The Biblical Roots of Alcoholics Anonymous – Dick B.

Welcome to the Oxford Group. In case you're wondering how to follow this along, what we did mostly this morning was to cover the materials that are in this book, The Good Book and The Big Book, Biblical Roots of Alcoholics Anonymous. And this afternoon we're going to start out with material is covered largely in this book, Designed for Living, the Oxford Group's Contribution to Early AA. And we're going to spend a couple of hours on it because, as I said, my own view is that Bob and Bill were telling the truth and that they told two different facets of the same story. When Dr. Bob said we got our basic ideas from the Bible, I think you might agree by now that we did. And Bill always wanted to steer clear of the Oxford group in later years, so he tended to talk about Sam Shoemaker and called him their American leader, which Sam wasn't. What Sam was was the most distinguished American leader in the American contingent, and we'll talk about that more when we talk about sam shoemaker. But Bill said as the years went by, He finally, and we'll read this in a little bit, said, We got all of our ideas, all of the principles from the Oxford group. And we'll go into that. The Oxford group got a bad rap for at least four reasons. And probably the earliest one was in connection with Princeton University. We'll talk about the founder in a moment. but he went down and joined Shoemaker at Princeton and he used to take some of these Princeton lads through their fifth step and he extracted some interesting sexual information from them and eventually the president of Princeton University in effect banned him from Princeton. And that was way back in the 1920s but it was, you know, it carried an opprobrium with it and they never let the people forget that. And it's like my own little sordid career when I appeared in the newspapers. I'm very well aware that newspapers have morgues and you come back 10 years later and they'll say there's that Dick B who comma in 19X did so-and-so. So, you know, Frank Bookman carried this past with him and Time and Newsweek and so on never failed to mention those things as the years went by. And it was difficult. We'll have some things to say about the Oxford group, but that was item A. And then item B was in effect... Well, I guess B and C are about the same. in the in the late 1930s we were preparing for war and franklin delano roosevelt was very anxious to get us involved in the war abroad and there were some americans that weren't that crazy about the idea and part of the argument was that communism was a major threat and that hitler was not that big a threat and i was saying i think to aussie do you remember no i was good i guess i was it to my college professor friend do you remember the pictures of neville chamberlain waving the white paper when he went to munich and said peace in our time he thought he'd made peace with adolf hitler well he was a more formidable adversary than they thought and it turned out that hitler was the major problem, but worldwide communism was considered by many from after 1918 and World War I to be the major threat. And part of it was its godlessness. So Buchmann made a statement to the press, which they never let him forget, and it was, thank God for a man like Hitler. Well, in 1938 and 39, you didn't say that kind of thing. And in the context, the context was, you know here is the only answer to worldwide widespread communism i'm not defending the man i'm just saying i that was a period when i was emerging as a student and i can relate to the to the thing and so that has result one of my sponsees has a famous sponsor and he said dick's writing books on the oxford group he says the oxfor group bookman was a nazi well you know this is just baloney, but that's how tarnished publicity generates that unruly member of the tongue. And so that was the second item. We might as well call a spade a spate. The third was much softer. Clarence Snyder was bringing some Roman Catholics down from Cleveland to the Oxford group meetings at T. Henry's house, and there was a priest in Cleveland that was basically saying this is a Protestant organization and you can't go there and it's said that he threatened them with excommunication and Clarence was very disturbed about this and he went to Dr. Bob and he said these Catholics cannot come and Bob basically said, you bet they can't they either get the recovery the way it works or they don't come And so Clarence announced on May 10th of 1939 that the next night there was going to be a meeting for alcoholics only in Cleveland, Ohio. And the next day, the next evening, he held his first meeting and Dr. Bob and some of the troops came up there and raised the dickens about it. It was very unpleasant. But many Catholics will say that there wouldn't be any Roman Catholics in AA today if it hadn't been for ClarenCE basically taking a stand that there had to be a meeting for alcoholics only. And they took the name from the book, Alcoholics Anonymous, and Clarence himself never escaped the opprobrium of saying, I am the founder of AlcoholicsAnonymous, and he said that for the rest of his life. And in one sense he was, because there hadn't been any AA meetings or fellowship as such. So that was a little problem with the Oxford group. and the last was when Sam Shoemaker kicked Frank Buchman out of Calvary House in New York. Calvory House was adjacent to, still is adjacent to Calvry Church, and that had been virtually the American headquarters of the Oxford Group, and for reasons that we don't particularly need to go into, Shoemaker and Buchman had a falling out, And basically, Sam Shoemaker said, take yourself and your belongings and leave. And that caused immense bitterness, which even persists today. There are some beautiful people. I was sitting down in Florida with Jimmy Newton and his wife and Dr. Shoemaker's daughter was there with us. We were going over the journals and she looked at Jimmy, who's 91. I said he was 92. He's 91 and Ellie was 94. And she said, which side were you on? And Jim said, we were on the side of the road. I loved him for that. But there was this tremendous bitterness because it really split the Oxford goop wide open. And most of the Oxford Goopers went with Buchman on the theory that better stick with the team than no team at all. And so Shoemaker went on to do a great deal more writing and be a famous church man and radio show, which we'll talk about later. And Buchmann went on to do some significant things in the world, among which might have been the reconciliation of the Germans and the French after World War II, using these principles of restitution and forgiveness. So what was the Oxford Group? Well, it was founded by Frank N. D. Buchmann, a Lutheran minister who was from Allentown, Pennsylvania. And its essential idea was life-changing. And there's a long story, and I don't think we need to go into much of it, but it's amply laid out in endless Oxford Group books. And you can find them listed in almost all of my books in the bibliography. Really, the Oxford Group principles, people are scurrying around now collecting Oxford Group Books and so forth, and half the books they collect are not all that relevant because the real question for me is, what did the AAs read? Not what did The Oxford Groupers write? but if you want to know the story of Frank Bookman there's an excellent book that was recommended to me by Frank M our archivist in New York and it's called On the Tale of a Comet and it was written by a man who's worked with me on my books he's dead now but it's a very thorough study of the whole life of Frank Booksman and the Oxford Group movement it's colored of course by the appeal that the Oxford Group had to the author, Garth Lean. To make a long story short, Buchman's basic story was that he had operated a Lutheran hospice and he'd gotten into a scrape with six trustees and he left with