A.A. Meetings in Akron and Cleveland 1938­1942 By Glenn F. Chestnut

A combination of elements drawn from

The Oxford Group, frontier revivalism, Emmet Fox, and the Upper Room

Descriptions of how the earliest AA meetings were conducted in these two cities, drawn from ​ow It Worked​ Mitchell K.’s H (containing Clarence Snyder’s accounts of early AA life), J.D. Holmes’ reminiscences in D​r. Bob and the Good Oldtimers,​and the 1942 Akron Manual. ​he Also some notes on the influence of Emmet Fox and the little meditational booklet called T Upper Room.​

FEBRUARY 1938 — AKRON — OXFORD GROUP MEETING at T. Henry and Clarace Williams’ home.

Note that this meeting already contained a mixture of:

1. A frontier revivalist style surrender to God / Jesus on your knees,** compare the later Third Step Prayer from page 63 of the Big Book: “God, I offer myself to Thee — to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will ….”

2. Regular reading of Emmet Fox, T ​he Sermon on the Mount.​(Compare also Fox’s little pieces on “The Golden Key” and “Staying on the Beam,” which were popular reading in A.A.) Compare Big Book pages 60­63, all the world’s a stage, but I thought I was the stage director. Learning to step back every time I find myself doing this, and say something to remind myself that God is totally in charge, and that all I have to do is quit interfering and let him run things.

​he Upper Room:​taught us to turn to the religion of the heart (as opposed to inflicting 3. T hundreds of doctrines and rules and dogmas on everyone, and continually threatening people with hellfire and eternal damnation). A spirituality of the “educational variety,” that is, the slow steady process (insight by insight) in which I let God (and the people in the program) love me until I can learn to love myself and others. Its watchword is: “God is love.”

**In the earliest Oxford Group teaching, the “conversion” part of the 5 C’s came, not by surrendering to God / Jesus in this fashion, but by either (a) making restitution (like making amends in AA Step 9, compare Frank Buchman’s experience) or (b) confessing my secret sins to another human being (like AA Step 5, compare Sam Shoemaker’s experience). But as we see here, in the United States, the tradition of frontier revivals was so strong that the original Oxford Group teaching could sometimes be forgotten or at least heavily altered and augmented.

Akron: February 1938, Oxford Group meeting at T. Henry and Clarace Williams’ home

​ow It Worked,​Chapt. 3, Sect. 8, the first Extended excerpts follow from Mitchell K., H meeting which Clarence Snyder attended at T. Henry and Clarace Williams’ home.

Before the meeting started, William Van Horn (author of “A Ward of the Probate Court”) handed Clarence Snyder a piece of paper with these words on it (2 Cor. 5:17 KJV):

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”

There were about fifty people at the meeting: alcoholics from Akron, a few from Cleveland, and the balance “just plain old sinners who didn’t drink,” as Clarence put it. The chosen leader for that night was, as Clarence remembered, Paul [Stanley] (“Truth Freed Me” in the first edition). Paul opened the meeting with a prayer for all of those in attendance and for those unfortunates who were still living in sin on the outside. Paul then read a verse or two out of the King James Version of the Bible. Clarence remembered that the particular verses, as well as everything at the meeting, had been “gotten from guidance” before the meeting. In the Oxford Group, guidance was by the Holy Spirit and was received through “two­way” prayer. There was a prayer to God for guidance and then listening for leading thoughts from God. The person who through guidance was chosen to lead the meeting would pray for God to “guide” him or her as to what to read and say at the meeting. Then there would be “quiet time” spent silently waiting for, and then listening to God’s response. The Group would then read from a Bible devotional—usually T ​he Upper Room.​This was a publication of the Methodist Church South out of Nashville, Tennessee. The Upper Room was,​and is, a daily devotional, published as a quarterly every three months, and in the 1930’s it cost five cents per issue. For each day of the month, there was an inspirational Bible quote, then a verse from the Bible to study, then two or three paragraphs pertaining to this particular Bible verse as it related to what was then the modern world. Then there was a prayer and a thought for the day. T ​he Upper Room​ is still published today, and except for the price per issue, contains essentially the same type of material that it contained from its inception in 1935. After the group at the Williams’ home completed its prayer, Bible reading, quiet time, and reading from the Bible devotional, the leader would “give witness” (tell about his or her past life and what God had done for him or her). This witness lasted about twenty to thirty minutes. Then the leader “giving witness” would open the floor to those in attendance at the meeting. Those present would raise their hands; the leader would call upon them, and then they too would “give witness.” But for a shorter period of time as Clarence described it, “They went on and on with all kinds of things. People jumping up and down and witnessing and one thing or another. Some of ’em would get pretty emotional and carried away. Crying and all kinds of business going on.” Clarence went on to say, “It sure was a sight to see, especially for this rummy.

