The Religious Absurdity of Alcoholics Anonymous & Christianity

Sexy Drunk Christians: Chapter 2 The Depravity of Twelve Step Christianity Part 15

To make AA more palatable for the nonreligious, the founders genericized Christianity, which amounted to a bait-and-switch. No one wrote more extensively on this AA practice than Terrance Hodgins, a.k.a. Agent Orange, who ran the anti-AA Orange-Papers website for many years. He described this fraud as,

First they say:

“Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.”

But then they say:

“At the moment we are trying to put our lives in order. But this is not an end in itself. Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people about us.” The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Into Action, page 77.

One of those two statements is a lie.

To get you to join, they will tell you that:

“It's spiritual, not religious.”

“It isn't a religion, it's just a fellowship of alcoholics who want to quit drinking.”

Alcoholics Anonymous is not a religious organization.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Foreword, page xx.

“It isn't a religion, it's a self-help group — just a wonderful spiritual quit-drinking program.”

“Alcoholics Anonymous requires no beliefs.”

“Alcoholics Anonymous does not demand that you believe anything. All of its Twelve Steps are but suggestions.”
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 26.

“You can use anything you wish for your Higher Power — a bedpan, or a doorknob, or a Group Of Drunks.”
Or, in Cocaine Anonymous, “G.O.D.” can be “a Group Of Drug addicts”. And the best ones that I've heard lately are: “God” can be “a cat” or “a parakeet”.

But, later, they will talk endlessly about “moral shortcomings”, confessions, surrender to God, and religion. You will only gradually find out that it is an intensely religious cult based on the strange teachings of a Hitler-admiring renegade fascist Lutheran minister named Dr. Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman, and the grandiose proclamations of one of his mentally-ill converts, William Griffith Wilson.¹

To look at AA and not see the spiritual and recovery rhetoric as Christian-inspired is impossible, but by genericizing the religion, AA founders opened the organization to the unintended consequences of placing the program at odds with Christianity, at least in doctrine. What began as watered-down religion to make the program a nudge, nudge wink, wink understanding of Christianity soon became a sect or cult rather than a fellowship. Still, the program resembled Christianity enough that glaring contradictions with the religion didn’t matter.

No other reason explains this long, enduring relationship Christian churches maintain with this heretical organization.

AA’s invent-your-God practice should seem heretical to Christians because it is, but instead, most churches rent space to AA groups or give them space for free. If you can pick your God, you can pick your morals, and by removing commandments to genericize the Big Book’s religious foundation, AA created a flimsy morality based on Christian allusions to sin using resentments, selfishness, egotism, and other character defects (moral failings) as the causes of alcoholism. 

Make no mistake; these are Christian references denoting a Christian religion evidenced by confessing sins, prayer, turning one’s will over to God, and making amends.

Just like Christians interpret commandments and conflicting scripture, AAs interpret biblical allusions guided by an absent morality and produce the same if not worse values and culture than the Christians. According to AA, a person chooses their God and their morality, so if a person decides to make their higher power Satan and they feel His teachings should guide ethics, this is perfectly acceptable — supposedly. This fictitious choice reveals in the constant reciting of the Serenity and Lord’s Prayer as well as referencing sin and other biblical concepts,

As we became subjects of King Alcohol, shivering denizens of his mad realm, the chilling vapor that is loneliness settled down. It thickened, ever becoming blacker. Some of us sought out sordid places, hoping to find understanding companionship and approval. Momentarily we did–then would come oblivion and the awful awakening to face the hideous Four Horsemen–Terror, Bewilderment, Frustration, and Despair. Unhappy drinkers who read this page will understand!²

AA literature is a stream of biblical allusion, making clear the only God is the Christian God. Still, AA cannot stop a person from believing God is a doorknob, and though members rarely challenge the generic Christian version, AAs argue the need for their Christian-lite God,

You can choose a doorknob, but can a doorknob remove your resentments?

Can you turn your will over to the care of a doorknob?

If you’re going to choose a God, shouldn’t you choose one that is powerful enough to perform the miracle of sobriety?

These and similar statements show how AAs pressure members to accept the generic Christian God and the inability to enforce their God. Yet, force is not needed; the disease of alcoholism will accomplish what AAs cannot. When the nonbeliever relapses, as most AAs do, the members point out the mistake of choosing the wrong higher power, or the drunk will remember the prior warning.

Along with heresy and perversion of values, AAs should offend churches with their contempt and hostility for Christianity, often openly displayed during meetings in the church basements. Members often say things like:

Who needs church; I get everything I need in AA.