a resentment and he went to England and there were some famous religious conferences there called the Keswick Conferences and he was a member of the Keswik Conferencing and he worked there and he came to a little church nearby where there was a Salvation Army worker preaching and she was preaching on the cross. I believe her name was Jessie Penn Lewis. She might have even been a daughter of General whatever his name was, the head of the booth who was head of The Salvation army. This immensely affected Buchmann. He had a sense of his own inadequacies and the transforming power of Christ, and the important thing was that he felt, I've got to go and do something. And he wrote a little poem from an old Christian hymn, When I surveyed the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died, I pour contempt upon my pride, and blah, blah, bla. And this is quoted over and over and again in Oxford Group literature. But what he came to see was that his pride had been more important to him than loving these gentlemen that he didn't love. So he sat down and he wrote letters of apology to all six people. And as we find, I don't think any of them answered him. But he cleaned up his side of the street. And this became a major item in Oxford group thinking. Restitution, making amends. There were other important things in Bookman's life. He picked up the idea of the four absolutes. They come from way back, we'll talk about that briefly. They were said to be the teachings of Jesus, the essence of the teachings of Jesus and we'll explore that briefly. So he kind of picked up baggage as he went along and one piece was restitution. Other pieces were certainly the sovereignty of God, the importance of the Bible. He was a tremendous Bible student and believer. he did a lot of personal work in the YMCA and took his cue from some YMCEA workers. He also learned from an evangelist the importance of quiet time, and he began observing what the YMCAA had observed for years, Morning Watch it was called. And during that time there was Bible study, prayer, listening, just getting quiet with God. I became a major Oxford group tenant and survives in AA today. You can recognize it in the 11th step, second portion of it. There were also the five C's. They're covered in a book. It's really rather easy to read about the Oxford group if you just know what you're doing. This little book was read by Dr. Bob. It's stuffed in the back of Ann Smith's workbook at Stepping Stones. It's called Soul Surgery. The first time I heard that expression in an AA meeting, and I've only heard it once, I thought how bizarre, soul surgery and Bookman was known as the soul surgeon he cut sin out of people's lives and he did it by a process called the five C's and as we'll see those five C'S became the heart of AA's change program life changing program and they were laid out by this gentleman who died he was trying to write the book with Bookman and a Yale Divinity professor and the Yale Divinity professor died and he died and his parents published this book called Soul Surgery and it's published, this copy is published by the Oxford Group and it first came out in 1918 or 19. So each one of these little things in the Oxford group fit in a group of ideas and I don't think, I'm not sure that the Oxford people themselves had ever pulled together their beliefs. They espouse and still do the four absolutes sort of a lot of AAs in the Midwest. They espouse the ideas of the five C's, confession, conviction, conversion, continuance, and something, confidence. And they don't even talk about that particularly anymore. They certainly live quiet time. Every Oxford group person that I know today, and I know several of them that go way back, observes quiet time. They're big on guidance. So these were some of the ideas that came along and then Buchmann about 1921 decided to abandon his YMCA college Hartford Theological Seminary connections and quote change the world. So he gathered around him a group of people and they called themselves a first century Christian fellowship And they called themselves that because a lot of their, they did not have a church. Their practices were in many ways akin to those described in the Book of Acts and whether they were misdescribing themselves or not, in any event, that's what they called themself until 1928 when a group of them went to South Africa on a life-changing mission and some reporters, there were about six of the seven people were from Oxford and so they called him the Oxford Group and they kind of liked that. Bookman liked the name, and they retained that name along with a first century Christian fellowship until about 1938. And because there was so much pro-war thinking going on and because there were so many people and because it was a group called the Oxford Movement, I'm not even sure that it was Oxford Movement. It was Oxford something, but it was at the university. And they said something about we will not die for country or king. And the pacifism was not very popular in England, and it was not Very popular in America. So the word Oxford itself had something of a stigma attached to it. And in the meantime, Bookman was believing that if he could carry forth the ideas, the Christian principles, to Hitler and Mussolini, and so he gave Mussolino a copy of his book, Life Changers. It didn't seem to have much effect, but anyway, that was his idea. So he began espousing the idea of world changing through life changing. And he talked a lot, and these are in Lois' Oxford notes, it's kind of interesting. God directed world with God directed nations and God directed people. And this was, if that could be brought about, he thought the world would be changed. And it would be change by individual work. One person changing the life of another who changes the life of another, and this, as you may guess, had an immense effect on AA thinking. Oxford group people, as we'll see in a moment, had some concepts that directly spilled over into AA. Well, what did the Oxford group believe in? Their principles, they said, were the principles of the Bible. This is a little pamphlet written by one of Sam Shoemaker's buddies called The Principles of the Group by Sherwood Sunderland Day. And it says the principles of the Oxford group are the principles of the Bible. So that's why I say it's not difficult to say our roots are biblical. You just have to close your eyes and say something else. So, that's one pamphlet that describes seven principles. Soul Surgery describes five, the five C's. There's an interesting little pamphnet called How Do I Begin? and it's written by Helen Viney and it talks about it's an experiment we picked up on that idea there are four tests the four absolutes write them down you know what do we do in the fourth step we list our resentments our fears and blah blah blah the power behind it and a decision for life third step idea a God controlled world and then he lists in the back of his pamphlet and these are some important ones if you want to know what to read. I've read all of these and put them in my books, but For Sinners Only was widely read by Dr. Bob and people in Accra. Life Began Yesterday by Stephen Foote, a Britisher, was very popular in the Oxford group, both on the East Coast and the West. I Was a Pagan was written by Bill's friend Victor Kitchen, who was an advertising executive, and his story reads very much like Bill's story. And What Is the Oxford Group? was writtenby a Roman Catholic, but it's a very good description of some of the Oxford Group ideas. And then When Man Listens was written by Cecil Rose, and each one of these things describes a particular attitude of the Oxford Group. When man listens, obviously, is listening for God. What is the Oxford group is a description of the four absolutes and sharing and surrender and some of those ideas. I was a pagan is a story of how a life was changed. Life Began Yesterday is a story of how life was changed. And