Was AA Founded On Religion? Religious History Of The Twelve Steps.
- chphurst
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
If one was to accuse a long-time member of Alcoholics Anonymous of belonging to a cult, the AA member would have an adamant rebuttal. We are just alcoholics helping other alcoholics. No, they are not. They use fear tactics on members who dissent as well as coercion for freedom of thought and more so if the member states he is leaving the rooms. They have the exact same characteristics of a fundamentalist church, which I also consider a cult as the hierarchy brainwashes its members to believe that there was a worldwide flood, which only Noah and his family survived on a constructed ark, and the world is only four to six thousand years old. It is the same repeat rinse cycle with AA as well. And with all of these cult tactics, not only can they not even claim a success rate but have had a dismal, majority failure rate of its members maintaining long-term sobriety.
But I will declare that Alcoholics Anonymous is not only a cult but they are a religious cult. There is a reason that atheists, agnostics and even quiet Christians tend not to feel comfortable in AA and the twelve steps. They were based on religion and specifically that religion was Christianity. The participants of the rooms will deny this, but it is true. Every aspect of AA was based on Christianity and the tenets of Christianity are propagated in their mantras, steps and philosophy. It was based on experiences from Bill Wilson during his own withdrawal from alcohol. And later I will reveal something that may shock you on what influenced his spiritual awakening.
When Bill Wilson ended his own friendship with John Barleycorn, he didn’t construct a method for sobriety that was based on rational thinking, reasonability or any sort of science backed intervention. Now, in fairness, this was in the 1930s and medicine and science were much more archaic than today. We had no way of studying the effects of neuroplasticity on the brain or anything of the like. Dr. Bob, Bill’s sobriety colleague, wasn’t a stupid man, he was just living in a time of much more ignorance than today. It would be a fair statement to say that they didn’t have the proper tools to construct a science-based method of treatment. And it would also be fair to state, as the decades passed, AA should have modified its philosophy as we learned more, especially since they have maintained this massive failure rate in which I speak.
To say Bill Wilson was influenced by the Oxford Group would be a vast understatement. He wasn’t influenced; he was completely programmed by them. The Oxford Group was led by Frank Buchman, a turned evangelist for the non-denomination but hardcore Christian focused nevertheless organization. I didn’t know this until recently, but the more I read about Mr. Wilson, the more he resembled a cult leader in his time. I first heard this on an episode by Sobriety Bestie. I fact checked her claims with multiple sources and her claims are absolutely correct. Wilson literally took the platform of Oxford and created the philosophy of Alcoholics Anonymous and the twelve steps directly from their Christian based tenets.
You can see this in the prayer of an AA meeting. The members in the rooms would claim it is multipurpose, it meets any worldview of anyone sitting in the circle, but the fact is it origins as a remembrance from my old days of my very strict Catholic upbringing. They are asking for God’s intervention for clarity. Telling me that the higher power can be anyone’s version doesn’t make it less religious. You are starting the premise of a recovery program with magic from the Magic Elf in the sky.
Understand, I am not saying it is awful to be religious. Believe me, during the initial inferno of my five-day detox and the second phase to day forty-five, I asked the Magic Elf, not to solve my problems, but for the strength to solve them myself. And I have no idea if that Elf answered or not. I know I made it through, and if I made the case that it was due to the Elf’s magic wand, it would be completely unprovable, and I certainly wouldn’t create a treatment program based on an invisible spell that largely would only reside in my personal gray matter.
But that is exactly what Wilson did. He based his philosophy of AA on the Oxford Group as well as the twelve steps. It isn’t based on solving one’s problems, it is founded on God’s intervention and that God is based on the Christian philosophy he was programmed with at the Oxford Group. If he wanted to create a religious group, then he certainly was free to do that. But the claims from his members are he didn’t do that. The AA proponents claim it isn’t religious based then use a philosophy that is nothing but religious based Christianity.
As stated, the twelve steps were taken directly from the group in which Wilson was indoctrinated as well. The members need to think about this before they rebuttal back. Many steps are about turning your life over to God. It is not reconstructing your life. It is not investigating the root cause of why you drank and possibly locating a counselor to figure this out and solving that past trauma, which is what a lot of alcoholics had. It is not about improving your world, advancing your being or being more successful than you are today. It is to admit you are powerless, you are deficit and turn it all over to God. It isn’t just a side note, AA, this is your premise. You are asking an invisible being that you can’t even prove exists to remove your deficits. I believe in a Magic Elf as well. And I think if I asked the Elf to fix me, it would refer me back to my own volition.
When you rely on God to solve everything, you immediately set yourself up for failure. It reminds me of a friend who once invested 250K on a bunch of speculative stocks, knowing his evangelistic God would see him through. He lost every penny. God is not going to pick you up and carry you. Those single set of footprints you see in the sand are your own. But yet, AA propagates this Christian philosophy then has the gall to inform me that they aren’t religious based at all.
If you look up one of the Five C’s of the Oxford Group’s tenets, you will see they promoted confessing your sins to another Christian, whether it be sin itself or temptation of such. Does that sound familiar? It is one of the steps of the twelve as well. Completely Christian based. Half of the twelve steps are solely and directly involved with Christian tenets or God Himself. But the members keep trying to defend that they aren’t founded by religion.
It could be argued that the reason for such a dismal record of success from the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous is directly correlated to their Christian based philosophy. This is funny because a great many Christians reject AA philosophy as well. The reason many ordinary Christians reject Bill Wilson’s founding principles is the same reason many ordinary Christians reject Christian fundamentalist church tenets. Because the ordinary Christian recognizes a cult just like I do and the other many escapees from that very cult.
I have an article where I equate AA to a Christian fundamentalist church. The reason AA will not modify its program is the same reason the fundamentalist Christian will not come to reason and realize the world is not four to six thousand years old. It doesn’t matter how much science from all genres is presented to this type of cult member. The fundamentalist replies they have their own scientists who differ in opinion. In another channel, I clearly show the gigantic errors in methodology in which these creationist scientists are guilty of committing. The fundamentalist will reply that mainstream scientists are against Christianity. I point out that many of these mainstream scientists are actually Christian, they state those scientists are not real Christians. They won’t change their beliefs or come to reason because they do not belong to a church, they belong to a cult.
This is exactly how AA worldview operates. They could have and should have transformed their philosophy and methods years ago. They should have figured out that the program generally wasn’t working after the first decade of it not doing so. But look at the parallels with my above example of the exact same cult traits with the fundamentalist church. You tell them the program doesn’t work and they give a bunch of reasons why the majority fail, all based on the fault of the majority. Some will point to one flawed study that was very biased to AA that shows it does work for most when every other review of their program states it not only doesn’t but massively so. You tell them you left the program and never used AA method, yet remain sober years or decades later, they reply you are either a dry drunk or were never a real alcoholic.
The two examples above are identical, each being a cult of a different genre with the same cult tactics. Bill Wilson went to Christian zealots, became a fanatic himself, and the surprise that I didn’t know until recently was that he was on hallucinogenic drugs when he came to his spiritual awakening. This is something you would expect in a cult leader, like the many that emerged from the 1970s. None of his recovery method was based on any sort of evidence, it was opinion coming from the religious fanaticism of the Oxford Group.
But yet all of us anti Alcoholics Anonymous creators get an avalanche of rebuttals from those long-time members of the rooms. They continue to trust the AA method and continue to trust it is the best way to gain long-term sobriety. But with this background that is revealed about Bill Wilson himself and the origin of AA, I can only scratch my head and ask . . . .
Why would you?
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John Barleycorn: taken from Jack London's memoir of his alcoholism. John Barleycorn: First published, 1913
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