After all, just being on the bum like I was, and a total stranger to all of this mumbo­jumbo stuff.” On Monday nights there was a preparatory meeting, called for all of those who were, according to Clarence, considered “most surrendered.” These were people, Clarence said, who had already made their full surrender according to the tenets of the Oxford Group. This preparatory meeting involved, among other things, sitting in T. Henry’s living room and praying for “guidance” from God as to who should be the leader for the regular Wednesday night meeting. There was a “quiet time” of complete silence. Those assembled would then write down on a piece of paper, the name of a person God had revealed to them in answer to their prayers. Clarence said he had been absolutely amazed to see that, on most of these occasions, a majority of these people, and sometimes all of them, ended up with the same name on their respective papers. New people were told they had to read the Bible—the King James Version of the Bible. They were instructed to do this on a daily basis. Clarence said that newcomers were also told to read T ​he Upper Room​ ​he Sermon on the Mount​ daily and to read T by Emmet Fox. Clarence said the new people were then instructed on the Four Standards. These were Biblical principles, in his belief, which the Oxford Group people had found in the Bible. These Four Standards were also called the Four Absolutes—Absolute Honesty, Unselfishness, Love and Purity. The early meetings ended with “fellowship time,” a period of time which was set aside for socializing, exchanging telephone numbers, speaking with newcomers, and making plans. These plans were for social events, in which all participated, in the regular meeting for the next week. It was the custom for the older Oxford Group people to participate in the “surrender” of the newer members. When Clarence had attended weekly meetings for a couple of months, he was taken upstairs to make his surrender. At Clarence’s surrender, T. Henry, Doc, and a couple of the other Oxford Group members went into T. Henry’s bedroom. They all, including Clarence—who by now was used to this kneeling—got down on their knees in an attitude of prayer. They all placed their hands on Clarence, and then proceeded to pray. These people introduced Clarence to Jesus as his Lord and Savior. They explained to Clarence that this was First Century Christianity. Then they prayed for a healing and removal of Clarence’s sins (according to the Oxford Group, sin was anything that separated us from God and from others), especially his alcoholism. When he arose, said Clarence, he once again felt like a new man.

Dr. Bob and Clarence Snyder February 1938

​ow It Worked,​Chapt. 3, Sect. 6: Mitchell K., H

Clarence Snyder had his last drink on Friday, February 11, 1938 and Dr. Bob put him in the hospital. On Wednesday, February 16, 1938:

Doc then took Clarence by the hand and hauled him off [the hospital bed] and down to the cold, hard, concrete floor—Clarence in his shorty hospital nightshirt tied together in the back by a couple of strings; Doc in a suit with a loud colored tie, argyle socks, and a diamond stick pin with a lion’s head. What a sight to behold! Both men on their knees, by the side of the hospital bed, in an attitude of prayer. Doc uttered some sort of a prayer, pausing every few words so that Clarence had the time to repeat them. Clarence didn’t quite remember the words of the prayer exactly, but he did remember its being something like this:

Jesus! This is Clarence Snyder. He’s a drunk. Clarence! This is Jesus. Ask Him to come into your life. Ask Him to remove your drinking problem, and pray that He manage your life because you are unable to manage it yourself.