for Sinners Only, it was a description of many of the leaders, Sam Shoemaker and others, and what they believed and what was involved. There's a little pamphlet called The Quiet Time. And if I get around to it, my next book will be on The Quiet Times because it's directly relevant to what we do in AA today and it describes a lot of the biblical principles. The first verse is, be still and know that I am God, Psalm 46.10. And then it talks about guidance, and it's a tiny little pamphlet, but it was a guide to them in what they did. Then there's a book by Thornton Dewsbury, who was a distinguished Oxford Group theologian, called Sharing. And the Oxford Group had an idea called Sharing for Witness and Sharing for Confession. Both of those ideas are directly involved in AA. Sharing for witness is what we do when we share our experience, strength, and hope, and then they use that expression. And sharing for confession is what мы делаем в пятом степе. This is a little pamphlet explaining that. This lady is still alive. Eleanor Napier Ford is married to Jimmy Newton, and she wrote a book in 1928 really called The Guidance of God, and it describes how God through the centuries has guided people and met their needs and this too was published by the Oxford Group. Another one called How to Find Reality in Your Morning Devotions was not written by an Oxford grouper but it says the word of God, the Bible the power of God prayer the guide of God the Holy Spirit and this was much read as a guide to morning devotions and a final one that I just brought with me is called Vital Touch with God, How to Carry on an Adequate Devotional Life and it's a description of the morning watch and what it involved. Those are the pamphlets. What did they do at the Oxford Group? Well there were a lot of interesting descriptions. We're not in the dark about what Oxford Group meetings did. AAs described it, Oxford Group people described it reporters described it And essentially, they would have a quiet time, some Bible reading. They used some devotionals that we'll be talking about later on. They listened for the guidance of God. And, you know, I don't believe Oxford groupers were perfect. I have not found perfection in Alcoholics Anonymous or in the Oxford group. So it's become popular to make fun of the Oxford Group and saying they were always getting guidance for the next guy. Well, I'm sure that's true. I'm sure that there were people that say, God told me that you just screwed up. And this has become a popular way of making fun of the Oxford group. But if you really read their literature, you'll realize that they were trying to adhere to principles and they checked their own lives through a mechanism like the fourth step to see where they had fallen short. So checking, even though Bill Wilson made fun of it, was checking your own life. You checked it against the four absolutes. Am I unselfish? Am I unleving? And so on. And if you couldn't figure it out, you'd go to another believer and say, what do you think of my conduct? Not here's what I think of your conduct. Now did they go around taking somebody else's inventory? Well, I sure do an AA, I'm ashamed to say. And doubtless Oxford groupers did that. But it's not a valid statement of what their principles were. well those were their meetings and often their meetings were sharing experience strength and hope aa's biggest practical uh inheritance from the oxford group was stories storytelling and one oxford goop idea which is not bad for us to remember and it's it's in a literature give me news not views you know we're on solid ground when we're talking about our own experience were on somewhat shakier ground when I tell you what your experience should be. That's a hard one, but that was an Oxford Group idea. They had house parties which were, as Lois Wilson said, akin to a retreat and a convention. Bookman would often bring in some luminaries to tell their life-change stories, but they would have Bible studies. They would have hymn singing. they would have quiet times and stories, stories, stories. Always how their life had been changed by God. Their Bible beliefs have been summarized by two Oxford Group leaders as follows. Their basic Bible beliefs. The sovereignty and power of God the reality of sin the need for complete surrender to the will of God Christ's atoning sacrifice and transforming power the sustenance of prayer and the duty to witness to others and to that willard hunter who's an american student of the oxford group and member a little bit younger 80 said you have to add to that an experience of christ that transforms the individual beyond anything it is possible for one to do for oneself prompt restitution for personal wrongs revealed by the experience and an immediate chain reaction multiplier effect through sharing the experience with others. That's their summary of absurd biblical ideas. I think it can be much broader than that. Once again, I didn't bring what I wanted to bring, but we know what the Oxford groupers read. It's very easy to get astray, and I see lists all the time. People are spending money collecting books, and they're all listed in my bibliography. If you want to see every Oxford Group book I've ever been able to find that they've sent me and so on, they're there if you want a read-all, 250 or 300 of them. But we know what the Oxford Group people were considered to be the most important books and pamphlets. I have letters from them. The Calvary Evangel had a recommended list not only of Shoemaker's books but of soul surgery and for sinners only and when man listens and so forth. So if we want to know what the Oxford groupers themselves read to find out about themselves in those earlier days, we know enough of the books. And the complete list of them is in my Design for Living book. Where did they get their ideas? Well, when Bill Wilson said all of AA's ideas were borrowed, nobody invented AA, the same could be said of the Oxford Group. I don't think that Frank Buchmann ever claimed that he had evolved a theology or a religion or a scheme of, you know, there was no church. There was no membership. It was very much like AA in that sense. No membership roles, no dues. They were self-supporting through their own contributions and so on. But the ideas came primarily from evangelical Protestants in the 1800s. And there were a variety of them. There was a theologian at Yale Divinity School, Horace Bushnell. And one of the things that he propounded was God has a plan. Now it didn't originate with him. One man was quick to point out to me that St. Augustine had covered the same ground a few centuries earlier. So it was nothing unique with Bushnell but where they got it was from Horace Buschnell and they quoted him on it. Every man's life a plan of God. and this weighed heavily on early AAs Sam Shoemaker used to say God has a plan find it, fit in with it and this was a lot of the basic thinking of our steps remember on page 164 see that your relationship with him is right and great things will come to pass for you and countless others underlying it was an idea there was a relationship issue and man had to get tuned into that Dwight Moody was a Bible thumper from the word go, an evangelist in America and in England. And he was a strong believer in the Bible as the inspired Word of God in salvation and the importance of Christ of conviction and repentance and conversion and of making a decision. Those ideas spilled over and Bookman always attributed his ideas to these people. He met a congregational evangelist named F.B. Meyer, who wrote a book called The Secret of Guidance. And Meyer was big on quiet time and guidance, and he said to Buchman, have you set aside a time in your life each day to get quiet with God? And so this had an effect on how Buchman conducted his life from then on. He would have a quiet time, and we would talk about the secret of guidance. And he would read the word, and they would listen and pray. Very much affected Oxford Group practices and AA practices. Then there was Henry Drummond, who was a giant. He was a professor in Edinburgh. Moody picked up on him. And Drummond came up with a lot of ideas. 