it describes what it is that this man did, where it was that he went, who it is that he talked to, and it's absolutely spectacular.

It's one of the most inspiring things I've ever read. But anyway, so A. J. Russell got together, A. J.

Russell was the editor of the London Daily Mail's religion pages. And, one time, he asked Frank, he said, what book should I read to prepare for special work? In other words, going out and changing people, helping folks to surrender their character defects and find God. He told me to prepare myself as I was the great problem. I must make sure that everything was right and clean between myself, my neighbors, and god.

And, of course, that same sentiments, described so well in a vision for you and that the answers will come if your own house is in order, but obviously you can't transmit something you haven't got. See to it that your relationship with him is right and great events will come to pass for you and countless others. And, again, I'm not saying that Bill took a look and and and, you know, he he had 6 books out and he was synthesizing it all. No. Not at all.

This man was a marvelous, marvelous, dynamic thinker, but these are the things that fed him. See, it's what's the roots? Where are where is it that that that this soil brought forth this magnificent thing that we call Alcoholics Anonymous. Now the Oxford Group, when they referred to changing lives, the way that they spoke about it was they were committing soul surgery. That every one of our souls had little parts that were dark and diseased, and if you could go in and cut those out, then everything had worked.

And that's how they referred to working these steps. So, H. A. Walter who was one of Buckman's earliest companions actually traveled around the missionary world in the late teens early 20s going to China, India, South Africa, South America and what they would do is they would get together with people who were missionaries and they would try and get them to work these four steps so that they could have the vital spiritual experience, so they were able to transmit a living acting message in these places that they were being missionaries. So Walter writes, following conversion, the new convert must be sent to work with others.

He should understand from the first that his prayer and bible study will ultimately become burdensome if he regards them only as fundamentally and inevitably the means to his own spiritual development, and not the means to his successfully serving others. In our book, we we express it this way that our very lives as ex problem drinkers depend upon our constant thoughts of others and how we may help meet these needs. In other words, when we're asking the Oxford Group people believed that when they were asking god to help them, that they were only asking for help so that they could be more useful for the God, not so that they could become more wonderful people. In more about alcoholism in We Agnostics, the words get kind of flowery sometimes, but there are a few points where it gets very direct and I love this point that comes from, I believe it comes from this line of thinking that Sam Shoemaker espoused in in his book, Confident Faith. This was written in 1932, 7 years before Bill wrote the book Alcoholics Anonymous.

He says religion is a risk. Faith is not sight, it is a high gamble. There are only 2 alternatives. God is or he isn't. You leap one way or the other.

How can you be stuck on the 3rd step? In the big book, I like where it says we had to fearlessly face the proposition that god is everything or god is nothing. And who's going to do these spiritual exercises? Not somebody who's kind of agreeing with it. It's that they believe that each person should be brought to some kind of a crisis of faith in their lives.

And we'll talk about that more with the 5 c's tomorrow. Having done the spiritual steps, having having made the confession or having shared with another Christian as they called it, having gone out and made amends, what happens is is that this new power starts to flow. And then I was a Pagan, VC Kitchen describes it as, I came not only into consciousness of God, but into usefulness for God. I was able to do through god's help what no man has ever been able or ever will be able to do for himself. And, of course, Evie's great line to build in, in the big book was that my friend sat before me and made the point blank declaration that God had done for him what he could not do for himself.

That particular line time and time and time again in just about everybody's testament, testimony is what comes out, that god was doing for them what they could not do for themselves. They were very big about proving spiritual principles And, one of the ways that that Kitchen talked about it in I was a pagan was I was able to supplement the all important why of life with the still more important how of living. I was able to begin really solving my own problems for the first time in my experience was given the power to begin helping others. And the way that that it's described in our book is that this is the how and the why of it. First of all, we had to stop playing god.

It didn't work. Next, we decided hereafter in this drama of life that god was going to be our director. Now the whole concept of sin is is really, really interesting. Buckman always mentioned that he believed that sin was what separated someone from god, any activity that separated someone from god or from his fellows. And as my friend, Bill c always says, he says that he believes that god lives in the space between you and me.