After they had concluded this simple prayer, they rose from the side of the bed. Doc shook Clarence’s hand and said to him, “Young feller, you’re gonna be all right.”>>

Cleveland A.A. meetings May­November 1939

​ow It Worked,​Chapt. 5, Sect. 1: Mitchell K., H

May 11, 1939: Albert (Abby) Golrick and his wife Grace 2345 Stillman Road, Cleveland Heights

In a letter to Hank P., dated June 4, 1939 …. Clarence described how the Cleveland meetings were being conducted: “Not too much stress on spiritual business at meetings.” Clarence always felt that overt spirituality belonged between a “baby” and his sponsor. Prayer and Bible reading was a prerequisite, Clarence felt, but only at home …. The meetings were very simple. They opened with a prayer or the reading of a verse from the Bible. This was followed by the leader’s speaking for one half hour to forty­five minutes. Then the meeting was over. At least the “official” part of the meeting was over. The remainder of the evening was spent with members and their families in fellowship with each other. “Plenty of hot coffee and doughnuts to go around,” said Clarence. In Cleveland, there are still some meetings that are held in this manner—a short “lead,” questions, and then fellowship.

​ow It Worked,​Chapt. 5, Sect. 5: Mitchell K., H

Cleveland, Ohio was a hub of A.A. activity in late 1939 …. A.A.’s spoke with the wives and husbands of the alcoholics either prior to, or during their hospitalizations. Family members were invited to attend meetings, were given a copy of the book, A ​lcoholics Anonymous,​and ​he Upper Room​ were told to read the daily devotional in T every day.>>

​ow It Worked,​Appendix C, “Mr. X and Alcoholics Anonymous,” by Rev. Mitchell K., H Dilworth Lupton.

The following sermon was preached on November 26, 1939 by Dilworth Lupton at the First Unitarian Church at Euclid Avenue and East 82nd Street, in Cleveland, Ohio. Mr. X was Clarence H. Snyder. This was one of the first pamphlets concerning A.A., and was used by A.A. members in Cleveland from the end of 1939 into the early 1940’s.

Not long ago I accepted an invitation from Mr. X to attend one of their meetings, held in a private home. They are simple affairs: First a brief prayer, then four or five give public testimony to their experiences, refreshments are served, and there is general fellowship.>> Excerpts from the Akron Manual — 1942

THE AKRON MANUAL — published in 1942 A Manual for Alcoholics Anonymous http://hindsfoot.org/AkrMan2.html

MEETINGS

A.A. of Akron gets many inquiries about how to conduct a meeting. Methods differ in many parts of the country. There are discussion groups, study groups, meetings where a leader takes up the entire time himself, etc.

Here, briefly, is how meetings are conducted in the dozen or more Akron groups, a method that has been used since the founding of A.A.:

The speaker can be selected from the local group, someone from another group or another city, or on occasion, a guest from the ranks of clergymen, doctors, the judiciary, or anyone who may be of help. In the case of such an outsider, he is generally introduced by the secretary or some other member.

The leader opens the meeting with a prayer, or asks someone else to pray. The prayer can be original, or it can be taken from a prayer book, or from some publication such as The Upper Room.

The topic is entirely up to the leader. He can tell of his drinking experiences, or what he has done to keep sober, or he can advance his own theories on A.A. His talk lasts from 20 to 40 minutes, at which time he asks for comment or testimony from the floor.

Just before the meeting closes ­­ one hour in Akron ­­ the leader asks for announcements or reports (such as next week’s leader, social affairs, new members to be called on, etc.). In closing the entire group stands and repeats the Lord’s Prayer. It is courteous to give the speaker enough advance notice so that he may prepare his talk if he so desires.

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The physical set­up of groups varies in many cities. Those who are about to start new groups may be interested in the method used by Akron Group No. 1. It is merely a suggestion, however.

When there are but very few members it is customary to hold the meetings in private homes of the members, on the same night of each week. When the group becomes larger, however, it is desirable to hold the meeting in a regular place. A school room, a room in a Y.M.C.A. or lodge, or hotel will do.

It has been the experience throughout the country that the more fluid the structure of the group the more successful the operation.