1 Corinthians 13, he wrote about that. He wrote about life-changing, about conversion experiences. Wrote a great deal about the will of God. A lot of the things that we either believe or ought to believe, perhaps can be found in Drummond's books. The will of God can be found in the Bible, he said. The universal will. And the particular will of god can be found by listening. These were strong Oxford group ideas. Drummond was also big on personal evangelism. One man working with another and changing him through the power of conversion. Then there's the whole four absolutes. A man that was connected with these people and later taught at Princeton was Robert E. Speer. And Speer wrote a little book, and he wrote a number of books, but the most important one for these purposes was called The Principles of Jesus. And one tiny little segment talked about Jesus had four absolute standards of perfection stemming from the idea be therefore perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect. And this became a thorn in Bill Wilson's side later on, but there was no idea that they were supposed to be perfect. The idea was that Jesus laid down these standards, and somewhere the Oxford groupers got the idea that Speer had extracted these four principles from the Sermon on the Mount, which he didn't. They can be found in the Serman on the Mountain, but at some point I hope I can read them with you, and they come from the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels and are confirmed elsewhere. And then there's William James. It had an immense effect on Sam Shoemaker, on Harold Begbie, who wrote a lot of the earlier Oxford Group books, and on Frank Buchman. And you ever heard the expression, the turning point? We stood at the turning part. We asked his protection and care with complete abandon. Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery. Well, William James said, the crisis of self-surrender is the turning point in any person's religious life. You've got to surrender. The Oxford groupers later converted that from an expression to Moody's, crucify the big I. And every now and then you'll hear somebody, I was so brain damaged for years in AA that I'd never, I'm trying to get rid of the ism in alcoholism. That's the big guy. you know and i'm why you know i thought there were 12 steps where did this come from and you hear this stuff you know it floats around the rooms and some of it is baloney and some if it isn't and some it's a combination of baloney and stuff that isn't but you hear it aas have their own language you know get rid of the ego tebow shoemakers i mean wilson's buddy wrote when the big guy becomes nobody now where do suppose he got that? Well, he was hardly a Bible thumper, but this idea of crucifying the big ego, the big I, became very important. This idea of self-surrender permeates AA thinking today in the third step, in the seventh step, and the daily surrender. Then there was John R. Mott, who was very, very important in the world's student movement. The whole country for a long time was in the grips of student evangelism and out of that came the YMCA and Mott went on to become the head of the world whatever student movement and MOTT had a lot to say about personal work Ann Smith quotes him he had a little bit of a story he had to say a lot about the morning watch He had a lot to say about the technique of one individual working with another. And then there was Henry Wright, a professor at Yale who taught divinity and taught Buchman. And he wrote a tremendous book called The Will of God, A Man's Life Work. And it talks about the Bible, it talks About Principles, it Talks About Four Absolutes. And many say that he was the most influential person in Frank Buchman's life. but actually if you look at his work he was quoting these various people that I'm quoting in short it was an eclectic thing the Oxford group was not dreamed up it wasn't invented by Frank Buchman it was a combination of a lot of ideas on conversion and principles from the Sermon on the Mount life changing ideas and those things came along finally to be pretty well represented in oxford group thinking and in oxfor group literature by the time bill wilson came trundling along and one of the interesting things is that you can read that one of my people that has become a friend of mine i have not met him personally but i sure have talked to him and written to him is ken belden and he lives in england and goes way back to the 1930s as do a lot of these people that have talkedto me and written to me. But you can read Belden's book, Meeting Moral Rearmament, or you can read his another book, I can't remember the name of it, just little pamphlets, and you can see that when they tell their life-changing stories, which all the Oxford group people do, they'll have all of these little elements in there that they observe a quiet time, that they study the Bible, if they try to practice these principles, they stand by the four absolutes, and so on. Well enough of the introduction to the oxford group there and people always ask too is there an oxford group today and that's a good question yes there is but you couldn't recognize it if you were trying to relate it to the 1930s the oxfor group is still a legal name in england a lot of the old timers there still belong to it they certainly study their bibles and have quiet time and talk about the four standards they've came to call them the four standards more than they did the four absolutes and they're involved in concepts of life changing but absent Frank Buchman who died quite a long time ago the kind of fervor and world publicity that was characteristic of the Oxford group is no more and there are there's a castle in Switzerland called co and it's virtually closed down they have meetings of world business executives once a year called the co-council and it is a long way from jesus christ a long away from the bible it tries to bring in people and talk pretty much about standards principles business ethics that kind of thing so it is active there and the old timers go and a lot of the young blood goes but it's hardly the little groups that characterized oxford group meetings there are no more harsh parties as far as i know in america we have a moral rearmament headquarters in washington and a new branch in uh in the united nations and their focus is primarily on restitution forgiveness and uh you know i'm happy to say that they say you ought to read dick's books I don't see much of what I write about in their literature, but they are not turned off with the principles and their own history. Maybe as AAs, they're not particularly turned off. They're also not doing a lot of reading of them, I would say. Okay, so what about the Oxford group? There were 28 ideas that influenced AA. And we're just going to run through them. Somebody said, dick no no alcoholic can remember 28 of anything and uh in the noon break i went upstairs and i was going to uh i was going put some aftershave lotion on my face and uh and it was brute and i drank it and i thought dick you are not well yet you know so for me to remember 28 principles when i couldn't observe the difference between brute and a mouthwash uh there's something to be said for simplifying this thing so what i did is to simplify it to eight general ideas and maybe you won't even remember the eight but um they do kind of represent the heart of eight major ideas that oxford group ideas that had their impact on aa let's talk first about god that terrible terrible word that'll scare the newcomers out what did the oxford group have to say about god well lots um did they call him a higher power nope one writer did did they call him no they did call him greater