Aa history Lovers 2004 moderators Nancy Olson and Glenn F. Chesnut page

twenty-four hours a day in and through us or we perish.

In order to set our tone for this meeting I ask that we bow our

heads in a few moments of silent prayer and meditation.

I wish to remind you that whatever is said at this meeting expresses

our own individual opinion as of today and as of up to this moment.

We do not speak for A.A. as a whole and you are free to agree or

disagree as you see fit, in fact. it is suggested that you pay no

attention to anything which might not he reconcilied with what is in

the A. A. Big Book.

If vou dont have a Big Book. it's time you bought you one. Read it.

study it, live with it, loan it, scatter it, and then learn from it

what it means to be an A.A."

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++++Message 1935. . . . . . . . . . . . Re: The Early Akron A.A. Reading List,

Part 1 of 5

From: Mel Barger . . . . . . . . . . . . 7/23/2004 8:00:00 AM

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With reference to Glenn Chesnut's information about the early Akron Manual, I

would like to add that this publication is still available from the Akron

Central Office. I picked it up yesterday while in Akron. They also offer a

"Spiritual Milestones in Alcoholics Anonymous," a "Second Reader for

Alcoholics Anonymous," and "A Guide to the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics

Anonymous," all for fifty cents a copy. Should you wish to purchase copies,

the office is: AA of Akron, 775 N. Main St., Akron, OH 44310. The phone number

is 330-253-8181, the toll-free is 800-897-6737, and the email address is:

[e-mail].

Incidentally, the Akron Manual no longer lists the additional publications

reading list which caught my attention. I was given this manual at my first

meetings in the Ventura, Calif., area in October, 1948, and I definitely

remember the list. I assume it was deleted in later editions when some members

may have objected to their inclusion in the manual. But the manual still

retains its original, no-nonsense flavor and really lays it on the line for

the newcomer, demanding that he must decide to get sober and do what's

necessary for real sobriety.

Mel Barger

~~~~~~~~

Mel Barger

[e-mail]

----- Original Message -----

From: Glenn Chesnut

To: [e-mail]

Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2004 12:56 AM

Subject: [AAHistoryLovers] The Early Akron A.A. Reading List, Part 1 of 5

================================

The Early Akron Recommended Reading List:

The Works It Contained and their Significance for Understanding Early Akron

A.A.

Glenn C. (South Bend, Indiana)

================================

PART ONE:

A pamphlet entitled A Manual for Alcoholics Anonymous, often referred to as

the Akron Manual, was written and published by early Akron A.A. at a very

early period, as an introductory booklet to hand to newcomers when they

began the detoxification process. [Note 1] Based on things that are

mentioned in the Manual, it was most probably put together during the summer

or fall of 1939, and certainly no later than 1940. A copy of it can be found

at http://hindsfoot.org/AkrMan1.html (the first half) and

http://hindsfoot.org/AkrMan2.html (the second half) on the Hindsfoot

Foundation website ( http://hindsfoot.org ). So this small pamphlet is an

extraordinarily valuable document. It is a little window opening into the

world of early Akron A.A. shortly after the Big Book first started coming

off the press.

~~~~~~~~~~

At the very end of the Akron Manual it says "the following literature has

helped many members of Alcoholics Anonymous," and then it gives a list of

ten works as a kind of recommended reading list:

Alcoholics Anonymous (Works Publishing Company).

The Holy Bible

The Greatest Thing in the World, Henry Drummond.

The Unchanging Friend, a series (Bruce Publishing Co., Milwaukee).

As a Man Thinketh, James Allen.

The Sermon on the Mount, Emmet Fox (Harper Bros.).

The Self You Have to Live With, Winfred Rhoades.

Psychology of Christian Personality, Ernest M. Ligon (Macmillan Co.).

Abundant Living, E. Stanley Jones.

The Man Nobody Knows, Bruce Barton."

~~~~~~~~~~

THE BIBLE was the second item on the list, right behind the Big Book. But

earlier in the pamphlet it was made clear that there were certain places in

the Bible that they wanted the newcomers to especially focus on: the Sermon

on the Mount in Matthew 5-7, the letter of James, 1 Corinthians 13, and

Psalms 23 and 91. This was a typical early twentieth-century Protestant

liberal selection of passages to emphasize, but they were also especially

useful for A.A. purposes because none of them required the newcomer to

believe in the divinity of Christ or that salvation could only be found by

praying to Jesus.