Akron Group No. 1 has a very simple set­up. There is a permanent secretary, who makes announcements, keeps a list of the membership, and takes care of correspondence. There is also a permanent treasurer, who takes care of the money and pays bills. Then there is a rotating committee of three members to take care of current affairs. Each member serves for three months, but a new one is added and one dropped every month. This committee takes care of providing leaders, supplying refreshments, arranging parties, greeting newcomers, etc.

As the group grows older certain qualifications, in terms of length of sobriety, can be made. Akron Group No. 1 requires a full year of continuous sobriety as qualification to hold an office or serve.

There are no dues. There is a free­will offering at each meeting to take care of expenses.

There is probably an older group in some community within easy traveling distance of yours. Someone from that group will doubtless be happy to help you get started.

THIS LAST PART OF THE AKRON MANUAL ALSO SAYS:

It has been found advisable to hold meetings at least once a week at a specified time and place. Meetings provide a means for an exchange of ideas, the renewing of friendships, opportunity to review the work being carried on, a sense of security, and an additional reminder that we are alcoholics and must be continuously on the alert against the temptation to slip backward into the old drunken way of life.

In larger communities where there are several groups it is recommended that the new member attend as many meetings as possible. He will find that the more he is exposed to A.A. the sooner he will absorb its principles, the easier it will become to remain sober, and the sooner problems will shrink and tend to disappear.

As a newcomer you will be somewhat bewildered by your first meeting. It is even possible that it will not make sense to you. Many have this experience. But if you don’t find yourself

enjoying your first meeting, pause to remember that you probably didn’t care for the taste of your first drink of whiskey ­­ particularly if it was in bootleg days.

Again, you may feel like a “country cousin” at your first meeting. Your sponsor should see to it that this is not the case. But even if he neglects his duty, don’t feel too badly. Don’t be afraid to “horn in.” If you are being neglected it is just an oversight, and you are entirely welcome. It is possible that you may not even be recognized because your appearance has changed for the better. In a week or two you will find yourself in the middle of things ­­ and very likely neglecting other newcomers.

So attend your first meeting with an open mind. Even if you aren’t impressed try it again. Before long you will genuinely enjoy attending and a little later you will feel that the week has been incomplete if you have not attended at least one A.A. meeting. Remember that attendance at meetings is one of the most important requisites of remaining sober.

AAHistoryLovers Message #7516 The latest book on the Manual’s reading list was E. Stanley Jones’ Abundant Living, which was first published in 1942.

The cover of the pamphlet talks about alcoholics in Akron with five, six and seven years of sobriety and on page 15 states that the Akron Group has been in existence for seven years. Dr. Bob and Bill Dotson both got sober in June 1935, which meant that they would have had seven years of sobriety in June of 1942. Likewise, the Akron Group would have been in existence for seven years in June 1942.

AAHistoryLovers Messages #1935 and 7598 Mel Barger says “I was given this manual at my first meetings in the Ventura, Calif., area in October, 1948, and I definitely remember the list” of books which were recommended reading. So the 1942 reading list was definitely still being recommended as late as 1948.

J.D. Holmes: Akron 1936­1938

Weekly Oxford group meeting at T. Henry and Clarace Williams’ home and one or more meetings every day at Dr. Bob and Anne’s home

J.D. HOLMES — MEMORIES OF A.A. IN AKRON 1936­1938

http://hindsfoot.org/nfirst.html

James D. “J. D.” Holmes, the founder of A.A. in Indiana, was born c. 1895, a native of Graves County, Kentucky. He eventually ended up working on a newspaper in Akron, Ohio. He got sober there in September 1936, where he was A.A. No. 10, a member of the original Akron group, which centered around Dr. Bob’s house in Akron. After the newspaper J. D.

worked for in Akron was sold, he moved to Evansville, Indiana, on May 30, 1938, and got a job selling advertising for a newspaper there. He started the first A.A. meeting in Indiana in Evansville on April 23, 1940. (This group, now called the Tri­State Group, still meets every Tuesday night to this day.) Around 1951, he returned to Akron, where he was a writer for the Akron Beacon­Journal. J. D. died at his home in Akron at the age of 66 on Saturday, May 27, 1961, with 24 years of sobriety, shortly after the twenty­first anniversary of the founding of A.A. in Indiana.