than ourselves often they often spoke of a power and as frank bookman used to say put the hay where the mules are so the oxford group concept was don't make this too doggone complicated whatever will lead these people in the right direction once somebody once said do you believe in god and he says you can call it rheumatism as long as people believe in it well i don't know that i subscribe to that but the oxfor goopers were solid and here was one writer who was a buddy of shoemakers he wrote a book that was very influential on a thinking on the national relations at princeton and he says the utter inadequacy of human speech to describe god leaves me almost inarticulate i can fall back on the many attributes such as omnipotent omniscient all-loving king of kings lord of lords creator judge father of mankind to suggest in finite terms something of the infinite so one whether one prefers to speak of god jehovah father supreme wisdom infinite power infinite power divine providence or any other designations i don't much care what does matter is the central fact of an identical experience a thinking to the core you know go through the action things and you will have an experience of god that was solid oxford group thinker thinking but were they talking about god almighty the fellow that's described in the Bible, you bet they were. They studied it, they read it, they called God Father, Creator. You'll find those terms in the big book. We may have wanted to bury God, but as I said, he's in there 400 times. And he's in there as Maker, Creator. Where did we get that? Did we get it from the Bible or the Oxford group? I don't think it makes much difference, but that's what they were talking about and thinking. Then there was the concept, God has a plan. and it was very common in the oxford group to talk about god's plan god has a specific life plan for every individual with definite accurate information for that individual if he wishes to see god's plans fulfilled lois wrote that in her oxford book notes and they said it came from jeremiah 7 23 obey my voice and i will be your god and ye shall be my people and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well unto you. I got a plan for you. Just obey it and everything's going to be hunky-dory. You can almost find that in page 164 of the big book. So God has a plan and man's chief end is to conform his life to God's will. Lots of Oxford Group writings about that. Man's chief ending ought to be to do the will of God and thereby I receive the blessings God promises to those whose lives are in alignment with His will. And Drummond had a whole thing that I won't take the time to read at length, but it says, Man asks, What am I here for? Hebrews 10 and 9 answers, Lo, I am come to do Thy will, O God. Man needs sustenance. Jesus responds, That strength comes from the Almighty, saying, My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me. Man needs society. Jesus said, For whoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same as my brother and sister and mother. Man needs to communicate. Jesus gave him the ideal prayer, Thy will be done. Man doesn't always need to pray, but sometimes to praise. Psalm 119.54 Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage. Oh, how I love thy law! It is my meditation all day. I delight to do thy will, O God. man needs education psalm 143 10 teach me to do thy will for thou art my god man is promised results when he asks for them first john 5 14 and 15 if we ask anything according to his will he heareth us and we know that we have the petitions we desire from him finally the will of god abideth forever he that do the willeth of the willof god abided forever 1 John 2.17 and then that one that we covered not everyone that saith unto me Lord, Lord shall enter into the kingdom of heaven but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven so what are we talking about when we're talking in AA about thy will be done and what is God's will it's a very definite Oxford group concept that things will go well when you track with God the concept was man's chief end is to do God's Will uh belief the oxford group started with hebrews 11 6 believe that god is he that cometh to god must believe that he is and that he's a rewarder of them that diligently seek him now for barbara and me we're going to talk about sin because she's coming to hawaii with me i just know it and sin was the oxford group's big deal first there was god but what was the problem sin said frank bookman sin said the bible and what did the oxfor groups call sin well it had a very profound influence on aa thinking they said sin is anything that blocks you from god and from your fellow man. And they said it over and over again in almost all of their literature. And you'll remember in the big book, three or four different times it talks about we had to get rid of what was blocking us. Blocking us. This idea that sin or our conduct that's not becoming in God's terms blocks us from God as a major concept of the Oxford group. In fact, the Steps originally talked about sin. They just took it out. Okay, so we have God. We have sin that blocks us from God. And then we have finding and discovering God. The Oxford group was big on may you find him now. Shoemaker wrote in his first book, what you need is a vital religious experience. You need to find God. You needs Jesus Christ who said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. So there was this idea that if you wanted to find God, you had to take some action. So we'll talk about this as finding or discovering God. And the starting point was surrender, the turning point. And this idea came directly from William James. You have to surrender yourself to God. You haveと make a decision to render yourself to God and there's just endless talk about that but here's what william james or here's shoemaker quoting james william james speaks with great emphasis upon this crisis of self-surrender he says that it is throwing of our conscious selves on the mercy of powers which whatever they may be are more ideal than we are actually and make for our redemption self-surrender has always been and always must be regarded as the vital turning point of the religious life so far as the religious life is spiritual and no affair of outer works and ritual and sacraments. One may say that the whole development of Christianity in inwardness has consisted in little more than the greater and greater emphasis attached to the crisis of self-surrender. A Bible verse that was quoted know ye not that to whom ye present yourself as servants unto obedience his servants he are to whom you obey whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness a lot of lingo but the gist of it was if you want to get to god you have to humble yourself and surrender well how did you do that well they had what they called soul surgery and the soul surgery was cut out the sin by the five c's and i won't belabor that because we'll be talking about them in a minute. And what was the result? Life change. The whole object of the Oxford group in finding God was you had to have a changed life. Your surrender was exemplified by the changed life, you cut out the sin and you got back to God. Hey, if you read page 29 of the big book, it says each of us in the personal stories mentions or describes in his own way and from his own point of view the way in which he established his relationship with God. The manuscripts used to read found or rediscovered God. So this Oxford group idea of God, sin that blocks you from God, and finding him through taking some action was certainly picked up in AA. Now what are the details? I call it the path. Rarely have we seen a person fail who has what? Thoroughly followed our path. So what is that path? Well, here are the steps we took which are suggested as a program of recovery. And what is the first step? A decision. This was big in the Oxford Group. The little book, what