H a Walter in soul surgery, he says that sins are the symptoms of spiritual sickness. No one will ever realize to what extent the holy spirit can work through the spiritual to alleviate the troubles of the mental and the physical. This is what these guys believe. This is what Bill and Bob and Bob Dobson and all the people who were sober that first 78 people that 1st year, that's what their experience was that the way they described it was they have not only been mentally and physically ill, they've been spiritually sick and when the spiritual malady is overcome they straightened out mentally and physically. The Oxford Group believed that there was no problem a human being could have that these steps could not address.

And all that we've done is we've taken the Christianity part of it, toned it down, and exactly that has happened. We have 100 and 100 of different fellowships all over the planet who use these steps to address every kind of problem that people can have. Now, one of the other fun things is is that you, you know, you read the big book and and and then you start reading the source material and what happens is, is that you find that everything like the formatting of the, inventories are right there and that all that people were doing when they were laying the big book out was taking the messages that they'd received and making it in such a way that they could transmit it to others. And one of the fun things, you know, you sit around, you go, how can a bunch of drunks hang out with, at least from the literature, looks like a bunch of radical Jesus freaks. But what were these people talking about in their meetings?

One of the things that they used to do at their their Oxford Group House parties is they'd get somebody who is kind of a well known figure, maybe a sports person or a race car driver or a politician or a noted society housewife and they'd get up and first they talk about what it was that their life used to be like and what their life was like now. And now this is the kind of person this is BC Kitchen again, He says, in my own life, I most liked myself, liquor, tobacco, and almost every other stimulant, narcotic, and other form of self indulgence. My man. Anything which gave me pleasure possessions, power, position and applause or pumped up my self esteem to be left largely to myself and my wife because of the comforting and complimentary way that she treated me. And then he says and and then so what they do is they they talk about what they liked most and then they talk in their former life about what they hated most.

And and he puts, I hated most poverty for myself, prohibition, right on brother, work, people who disapproved or tried to interfere with me, and any betrayal of my inner thoughts or emotions. I like these guys. Now, so he has the spiritual experience, he works the steps, he starts changing others and what is it that he finds that he most like? So then they talk about what it's like now. What is he like most now?

God, time alone with god, the fellowship of the loving Jesus Christ, the stimulation of the holy spirit and the wisdom of god's guidance. My wife because of the things God now enables us to do for each other, communion with others who are trying to lead the same kind of Christ centered life, and the witnessing to all of what Christ has come to meet for me mean for me. Now when I go to meetings, what do I hear? I hear about god. I hear about sometimes met with god.

I hear about the fellowship, our fellowship. I hear about what it is that fires people up about AA, about what happens when you go out and you actually start working the steps, working the 12 step and really helping others to see the light come on in people's eyes. And, you know, I happen to like my wife because she goes to meetings with me and because she prays and she meditates with me in the morning and because we've got an AA household where the phone rings early in the morning and late at night. And there is nothing that I enjoy more than communion with others who are trying to lead the same kind of sobriety centered life, active, rabid, charged up, dynamic, enthusiastic, alcoholic. And now he says that he hates most again, this is kitchen.

He hates sin because the, and self because I is the middle letter of sin, sins that separate me from god, sins that separate me from people, anything that falls short of god's plan for me. And, of course, here's our format. It's exactly this, you know, when we're talking about the resentments, you know. Mister Brown, his attention to my wife, he told my wife about my mistress, my innermost thoughts and feelings. Brown may get my job at the office.

And, again, the the the fear the fear the fear the fear the self esteem, pride, personal sex relations. This was the thing that fired me up the most when I saw the old Oxford Group game and our inventory and could see just exactly what it was that the guys actually did. VC Kitchen says, and I was a pagan, I also know that these ambitions, They were drained out by stopping the self effort to get rid of them by letting god take hold to do the job and putting god first in our lives, in my life. I love the fact that these people had shortcomings, these guys had problems that kept calling on and going on and going on and going on. And one of the wonderful dynamic things that happens when you take a read of, like the life of Sam Shoemaker, there there are 2 really good books.