~~~~~~~~~~

EMMET FOX, The Sermon on the Mount, is still well known to A.A. people

today. He was a major representative of an American religious movement

called New Thought, which was connected to, but also different from, Mary

Baker Eddy's Christian Science movement. Among present-day American

religious denominations, Unity Church is the largest group using that basic

kind of approach. Emmet Fox's position was strongly Christian in its

orientation, although the kind of Protestantism he represented was clearly

in the liberal camp.

Please note that nineteenth and early twentieth-century New Thought was most

definitely NOT the same as "New Age," which was a late twentieth-century

movement involving claims that its practitioners were able to do spirit

channeling and use the mystical properties of crystals, and things of that

sort. New Age sometimes include beliefs drawn from Wicca -- that is, ancient

witchcraft -- and other unconventional religious ideas. Or to put it another

way, New Thought was fundamentally Christian in its orientation, whereas New

Age is for the most part extremely hostile to Christianity.

~~~~~~~~~~

JAMES ALLEN, As a Man Thinketh (34 pages long). He published his book in

1908 or a little before. I would also put his ideas in the same general

category as New Thought, even though he was English. He may or may not have

read any of the American authors in the general New Thought genre, which is

why I hesitate to call him "New Thought" in the narrow sense of the term.

~~~~~~~~~~

HENRY DRUMMOND, The Greatest Thing in the World (45 pages long). His book

was a beautiful commentary on 1 Corinthians 13. He was closely associated

with Dwight L. Moody in the 1870's, so we might describe him as one of the

best examples of the richness and depth of thought which we can find in some

parts of the nineteenth century evangelistic movement.

Drummond was a Scotsman, who was Professor of Natural Science at the College

of the Free Church of Scotland, and had written a book (famous in his

lifetime but forgotten today) called Natural Law in the Spiritual World,

which was an attempt to make peace between science and religion. This is

important, because early A.A. had no sympathy whatsoever with religious

people who were completely anti-scientific in their attitudes and who tried

to deal with modern science by rejecting its findings. Early A.A. realized

that there was a spiritual dimension of reality which went beyond anything

which the scientific method could investigate, but they also realized that

the profound discoveries of modern science could neither be denied nor

neglected.

The modern evangelical movement, at its beginnings in the 1730's and 40's,

had an enormously respectful attitude toward the new science. Both Jonathan

Edwards and John Wesley, the movement's two greatest theologians, were

deeply interested in Newtonian physics, the new biological discoveries,

modern medicine, electricity, and modern psychology. The evangelical

movement remained positive in its attitude to modern science down through

most of the nineteenth century, as we see in Henry Drummond. But then the

Fundamentalist movement, with its often negative attitude toward modern

science, began developing in a series of events which took place in

1895-1919. [Note 2]

~~~~~~~~~~

E. STANLEY JONES, Abundant Living (first came out in 1942, 156 pages long).

Chapter 6-10 is one of the best discussions of prayer that I have ever read.

He ends up that section with a discussion of guidance and entering the

Divine Silence. If Richmond Walker did not read this book, he read something

in that tradition (there were similar kinds of material in The Upper Room

for example). At any rate, this book helps enormously in understanding more

of what Walker was doing in his selection and modification, in the fine

print sections of Twenty-Four Hours a Day, of various passages from God

Calling by Two Listeners.

Chapter 6 of E. Stanley Jones' book begins with a section on "Prayer is

Surrender," and Chapter 8 is entitled "The Morning Quiet Time." Jones gives

a good deal of detail on what we are supposed to be doing during this

Morning Quiet Time, including talking about the role of the subconscious in

the process, how to deal with the problem of "wandering thoughts," and what

to do when we are confronted with what the medieval tradition called aridity

(where it doesn't "feel" like we are in real contact with God, and where we

have extraordinary difficulty forcing ourselves to pray at all). On both of

these latter issues, I suspect that he as a Methodist had read John Wesley's

Standard Sermons, including especially Wesley's sermons on "Wandering

Thoughts" and "Heaviness through Manifold Temptations."

John Wesley in the 1740's was one of the two major theoreticians of the

modern evangelical movement during its beginning years. He was an Anglican

priest who taught theology and classics at Oxford University in England for

a number of years, but ended up becoming a traveling revival preacher who

founded the Methodist movement. His work was thoroughly scripturally

grounded - - he knew the New Testament by heart in the original Greek, and

knew not only Old Testament Hebrew, but also several other ancient Semitic

languages. Yet he and Jonathan Edwards (the other major formative

evangelical thinker of the 1730's and 40's) both made skillful use of the

work of the seventeenth-century British empiricist John Locke, who invented

modern psychology, and both of them knew that a knowledge of psychology was

necessary for understanding how to preach the gospel effectively and produce

real moral change in people's lives. It is totally incorrect to believe that

good evangelical theology and modern psychology are opposed to one another.

What gave the evangelical movement so much power during its early period was

its use of the best psychology of its period.

John Locke had discovered not only the basic principles of behavioral

psychology and operant conditioning, but had also discovered the way early

childhood traumas could continue to influence adult behavior in negative

ways. And he also made the first serious studies of the profoundly

psychologically disturbed who were confined in insane asylums and discovered

"the inner logic of insanity" which affected these people.

Wesley, who knew Locke's work forwards and backwards, was the first person I

have read in the modern period who used the term "psychotherapy" - - though

of course as a teacher of classics at Oxford University, it was used by him

in the original Greek form as psyches therapeia (!!!) Wesley said that good

psychotherapy (which meant "the healing of the soul") was what true

scriptural Christianity was actually about. And although he did not use the

word subconscious, he anticipated Sigmund Freud by over a century in his

understanding of the distinction between conscious thought and the

subconscious layer underneath which creates so many of our spiritual

problems. And like Freud he realized that this subconscious material came

out in both free association and dreams.

Around fifty years ago, Protestant seminaries all over the country began

putting people on their faculties with professional degrees in psychology

and psychotherapy to teach counseling techniques to their students. I had to

pass an exam in psychotherapy and counseling to obtain my degree from the

seminary at Southern Methodist University, and that was back in 1964. The

best books and articles on practical psychology today are being published by

conservative evangelical theologians, who seem to have a better

understanding of what is important. But most Christian pastors in the United

States today know that there is no conflict between good spirituality and

good psychotherapy.