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“I met seven other men there who had a drinking problem,” J. D. said, “together with Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson. They all told me their stories, and I decided there might be hope for me.” They conducted it a little bit like they used to do when they gave you the third degree at a police station ­­ you know, the bright light shining in your eyes, everything except beating you with a rubber hose ­­ the old timers weren’t kidding around when they did a twelfth step on you!

“I sat under a bridge lamp, with the rest of the crowd facing me. My wife told me I sat there with a silly grin on my face like Calvin Coolidge for the whole night. But I was embarrassed, you know, among strangers. After the meeting, Bill talked to me for about 30 minutes, and the other boys also came up and talked. Then we had coffee in the kitchen.

“The next day, I called some of the fellows, and that night, two of them called at my home. It seems as though we just lived together when I first came into the group ­­ me and Paul ___ and Harold G___ . We would go from house to house during the day and wind up one place every night ­­ Bob Smith’s.” (Note 1)

Note 1. Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, 1980), pp. 112­113.

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During this period, J. D. recalled, he saw Dr. Bob every day of the week, either at his office or in his home.

“I was over there four or five times a week in the daytime, and then I’d wind up there at night. I’ve gone to their home on a morning, opened it up, and gone in,” J. D. said. “No one up. I’d just go ahead and start the pot of coffee going. Somebody would holler out, ‘Who’s down there?’ ­­ thinking maybe it would be a drunk who had stayed overnight. Anne never knew who would be on her davenport when she got up in the morning.” (Note 3)

Note 3. Dr. Bob pp. 114­115.

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The early A.A.’s in Akron continued to stick together. This was somewhere around early 1938 by now. J. D. told how

“Ernie’s mother used to throw a party every two weeks during this period. She’d make the doughnuts, and though everybody was broke, we all brought something. It was nothing unusual to see 25 or 30 people over there drinking coffee and eating doughnuts. (Note 4)

Note 4. Dr. Bob pp. 147­148.

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… when the alcoholics in Akron were still meeting with the Oxford Group, J. D. said that there was one woman who “used to get on my nerves with her constant chatter. One day, I called her into T. Henry’s study and said, ‘I don’t like you for some reason or other.'” (In the Oxford Group, you were supposed to “check” people like that, as they called it.)

“‘You interrupt and talk too much. I’m getting a lot of resentment here, and I don’t like it, and I’m afraid I’ll get drunk over it.’

“She laughed and said something. Then we sat down and had a very pleasant visit. And I lost all resentment.” (Note 6)

Note 6. Dr. Bob p. 140.

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Preaching to newcomers that they had to accept Jesus as their personal savior, and that this was the way the program absolutely had to be worked, was also something that early A.A. eventually learned was not a good idea, and was not part of the essential twelve­step program. By the time the twelve steps were written, the early A.A. people realized that they needed to speak of God a “​s we understood Him”​with the understanding that each A.A. member had to work out his or her own concept of a higher power. By the time the Big Book was published in 1939, the name of Jesus Christ was mentioned only once in the first 164 pages, on page eleven, where Bill W. said that, speaking honestly, when he first got sober, as far as he was concerned, Jesus was no more than a great moral teacher from a long dead era of history. And again, speaking honestly, as far as he could see, those who claimed to be Christians had never followed Jesus’ real teaching very closely anyway.

But in Akron in September 1936, the early A.A.’s were still closely attached to the Oxford Group, and they assumed that alcoholics had to be persuaded to accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior before the program would work. So since J. D. had his problems with the spiritual part of the program, they preached Christ at him, even if they did it alcoholic­fashion by swearing at him while they were doing it. J. D. said that

“Ernie G. and Paul S. were at his house one day trying to explain it to him, when Ernie said, ‘Why, Jesus Christ is sitting right on the arm of that chair by you. Damn it, He wants to help you if you just reach out your hand.’