1 is, I Stand by the Door, which is his life by his wife, Helen Shoemaker. And another one that's really a kick is a new light on alcoholism by my friend, Dick Bee, that goes through all of his writings and does a lot of this type of comparison work. But Shoemaker always talked about the fact that he kept having these problems, that his problems just didn't go away. And so in our big book, the way that we talk about it, are are we ready to now let god remove from us all the things that we admitted are objectionable, and can he take them all, everyone? If we still cling to something we will not let go of, we ask god to help us to be willing.

So even though when you read some of this stuff, it seems very, you know, hardball Christian, it's also extremely practical that it's the willingness and it's the continuing to grow along the spiritual lines that gives us the help. Walter mentions in Soul Surgery that the the ultimate definition of sin is that it's selfishness, that the sinful mind is the unsocial, the antisocial mind. And in describing our problem, in describing alcoholism, how does Bill describe our problem? Selfishness, self centeredness, that we think is the root of our problem, driven by a 100 forms of fear, self delusion, self seeking, and self pity. It's all right there.

These are the steps that we took. Samuel Moore Shoemaker was the rector at Calvary Chapel, and, he was there from 1925 to 1951. And he worked closely with, Frank Buckman from 1918 to 1925. They went all over the globe carrying this message of working these steps and having a personal spiritual experience by removing the things that blocked you from your usefulness from God and his fellows. He was the guy who, when Bill had his spiritual experience a couple of weeks before he went into town's or a couple of days before he went into town's hospital the last time, he was down at Sam's Church, the Calvary Mission, and Bill got seized and he went running down and went to the aisle and he gave his life to Christ, and he said he did it in a blackout.

He didn't remember anything about it. He was jumping for Jesus. Yes. He was jumping for Jesus is one of the ways that he put it, singing old camp songs, and he was just mortified. He was absolutely sure that somebody was gonna say, you know, the next time he was trying to get a job on Wall Street, oh, yeah.

I remember you. You were down at the mission. Anyway, Shoemaker, when Bill had his spiritual experience, what he did with that was he was given by his friend, Debbie Thatcher, the book, the variety of of, religious experience by William James. And, and in that, there's a wonderful piece that is, SH Hadley's conversion and liberation from from his drink obsession. And there at the cavalry mission and in the Oxford Group meetings that were happening at the Calvary Chapel at the time.

There were about 15 guys, all whose drink obsession had been lifted by working these steps. So when Bill comes out of the hospital, he's got a bunch of fellow travelers, not only his buddy, Ebby, and his buddy, Roland, but he's got VC Kitchen, he's got Chef Cornell, he's got all working with drunks, trying to get them to find Jesus so that they can have the spiritual experience. Bill gets into The Oxford Group, And The Oxford Group at the time into the late 30s is starting to morph from not only a personal religious transformation, but into a group called moral rearmament. And moral rearmament was going out to change drunken nations, not drunken people. And Frank Buckman had been sober enough drunks since before Bill Wilson had his first drink, and he wasn't that interested in them.

And Bill had this driving desire to save drunks, to work with alcoholics. And all the pressures from the Oxford group, all the people that he was going to meetings with kept saying, Bill, that's all very good, but you were a millionaire. We need you to go out and be part of the business team and tackle American business to save this nation's financial outlook by sharing Christian spiritual principles. And Bill was just all he wanted to do is grab guys off bar stools, take them home, you know, try and get them sober, talk to him about the light. Sam Shoemaker believed in Bill's calling.

And once to twice a week, from the time he got out of town's hospital, whenever he was in New York, that first couple of years, he was spending time with Sam Shoemaker. And Sam was teaching him, going through the steps, And this is the guy that Sam was the single most prolific author of Oxford Group material. And he's teaching them these concepts. As they're starting to write the book, Bill goes to Sam and we have this on 2 authorities that he goes to Sam and he says, Sam, we need to take these 4 steps. He's not talking about the 6 that they were using, but your 4 steps, and we need to break them down so that they're more palatable to alcoholics.