~~~~~~~~~~

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This message was scanned by GatewayDefender [4]

4:20:52 AM ET - 7/21/2004

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++++Message 1939. . . . . . . . . . . . Re: old preamble

From: [e-mail] . . . . . . . . . . . . 7/24/2004 10:38:00 PM

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There are at least a dozen copies of that particular "Old Preamble"

around the internet. For example:

http://www.aabibliography.com/old_1940_AA-preamble.htm.

Most identify it as 1940. Some point out that it "was never official."

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++++Message 1941. . . . . . . . . . . . Question from Gilbert G. on Ebby T.

From: Glenn Chesnut . . . . . . . . . . . . 7/25/2004 11:34:00 PM

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Gilbert G. has written in asking

"does anybody have any info on Ebby T's life (like the times he spent sober,

where he sobered up at, with whom, etc.) any and all info will be greatly

appreciated."

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++++Message 1942. . . . . . . . . . . . [e-mail] on the Old Preamble

From: Glenn Chesnut . . . . . . . . . . . . 7/26/2004 12:14:00 AM

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Lee N. (Woodstock, Maine) [e-mail] wrote on Sun, 25 Jul 2004:

An elder member who was a great friend of our Archives during my tenure, and

another member also, were close to Captain Jack near the end of his life. When

he passed from us both these folks donated a very large amount of Captain

Jack's memorabilia to the Archives, including this old Preamble which I

described in my previous post to the group. We were able to fill a display

case 4' long with his memorabilia at the Central Office where our Archives is

located. Anyway, she has passed this question to me and I would very much like

to give her an answer. How do we describe this old Preamble which we have on

display? What kind of tag or information should we put on it?

Tom E. [e-mail] responded:

Hi, Folks:

Variations of that preamble were discussed in AAHistoryLovers and the earlier

AAHistoryBuffs forums. Here are some of the posts:

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/AAHistoryLovers/message/247

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/AAHistoryLovers/message/271

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/AAHistoryLovers/message/826

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/AAHistoryLovers/message/827

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/AAHistoryLovers/message/828

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/AAHistoryLovers/message/829

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/AAHistoryLovers/message/836

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/AAHistoryLovers/message/841

Article 828 quotes a GrapeVine article with Searcy W taking partial credit. In

Message 841, Art Sheehan is saying that it was a Preamble from Texas but it

predated Searcy's sobriety. Lacking physical evidence, I'm not going to

attempt to validate any attribution of the source.

This Google search gets you thirty-four examples of the same or similar

preambles on web sites.

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22We+are+gathered+here+because+we+are+faced+wi

th%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF_8&c2coff=1&filter=0 [87]

Most of these sites have no attribution or are vague. I believe they got their

information when it was argued out without agreement in the Usenet news group

alt.recovery.aa in the mid 1990s.