does the Oxford group said? The Oxford Group recommend our making the initial act of surrender to God in the presence of another person who is already a changed life, your beloved sponsor, or in the presence of a person who has for some time been an active Christian to make our surrender complete in the sight of God and man. It is a simple decision put into simple language spoken aloud to God in front of a witness at any time and in any place that we've decided to forget the past in God and give our future into his keeping. The Lord's Prayer is a perfect example of surrender to God. The essential point in studying the Lord's prayer as surrender in its complete form is to ask ourselves if we are really convinced that we believe in and act on every phase of our daily lives, thy will be done are the four little words that give us the crux to the surrender of our willpower. Now I'm going to come into this later, but they had a prayer which you can find in the language of the first step, oh lord manage me because i can't manage myself thy will be done oh lord manage me because i'm not doing a very good job and this was a very big deal in the oxford group the little manage me prayer bookman used to use that all over the world at calvary church they called it charlie's prayer ann smith put it in her journal now where do you suppose we got the expression our lives had become what yeah oh god manage me, things are screwed up. Okay, first step is a decision. Third step. Second concept, self-examination. Without burdening you with the details, they used to talk about making the moral test. And the moral text was look for your own problems. And guess what Frank bookman wrote the root problems in the world today are dishonesty selfishness and fear and he wrote in another place the disease remains the same what is the disease isn't it fear dishonesty resentment selfishness now i don't know how your big book reads but mine says we looked for resentment self-seeking dishonesty and fear and one distinguished historian said oh dick that was just common language of the day it may have been but frank boekman was using it and bill wilson was listening to it it was all over the place so the moral test was looking for these things and seeing how your life conformed to the four absolutes and interestingly enough you know the stuff that talks about we need to take a business inventory and discard the unsalable merchandise. I won't go into digging it out, but that word, those two ideas came from two Oxford Group writings. One was called The Eight Points of the Oxford Group and the other was When Man Listens. And they talk about taking a business inventory and discarding the unsalible merchandise. This is just so interesting that, you know, this is not just some general resemblance to the Oxford group. It's specific source material. So we had decision, self-examination, and confession. And Oxford language talks over and over again about James 5.16, confess your faults one to another, and it's very definitely founded on that, but there's a whole bunch of stuff on the importance of honesty, honesty, honesty, honestly in sharing. Then there was conviction, which I talked about, but it came from Frank Buchman's story that he had to realize he had the change, and he wrote this poem. When I surveyed the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died, my richest gain I count but loss and poor contempt on all my pride. The idea was getting rid of the big I. And it was described in one Oxford group. He, Bookman, caught a vision of the cross. He'd been convicted of sin in his life. He had made an unreserved surrender to Jesus Christ. He'd made frank confession and restitution. He'd witnessed to the renewing power of Christ. you know we're listening to the AA language it found its way into our book so we had self-examination confession conviction and then the new birth remember the little expression in the big book we were reborn there's just endless material on the necessity for a rebirth a change and in those days it was conversion to Christ that's what they were talking about there's a lot on that and then came restitution righting the wrong remember i said that um well here here it was one oxford group writers nothing is clearer in the gospels than the direct teaching that our relation to god cannot be right unless our relations with men are as right as we can make them and then bookman's biographer wrote if you will put right what you can put right god will put right what you can't put right restitution that was the action i had to take whenever i could do anything to right the wrongs i had done i must do it it has been said that you should do four things with sin hate it forsake it confess it and restore for it so this idea of restitution straightening things out fine to get straight with god step six and seven it's important to get straight with your fellow man eight and nine so that was a strong oxford group concept and then there was jesus christ the oxford goop had a million ways of little acronyms for christ one was jesus jesus exactly suits us sinners and a lot of little catch words that they had for it but the point was that they needed to turn to christ as a source of power the regenerating power in their lives about an hour you think the newcomer is leaving the room no well that's where we came from then there was this whole different thing continuance okay so you remember you know the ninth step ends with uh what amounts to a spiritual awakening the promises all these things that are supposed to be happening we will be amazed when we are halfway through then comes growth, continuance, growing in understanding and effectiveness. That was an Oxford Group idea, continuence. And it was sometimes called conversion. Well, what was that? Prayer, Bible study, guidance, group worship, and witness. Surrender goes on, said an Oxford group writer. It's not simply an initial act. It is a process carried deeper every day. We find out more of ourselves to give to God. and they're just endless writings on the importance of the day-to-day surrender. And one comment was, we have to surrender our temptations because they do have a way of accumulating. I remember I was baffled with Step 6 and 7 because I'd finally gotten to Step 10 and I didn't understand any of them. And I heard my first sponsor say, well, I asked God to remove all my character defects And he did. And I knew this guy. And I knew myself. And I thought, well if he did, you don't look like a very good example and in any event, what is the tenth step about? We've lost touch with our roots. Therefore it's difficult sometimes. Bill said, and pardon the male chauvinism in this statement, but six and seven, I believe he said, are the steps that separate the men from the boys. How? If you don't understand where they came from, you'll ask the same question, I hope, that I did. And then I asked my grand sponsor. I thought, I know I'll get the answer. And I accosted him and he was having a tough time in fairness to him as his father had just died. And I went up and I said, if in six and seven we've lost all of our character defects and they've been removed, what about steps 10 and 11? What do those two steps mean? and he says, hungry, angry, lonely, and tired. Well, I was still sick, but not stupid. And I thought, what is this man talking about? I don't think he'd ever been to the big book seminars. He was a big book thumper. But this is tough stuff. And if you're analytically oriented, which hopefully you're not, but I am, I wanted some answers. And it's so easy for me to understand some of the more biblical origins. Conviction. dick you got to change conversion okay change with the help of god but then it's your noggin that's the problem it's the noggin that'sthe problem so what are we working on in steps 10 11 and 12 the noggan the thinking process that'sthestuffthat has to be changed with the power of god so to me