Will you do that for us? And Sam said, no. He said, this has to be written by an alcoholic, and you're the man to do it. There are some wonderful literature. You know, this all this stuff that I've I've read and that I'm sharing with you, it's all around.

You know, it's just a matter of of of seeking it out. But one of the pieces that that we have in our grapevine is an article that Sam Shoemaker wrote for the grapevine in 1963 and it was supposed to be published and it actually was published in January of 'sixty four. But Shoemaker died before it was the thing was actually published. It was published posthumously. But what it says in the long form is the name of the article was those 12 steps as I understand them.

He says the 12 steps are a pile of wisdom and experience is packed into the 12 steps. I have even compared the inspired 40 minutes during which those steps were given to the founder to the 10 tables of law that were given to Moses on Mount Sinai. This is from the man who Billy Graham said was the single most dynamic preacher of his day. Many skeptical folks are inclined to say, oh, there is a this is a gathering of previous experience. It didn't come all at once.

I have no doubt about the previous experience entering in, but I know that there are inspired hours when people have been able to gather and put down a compendia of truth in a fashion that can only be called inspiration. It is an hour when men's powers are at high pitch intention when the spirit of god hovers near making suggestions. I doubt that the 12 steps that have changed the course of existence in so many thousands of lives could have been the product of a mere and insight and observation. They can and will bless anyone, alcoholic or not, who will follow through and be obedient to them. They are morally and spiritually and psychologically and practically as sound as they can be.

They will offer a way out for many a person who knows nothing personally about alcoholism. They will point the way to those who have known it and lost it. Thank God for the 12 steps and for a man wise enough and open enough to god and to the observation of human experience to receive these truths and to transmit them to the world. That's what I got. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Questions? Repeat the question. Yeah. I'll repeat the question.

In what he could achieve in their mind side. Do you suppose that that that attitude that internal attitude towards him was one of the things that caused them to slowly move off on their own. The question is, did Bill Wilson's unwillingness to become what they called it was being maximum. You're either maximum for the Oxford Group or you won't. Did Bill Wilson single mindedly about working with drunks?

Was that what moved them away gradually from the Oxford Group? And the fun answer about that is, is that they basically got booted out in New York. It wasn't a matter of, like, in in in Cleveland where they left. They were just they weren't playing the game, and they weren't invited back. And they realized it, and so they they went home.

And there's a marvelous quote where, guys talking about Frank Buckman, the founder of the Oxford Group and VC Kitchen and Garrett Sterling sitting around at a Oxford Group House Party with Bill trying to convince him to get in shape and get with the program and yet he wouldn't. Was Shoemaker part of that? No. Shoemaker was his supporter through all this. Shape and get with the program.

And yet he wouldn't. Was Shoemaker part of that? No. Shoemaker was his supporter through all this. Shoemaker has a falling out with Buckman also.

Well, yeah. But that's another that's Schumacher having another a falling out with Buckman. That's an entirely different story in this and another thing. But the fact was is that Shoemaker believed in the vision and believed in the validity of Bill's spiritual experience. Yes.

What happened to the Oxford group? The Oxford group is now normal is moral rearmament and it has washing offices in Washington DC and, and London and moral rearmament. And, you remember up with people? Yeah. Up with people was a was a program that came out of the Oxford group.

What Buckman tried to do, and I'll talk about this more tomorrow, is he tried to get in the mid thirties and late thirties when he saw what was happening and that the war was coming. He tried to get the heads of government all over the world to work the Oxford Group steps. And what happened is the reason they called it moral rearmament was that they believed that these steps were the revolutionary response to communism and to fascism. And it is true. Yeah.

Well, do they still come to? No. They they they they in 1938, they changed their name to moral Morrill Rearmoreman. I have one more question. Yeah.