______________________

En2joy! Tom En2ger

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++++Message 1943. . . . . . . . . . . . How to post messages on

AAHistoryLovers

From: Glenn Chesnut . . . . . . . . . . . . 7/26/2004 1:02:00 AM

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To post messages for the AAHistoryLovers webgroup, all you need to do is write

an email to:

[e-mail]

And then all the moderator needs to do is push a button and the message will

automatically go out to everybody in the group.

If you have a question or comment you want to make to me privately, my home

email address is [e-mail] . But I can't transfer stuff directly

from that email address to the AAHistoryLovers webgroup.

Glenn C. (South Bend)

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++++Message 1944. . . . . . . . . . . . on Ebby T.

From: Glenn Chesnut . . . . . . . . . . . . 7/26/2004 1:08:00 AM

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Gilbert G. [e-mail] has written in asking "does anybody have any info

on Ebby T's life (like the times he spent sober, where he sobered up at, with

whom, etc.) any and all info will be greatly appreciated."

[e-mail] writes:

The piece by Walter L. in http://www.barefootsworld.net/aaebbyt.html is a

great article on Bill's "sponsor." He was the one that carried the message to

Bill from the Oxford groups. Ebby had various relapses until 1964.

Ebby had carried the message of the Oxford Group to Bill with great care and

dedication -- that recovery from alcoholism was possible using spiritual

principles, but only if it was combined with practical actions. Bill Wilson

never took another drink, and left Towns Hospital to dedicate the rest of his

life to carrying the message to other alcoholics.

Ebby, however, took a different path, one that caused him to have a series of

relapses. The man whom Bill Wilson called his sponsor could not stay sober

himself, and became an embarrassment. There were periods of sobriety, some

long, some short, but eventually Ebby would, "fall off the wagon," as he

called it.

Ebby drifted in and out of sobriety, and in and out of AA, with many AA

members trying to help him regain a more stable sobriety. The person who was

ultimately successful was Searcy W., who had established a hospital for

alcoholics in Texas. Early in 1953, Searcy had asked Bill what he would like

to see happen in AA, and Bill said, "I would like for Ebby to have a chance to

sober up in your clinic." Several months later, it came to pass, and after a

short slip in 1954, Ebby remained sober for seven years.

In 1961, Ebby's girlfriend died and the next day Ebby got drunk. He apparently

still believed that his sobriety was conditional on having the right woman,

and now she was gone. Ebby moved back to New York and lived at several places

for the next two years, one of which was at his brother Ken's home in Delmar,

a suburb of Albany. He had emphysema, the same disease that caused Bill's

death, and was in poor health, his weight having dropped from 170 to 122

pounds.

Ebby eventually came to Margaret and Micky McPike's farm outside Ballston Spa,

New York, in May, 1964 and it was under their loving care that he finished the

final two years of his life, dying sober on March 21, 1966.

FROM: [e-mail]

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++++Message 1945. . . . . . . . . . . . keep coming back, it works if you work

it

From: David Ingram . . . . . . . . . . . . 7/26/2004 4:31:00 PM

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Greetings;

I have inadequately searched the archives trying to answer this question and

thought I would try a broad appeal.

In my home group we close our meetings holding hands and reciting the Lords

Prayer, but before breaking the chain we say "keep coming back, it works if

you work it". We're trying to learn anything about the origin & introduction

of the latter statement.

Many grateful Thank You's in advance - David

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Do you Yahoo!?

Yahoo! Mail [88] - Helps protect you from nasty viruses.

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++++Message 1946. . . . . . . . . . . . RE: [e-mail] on the Old Preamble

From: Arthur . . . . . . . . . . . . 7/26/2004 4:42:00 PM

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10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black;">I have a very similar preamble that was

used by the first group in Fort Worth,

Texas in 1946 (perhps earlier).

Parts of the preamble were taken (near verbatim) from the 1940 Akron

Manual.

10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black;">

10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black;">Cheers

10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black;">Arthur

*ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS OF FORT WORTH, TEXAS, INC.*

*GROUP ONE*

*REGULAR PREFACE TO MEETINGS *

We are all gathered here because we are faced with the fact that

we are powerless over alcohol and are unable to do anything about it without

the help of a Power greater than ourselves.

We feel that each person's religious views, if any, are their own

affair, and the simple purpose of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is to

show each of us what we can do to enlist the aid of a Power Greater than

Ourselves, regardless of what our individual conception of that Power may be.

That in order to form a habit of depending upon and referring all we do to

that

Power, we must at first apply ourselves with some diligence, but by often

repeating these acts, they become habitual, and the help rendered becomes