“Well, I did chuckle for a few minutes,” J. D. said. “Then I got to thinking about it ­­ ‘Maybe the guy is right.’ And I began to give this thing a great deal of spiritual thought after that. You know how crudely Ernie talked. But I would listen to him trying to explain it to me a lot quicker than I would a polished man like T. Henry. Isn’t that peculiar?” (Note 7)

Note 7. Dr. Bob p. 140.

Emmet Fox

Early A.A. meetings talked about Emmet Fox almost as much as they did about Oxford Group ideas, not only in New York City (where the A.A. people regularly went to hear Fox’s sermons) but also in Akron (where they read his books).

Here are two little pieces written by Fox which were regularly read by A.A. people and heavily influenced A.A. spirituality at the deepest level: “Staying on the Beam” and “The Golden Key.” The first was printed in the most commonly used booklet of early A.A. beginners’ lessons, called the Detroit Pamphlet or Washington D.C. Pamphlet or Tablemate. The second was easily obtainable as a small printed pamphlet.

Staying on the Beam

Today most commercial flying is done on a radio beam. A directional beam is produced to guide the pilot to his destination, and as long as he keeps on this beam he knows that he is safe, even if he cannot see around him for fog, or get his bearings in any other way. As soon as he gets off the beam in any direction he is in danger, and he immediately tries to get back on to the beam once more. Those who believe in the All­ness of God, have a spiritual beam upon which to navigate on the voyage of life. As long as you have peace of mind and some sense of the Presence of God you are on the beam, and you are safe, even if outer things seem to be confused or even very dark; but as soon as you get off the beam you are in danger. You are off the beam the moment you are angry or resentful or jealous or frightened or depressed; and when such a condition arises you should immediately get back on the beam by turning quietly to God in thought, claiming His Presence, claiming that His Love and Intelligence are with you, and that the promises in the Bible are true today. If you do this you are back on the beam, even if outer conditions and your own feelings do not change immediately. You are back on the beam and you will reach port in safety. Keep on the beam and nothing shall by any means hurt you.

— Emmet Fox

The Golden Key to Prayer

I have compressed this essay into a few pages. Had it been possible I would have reduced it to as many lines. It is not intended to be an instructional treatise, but a practical recipe for getting out of trouble. Study and research are well in their own time and place, but no amount of either will get you out of a concrete difficulty. Nothing but practical work in your own consciousness will do that. The mistake made by many people, when things go wrong, is to skim through book after book, without getting anywhere. Read The Golden Key several times. Do exactly what it says, and if you are persistent enough you will overcome any difficulty.

— Emmet Fox

Prayer will enable you, sooner or later, to get yourself, or anyone else, out of any difficulty on the face of the earth. It is the Golden Key to harmony and happiness. To those who have no acquaintance with the mightiest power in existence, this may appear to be a rash claim, but it needs only a fair trial to prove that, without a shadow of doubt, it is a just one. You need take no one’s word for it, and you should not. Simply try it for yourself, and see. God is omnipotent, and man is His image and likeness, and has dominion over all things. This is the inspired teaching, and it is intended to be taken literally, at its face value. Man means every man, and so the ability to draw on this power is not the special prerogative of the mystic or the saint, as is so often supposed, or even of the highly trained practitioner. Whoever you are, wherever you may be, the Golden Key to harmony is in your hand now. This is because in scientific prayer it is God who works, and not you, and so your particular limitations or weaknesses are of no account in the process. You are only the channel through which the divine action takes place, and your treatment will really be just the getting of yourself out of the way. Beginners often get startling results at the first time of trying, for all that is absolutely essential is to have an open mind, and sufficient faith to try the experiment. Apart from that, you may hold any views on religion, or none. As for the actual method of working, like all fundamental things, it is simplicity itself. All that you have to do is this: Stop thinking about the difficulty, whatever it is, and think about God instead. This is the complete rule, and if only you will do this, the trouble, whatever it is, will presently disappear. It makes no difference what kind of trouble it is. It may be a big thing or a little thing; it may concern health, finance, a lawsuit, a quarrel, an accident, or anything else conceivable; but whatever it is, just stop thinking about it, and think of God instead — that is all you have to do. The thing could not be simpler, could it? God Himself could scarcely have made it simpler, and yet it never fails to work when given a fair trial. Do not try to form a picture of God, which is impossible. Work by rehearsing anything or everything that you know about God. God is Wisdom, Truth, inconceivable Love. God is