and i don't say that the oxford group handed us that solution but it's rather clear what they were talking about and why well because one of the biggest concepts in the Oxford group was called guidance. You can't do it alone, you can't change alone, and you can' t walk alone and you don' t have to. And the Oxford Group were big on guidance. All of our concepts in the language of the 10th step and certainly the substance of the 11th step are walking with God. We need His help. We need his direction. How many times does a big book contain a prayer? Well, I've listed them all in here asking god for guidance and direction we don't have to do it alone can't do it alone and that's oxford group thinking and they used to talk about things god spoke to the prophets of old he may speak to you by a miracle of the spirit god can speak to every man direct messages from the mind of god to the mindofman definite direct decisive god speaks one of the oxford goop expressions was when man listens God speaks when man obeys God acts and you'll hear Oxford groupers talking about this so in the concept of the 11th step the background of it were all these bible verses and concepts God guides and they had a little expression where God guides God provides you know a lot of little catch words and they were biblically oriented but guidance was a big deal with the oxford group okay well how did you get this guidance they talked about intuition only they said guidance is intuition plus it's using your noodle plus the directions from god and they measured their walk by the four absolutes the question was you got a thought i'm going to go out and give willis a bad time now is that from god well if you knew willis you'd say yes But, you know, what does the word say? They would say. Does it say in the word that you're supposed to go and give Willis a bad time? Nope. Does it stay in the four absolutes that you should give WillIS a bad time? Pardon me, Willis, but, you know, maybe you need a bad time or I need a bad time. But I need to check my thoughts. And by the time Bill wrote it in the big book, he said we need a lot of practice in this thing. Well, they abandoned checking and the checking in the Oxford group was biblical checking You get an idea. I'd like to kill that son of a gun. And maybe that's an easy one for you. I mean, to not kill him. But thou shalt not kill. And you consult the word. You consult another believer. Do you think I should kill him? No, Dick, it says you shouldn't. And so they had some very sensible ideas about taking the thoughts that you get and testing them against the four absolutes, against the Bible, consulting another believer and finding out if these were sound theological ideas. Underlying it all was the quiet time. The quiet time involved listening, and the concept was that be still and know that I am God. And so Oxford groupers to this very day keep a journal, and they have their time in the morning with Bible study prayer, which is speaking to God, and then listening, writing down thoughts and then checking those thoughts to see if they conform to Scripture. So the whole quiet time procedure you can see it laid out in the big book. On awakening we laid out our plans for the day. If undecided, blah, blah. We sought God's help. We asked for his help all through the day and then there are many helpful books. Be quick to see where religious people are right. Make use of what they have to offer. Suggestions may be obtained from your rabbi, your minister, and your priest. You know, AAs are not supposed to know it all. Bill said we must always remember that the clergy are the experts in religion and the doctors are the efforts in medicine and we are their assistants. And sometimes it's the other way around. We think it's just terrible if a man in the cloth has something to say to us about our conduct. We got all our ideas from these Joes. They're the ones that gave us the information. So the last one was prayer, Bible study, listening to God, checking your thoughts against Scripture, and finally, the issue of when agitated or in doubt. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee, said the Word. Well, if I want to get out of sync, all I've got to do is just let my mind race and race around. All I have to do is get an 800 number and music and I'm absolutely nuts. you know it's just i want to run the whole telephone company and consult the president and get my call through gosh darn it i want it right now and you know that's my choice what am i going to do with my mind um can i turn to god for that well bill said so thy will be done and it's not fatalistic god describes his will okay we're winding down on this so the steps The heart of the Oxford group, ideas. I have to take this out and hopefully get it back. I had 28 ideas. The first general concept was God. The second general concept was sin, what blocks us from God. The third idea was finding God initially through surrender, soul surgery, and life change. And then there's the path. You make a decision. you examine your conduct you confess it to another you become convinced that you ought to change, you become converted and you make restitution and the power said the Oxford group is Jesus Christ and then there's continuance daily surrender, guidance quiet time, bible study, prayer listening and checking and then there's the spiritual experience the oxford group used the experience one of shoemaker's books was national awakening frank bookman wrote repeatedly about the need for a moral awakening spiritual awakening he often spoke of a spiritual experience the oxfor group had dozens of expressions all amounting to the same thing, an experience of God, a vital experience of Jesus Christ, a religious experience, a spiritual experience, a spiritual awakening, a relationship with God. How much time do we spend in AA saying we are a religious, great, a Spiritual Program, not a Religious Program? Why not look in the dictionary and see what the difference is? You know, the Oxford groups called it a religious Experience, a Spiritual Experience, A Spiritual Awakening, a Relationship with God, A sense of the power and presence of God, finding God, being in touch with God, contact with God. Conversion, surrender, change, born again God consciousness. Now those all have different theological connotations but the bottom line was you've touched bases with God whether it's by conversion or whatever it might be. Now Bill baffled people for a long time with his hot flash experience and a lot of poor souls thought they had to have one and they weren't having them. So then, well, we better call it an educational variety. Well, whatever you want to call it, it still is some basic touch with God. Call it relationship with God, the big book does. Call it consciousness of the power and presence of God, the big books does. There are dozens of ways of expressing it. Finally, in the 11th step, our conscious contact with God it's an experience said the oxford group that comes as a result of taking these life-changing steps that's essentially what the big book is talking about having had a spiritual awakening as a результат of these steps and so that was the process and it was often called god consciousness the ox for good books talked over and over again about god consciousness so does the big book in the spiritual appendix and william james described a lot of that and so did some oxford group literature that closely resembles our big book language peace direction power the fullness of life await the complete surrender of ourselves to god for his purposes there's even a line and i may find it this afternoon praying for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry it out. And it isn't in the big book. It's in an Oxford Group book. Over and over and over again, it was how to get in touch with God through prayer and meditation. Then there's fun stuff like Shoemaker wrote. Let go. Abandon yourself to him. Say