Church is for people looking for God, AA is for people who have found him.

Church is for people who fear hell; AA is for people who have already been there.

The irony of AAs expressing gratitude for God in drunkalogues and holding hands praying in church basements while venting hostility at the church would make Christians laugh if not for their seriousness. If ridicule did not insult enough, AA members’ arrogance should exasperate Christians, especially since much of that arrogance comes from one of their own. Dr. Sam Shoemaker was a clergyman and one of the founding friends and spiritual leaders of AA, providing room for the organization to grow through the Calvary Church.³ In his article, What the Church has to Learn from Alcoholics Anonymous, he criticizes church members for hypocrisy and relates to them how they could become better Christians by learning from AA members, outlined as:

Recognition of Need: Dr. Shoemaker expresses that Christians lack the strength of spirit that AA members maintain because they do not have the necessity to be convicted in the same manner.

Redeemed in Life-Changing Fellowship: This lesson centers on the idea that the church needs to become life-altering in the way AA is for alcoholics: achieved through recruitment.

Definite Personal Dealing with People: This lesson for the church instructs members to be more like AA, the way AA takes a personal interest in its members.

Necessity for a Real Change of Heart: Christians could learn to promote Christianity the way AA promotes itself by showing true transformation.⁴

Clearly, AA succeeded where Christianity failed, denoted by a long history of AA members believing their program is superior to the church, stated perfectly by an early member of the organization,

The relief of being accepted can never be known by one who never thought himself unaccepted. I hear of 'good Christian men and women' belonging to 'fine old church families.' There were no good Christians in the first church, only sinners. Peter never let himself or his hearers forget his betrayal in the hour the cock crew. James, stung by the memory of his years of stubborn resistance, warned the church members: 'Confess your faults to one another.' That was before there were fine old church families. Today, the last place where one can be candid about one's faults is in church. In a bar, yes; in a church, no. I know; I've tried both places.⁵

More than just seeing the church as a rejection, AAs see it as inferior and indoctrinate newcomers accordingly,

They hold the Big Book above both other religions and science, have special knowledge of God’s Will and believe that those who don’t “come to believe” face inevitable “jails, institutions, and death.” He [a newcomer] is not told that his religious beliefs are considered inferior and that, as he becomes more dependent on AA, great pressure will be brought to bear to change his belief system.⁶

With all this said, Christians should take offense to the perverting of their religion, yet churches and AA groups span nearly eighty years, not just with one church but with almost all denominations. You might ask why Churches continue associating with this offensive organization. In fairness to Christians, some churches don’t, but most do because AA's absurdity and fraud merely reflect Christianity's absurdity and fraud. Like most people outside AA, church congregations lack knowledge of AA and assume the program benefits attendees, but Church leaders probably understand AA's heresy but ignore it.

Practicality also likely reinforces church and AA relations. Moralizing problems like substance abuse dictates providing a moral solution. Churches claim substance abuse is sinful behavior, but faith and prayer fail to alleviate addiction. If churches tell people to pray, and they continue drinking, churches must either blame the parishioner or admit faith's ineffectiveness. AA removes this dilemma, allowing churches to continue condemning substance abuse while providing access to a cure. AA furnishes a solution, combining Christian-based spirituality with a disease model (or at least the illusion.) 

With the decline in Christian church membership, churches need not turn away drunks, and AA opens the door to possible converts. (People already speaking the same language of spirituality and God.) More importantly, churches ignore AA because AA is Christianity or a close enough approximation to pass for a Christian organization, and within that absurdity uniting Christian and booze churches, one finds…

1. Hodgins, T. (2015). The Bait And Switch Con Game “3. Bait and Switch: First, it's only a “spiritual” alcoholism recovery program, and then it's a fundamentalist religion whose 'real purpose' is to make you 'serve God'.” https://www.orange-papers.info/orange-bait-switch.html#shifting_objectives

2. Alcoholics Anonymous. The Big Book. (p. 126). Kindle Edition.

3. Alcoholics Anonymous. (2023). Sam Shoemaker. https://www.aa.org/sam-shoemaker

4. Shoemaker, S. (2023). What the Church has to learn from alcoholics anonymous. Christians In Recovery: A Ministry of City Vision University. https://christians-in-recovery.org/cirkb/tools_aa-bb_whatchurchcanlearnfromaa-shoemaker/  

5. Ellison, J. (1955). Report to the creator. New York, NY: Harper.

6. Ragge, K. (1991). More Revealed. Alert Publishing Online copy available https://web.archive.org/web/20190227233447/http://www.morerevealed.com/mr/on-the-broad-highway.html