What time are you speaking tomorrow? Tomorrow, we are speaking I'm speaking at 3:30 to 5. And we're going to be over in the, Newport room. And, there's another meeting that's going on before that. And then after that, I'm gonna start talking after the the service meeting is done.

May I ask? Yes? Was there Was there any form of getting sober before the Oxford Group? There have been some other movements. There was the Washingtonians that was a politically driven temperance movement, during the around the time of the Civil War, just before the Civil War.

They lasted for about 15 years. At one time, because they let everybody in, because they had an agenda of of sobering up the world, over 20% of the population of the United States actually was a Washingtonian member. Yeah. Yes, sir. So the so the president, out of 12 steps, when they left the offices Mhmm.

When they wrote the 12 steps as we know them today. Because they focus on an individual and focus on the world. If they have any problems from the oxygen, Let me see if I have this right, because I have to repeat the questions. The question is, did the personal work with alcoholics in Alcoholics Anonymous bring a schism or a split with the Oxford Group as their agenda went worldwide? And I would say that, no, no, not during this particular moment when the steps were written.

When the steps were written, when the book was written, the gang was still pretty much part of, the Oxford Group. They were members of the business Bill was a member of the businessman's team. He actually was going out and and doing some stuff with them that they wanted. But what happened is is that as time went and, there was there was a real split because of the as the war effort started in the United States, was was the Oxford group pacifist? Was it was it pro war?

Was it you know, so again, it's it's it's a fascinating thing. This was a true spiritual movement that was led by people that were busy changing folks on a on a tremendous level all over the world all over the world. And they did it one soul at a time. But as the war started coming and as fascism and communism became more and more prevalent, they started to say, look. This is why we're doing this.

We need to we need to be aware that this is this is what the enemy is. It's godlessness. Yes. What is the term? What is the driven movement in Washington?

What do you mean by that? I really don't feel qualified to speak about the Washingtonians a lot because for the purposes of my discussion, I wanna I wanna limit it just to the to the Oxford group and I haven't done the the the study about that. But from the beginning, as I understand the Washingtonians literally from after about their 6th or 7th meeting, what they were doing was is they were working for alcohol reform, which I consider consider to be a political movement. And they, in fact, if you want, it's really fun. I don't know how many of you enjoy reading the speeches of Abraham Lincoln, but one of his his speeches is to the Washingtonian group, and he talks about alcohol affects you guys different than it affects me.

Why is it so important to you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Casey.

Say thank you, Casey. My question is, how many actual people were involved in those built the book? Is he The the the question is about the actual writing of the big book and and and how it went. The format was basically along the lines of 3 books, for sinners only, I was a pagan, and, the varieties of religious experience. Those were the 3 things that they were that Bill was looking at as as they wanted something that that spoke to what people were buying contemporarily.

Now, as I have been told and as our literature says, what happened is is that Bill would write the book, what we know is the 164 pages. He would send it to Bob. Those guys would check it out and then it would go back to Bill and they'd and they'd go through the New York. The editing of the big books really interesting. Shoemaker was, Bill would go and actually share this stuff with Shoemaker before he sent it off to Bob, because he wanted to make sure that he was not impinging on Christian principles.

And he'd sit there and he'd and he'd read it, and and and the, the quote is Sam would nod his head and say, sounds like good old fashioned Christianity to me, Bill. And Bill would say, it's almost too good to be true, isn't it? So he was he was kind of he was the he was Bill's sponsor, as far as, you know, his his spiritual growth. And and one of the wonderful things we're we're not really sure about this, but but we found again, with all the historians and everything, we know that the Oxford Group was now I'm taking the talk from from later, but the Oxford Group was in Akron in 1933. We also know now that they were also the businessmen team was also there in 'thirty four.

In 'thirty four, at the meetings that Anne and Bob were at and all the folks were were at. So, I mean, the the way that the information flows back and forth, I mean, it's a very small society. The country is not that large. They're all reading the same things. The same folks are going through and doing things.