to him not my will but thine be done. Live it. Pray for it. Put yourself at his disposal for time and for eternity. And if your experience is anything like mine has been, you'll find that Jesus gives to life a zest and a glory, a peace and a purpose which only He can give. And there are just a lot of expressions like that that have found their... because you can find parallels in the big book when many hundreds... this is a big book... when many hundred people are able to say that consciousness of the presence of God is today the most important fact of their lives. They present a powerful reason why one should have faith. And endless expressions like that. A couple of Quickies at the end. It didn't end with the spiritual experience. It ended with fellowship and witness, carrying it out in your life. Strong Oxford group concepts. The Oxford group believed in a fellowship, in the group, in God's guidance of a group. Very strong Oxford group concept. You'll find them in our fellowship ideas. You'll fine them in meeting concepts. Find them in traditions. And how about witness? Well, there were many verses. Jesus was talking about follow me and I will make you fishers of men. One of the non-Oxford group books was called Fishers of Men by Glenn Clark. You know, go out and carry the message to somebody else. And Dr. Bob said that the biggest thing that he picked up from Bill was the concept of service. He'd been sitting there, you know, in these meetings, praying and studying the Bible and listening and checking and having quiet time and reading literature and drinking. I could relate to that. And, you know, finally along comes Wilson who doesn't know him anything. And he comes there and it's so cute. Bob said to his son Smitty, I'll give this bird 15 minutes. That's top. That's it, 15 minutes, you now. Okay, Ann wants me to go. I'll go. So he goes there and he disappears with Bill and six hours later he emerges well what do you suppose they talked about bill was no great guru bill probably told him all the dirty stuff that had gone on in his life you know bob told him all the stuff that he'd gone on his life one drunk talking to another and you know Bob says I already knew the spiritual stuff can't you just imagine bill who didn't study the bible and had only been hot on this stuff for six months talking to a guy that had been reading the Bible for two and a half years, gone to Sunday school, and believed all that stuff. And Bill thought he was carrying a tremendous message. And Bob said, you know, I knew all that stuff. Bill finally said he had all the answers except one. And Bob said he grasped their idea of service and I hadn't. Well, one historian wrote, how could Bob have missed it? Well, I missed it. I missed it in my law office. I will tell you today that if I were a lawyer, and I don't know that they would ever let me back. But if I were a lawyer, I know what I'd be doing in that office. I'd have drunks in there. My ex-wife once said, what would you do? I have a beautiful home in Mill Valley that I own half of. She said, What would you Do if you were living there? And I said, I'd Have it filled with drunks. And that's what my joint is like out in Maui. At 5pm. It's moo cow time. The contented hour. All these guys come in from beach and surfing and jobs and expect to be fed. And, you know, I don't charge them. It's about like Ozzie's place here. It is a losing enterprise in terms of money. And it is a gaining enterprise in terms of serving other individuals. Somebody was there for me. And Bob hadn't grasped this. And about that time is when the Smith home got so cotton-picked and filled with drunks and he learned that from Bill. Bill and Lois weren't getting any place with the drunk because they weren't talking much spiritual stuff, but they sure had their home loaded for them. All the early people did. Service, service, service. And they had a message and Bill and Bob carried that message at first and Ann taught it and it was about helping another human being. It's an Oxford group idea, but it sure comes from the word. If I could find it quickly, and I probably can, Jesus Christ basically said, you know, I'm the chiefest of the servants. It was my job is to serve, to minister to others. Is it unique with the Oxford group? No. But the point is reaching out to another human being is a structural idea. Remember I said I believe that the basic ideas are biblical. That's what Bob said. And the structural ideas are Oxford group. How do you go through this process of changing your own life and changing the lives of others? That's what the Oxford group was about. Now, why did we leave it? We've got about three seconds to cover that one. I know what Bill said in 1940, and I think he was harboring a resentment. They, Lois said they kind of kicked us out. And why wouldn't they? For one thing, some guy threw a chair through a plate glass window in the Calvary Church in New York. That's cause for expulsion, maybe even in an Alano club. You know, these drunks were not all that popular in the Episcopalian center of New York City there with one of the world-famous preachers. Shoemaker was working with drunks, but he had an assistant rector that wasn't all that crazy about this. And then Bill started having meetings, as the minister described, behind Mrs. Smith's barn, whoever Mrs. Smith was and you know that got to him hey why aren't you coming to Oxford group meetings what are you doing meeting with these drunks on the side and the essence of the thing was that Bill was not all that popular in his attempt to help drunks individually within the confines of the Episcopal Church Sam saw what he was doing and he liked what he saw and he comforted bill for a while. Now, the litany later on was, oh well, they had a key man strategy, we don't. They went for publicity, we do not. The absolutes were too absolute for drunks and on and on and on. And then he said there is an unreasoning prejudice against the Oxford group in America, true. And he said the Roman Catholics were concerned about Oxford group Protestant principles, Probably true. You know, I could make up a thousand reasons why I was a drunk and a thousand reason why I didn't come into AA and a thousands reason why don't like my wife and on and on after the fact. But when I think of what I was like in my home when my poor wife was having to live with me, I think she could describe in about two sentences what my problem was. Dick drank too much! And he was an idiot when he did. And so you can always come back after the facts and give a great rationalization. And I think perhaps some of Bill's points may have been sound, but let's remember something. In Akron they didn't leave the Oxford Group. In his last address, which of course I can't find, is Dr. Bob's discussion of the Oxford group and the four absolutes and what he thought of them. And he was not for leaving. there was the issue over Roman Catholics, and Dr. Bob wasn't happy with that. But essentially, Bob was saying, I still believe in the four absolutes. First time I met his daughter in 1991 or 1990, I said, What did Dr. Bob think of the four absolutes? And she said, He tried to live by them, and so did my mom. And when I went to Florida in December, I asked Grace, What did Clarence think of The Four Absolutes? And She said he tried to base his whole life on them. Now, they were not much concerned with the shortcomings of the Oxford Group, but the simple fact is that there was a Protestant issue, there was an schism in the Oxford group, and there was need for drunks to help drunks without problems. And if you want a view instead of some news, the view would be that they parted ways. And if they hadn't parted way, we wouldn't have an Alcoholics Anonymous today. so essentially that's the first part of the Oxford group and the next part will be where can we find it in our steps and have a nice break oh and by the way the subsequent break will be a dance