Harry Emerson Fosdick on A.A.

“Some good causes with which I have been allied have fortunately been all success without contention­Alcoholics Anonymous, or example. I teamed up with that movement in its early days, and count my acquaintance with Bill W., whose experience helped to launch this remarkable society, a very rewarding association. We ministers are not uncommonly thought of as needlessly prudish and puritanical about the use of alcoholic beverages, but I challenge anyone to be a parish pastor very long without hating the prevalent misuse of liquor with implacable indignation. We have the devastating results of alcoholism dumped in our laps day after day­individuals and families ruined by drink, men and women enslaved by a habit they are powerless to break, children humiliated, shamed and irretrievably harmed by drunken parents. In dealing with this problem I often found myself utterly frustrated. What could I do? To be sure we had our victories. Once, a young journalist, ruined by drink, bought a bottle of poison, and on a Sunday morning headed for Washington Square, where he planned to commit suicide. Passing the First Presbyterian Church, where I was then preaching, and seeing the crowds waiting to get in, his journalistic curiosity was aroused. Why on earth, he wondered, were so many people going to church? So he postponed his suicide long enough to join the congregation and listen to the service. Afterward he poured the poison down a manhole, and the next day he came to see me. He won his battle, but alas! that young man was only one victory among many defeats.

Since then Alcoholics Anonymous has grown to its present astonishing strength, and it is a godsend to us ministers. How can we understand an alcoholic­his compulsive desire for liquor, the hopeless captivity against which he futilely contends, one determined decision after another to stop drinking ending in collapse? When we talk to an alcoholic, he knows that never having been in his place we cannot understand his plight. But when an ex­alcoholic, who has been in the depths himself and has taken the Twelve Steps to freedom, talks to an alcoholic, amazing results can follow and have followed in countless thousands of lives.

Month after month I read G ​.A.’s official journal­about the most moving collection ​rapevine, A of testimonies to the possibility of personal transformation of which I know. Moreover, these testimonies bear witness to religion’s reality, for Alcoholics Anonymous is deeply religious. That Eleventh Step is an essential factor in its program: “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understand Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.” The meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous are the only place, so far as I know where Roman Catholics, Jews, all kinds of Protestants and even agnostics get together harmoniously on a religious basis. They do not talk theology. Many of them would say that they know nothing about it. What they do know is that in their utter helplessness they were introduced to a Power, greater than themselves, in contact with whom they found a strong resource which made possible victory that had seemed incredible. I have listened to many learned arguments about God, but for honest –to­goodness experiential evidence of God, His power personally appropriated, and His reality indubitably assured, give me a good meeting of A.A!

Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick as found pg 286­288 “The Living Of These Days”, autobiography, written in 1956, Harper Publishing.