present everywhere; has infinite power; knows everything; and so on. It matters not how well you may think you understand these things: go over them repeatedly. But you must stop thinking of the trouble, whatever it is. The rule is to think about God, and if you are thinking about your difficulty you are not thinking about God. To be continually glancing over your shoulder, as it were, in order to see how matters are progressing, is fatal, because that is thinking of the trouble, and you must think of God, and of nothing else. Your object is to drive the thought of the difficulty right out of your consciousness, for a few moments at least, substituting for it the thought of God. This is the crux of the whole thing. If you can become so absorbed in this consideration of the spiritual world that you really forget for a while all about the trouble concerning which you began to pray, you will presently find that you are safely and comfortably out of your difficulty — that your demonstration is made. In order to “Golden Key” a troublesome person or a difficult situation, think, “Now I am going to ‘Golden Key’ John, or Mary, or that threatened danger”; then proceed to drive all thought of John, or Mary, or the danger right out of your mind, replacing it by the thought of God. By working in this way about a person, you are not seeking to influence his conduct in any way, except that you prevent him from injuring or annoying you, and you do him nothing but good. Thereafter he is certain to be in some degree a better, wiser, and more spiritual person, just because you have “Golden Keyed” him. A pending lawsuit or other difficulty would probably fade out harmlessly without coming to a crisis, justice being done to all parties concerned. If you find that you can do this very quickly, you may repeat the operation several times a day with intervals between. Be sure, however, each time you have done it, that you drop all thought of the matter until the next time. This is important. We have said that the Golden Key is simple, and so it is, but, of course, it is not always easy to turn. If you are very frightened or worried it may be difficult, at first, to get your thoughts away from material things. But by constantly repeating some statement of absolute Truth that appeals to you, such as There is no power but God, or I am the child of God, filled and surrounded by the perfect peace of God, or God is love, or God is guiding me now, or, perhaps best and simplest of all, just God is with me — however mechanical or dead it may seem at first — you will soon find that the treatment has begun to “take,” and that your mind is clearing. Do not struggle violently; be quiet but insistent. Each time that you find your attention wandering, just switch it straight back to God. Do not try to think out in advance what the solution of your difficulty will probably turn out to be. This is technically called “outlining,” and will only delay the demonstration. Leave the ques tion of ways and means strictly to God. You want to get out of your difficulty — that is sufficient. You do your half, and God will never fail to do His.

“Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

—Emmet Fox

The Upper Room

​he Upper Room​ Beginning in 1935, the daily devotional in T was read aloud every morning by the group gathered in Dr. Bob’s house, with Anne Smith regularly leading the discussion. Early Cleveland AA members were instructed to read the daily devotional from this book every morning at their homes. The Upper Room continued to be used as the standard AA meditational book until 1948, when T​wenty­Four Hours a Day​ (written by AA member Richmond Walker, who had gotten sober in Boston in May 1942) was printed by the AA group in Daytona Beach, Florida, where Rich was living by that time.

The Upper Room​ taught early AA men and women to turn to the religion of the heart, as opposed to inflicting hundreds of doctrines and rules and dogmas on everyone, and continually threatening people with hellfire and eternal damnation. A spirituality of the “educational variety,” that is, a slow steady process (insight by insight) in which I let God (and the people in the program) love me until I can learn to love myself and others. The constant watchword of T ​he Upper Room​ is: “God is love.”

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

AAHistoryLovers Message 9705

From Cora Finch​ :

Do I remember correctly that Bill believed that the “educational” or gradual religious experience was as efficacious as the sudden type? If so, did he ever imply that this was James’ view? Because, of course, it was distinctly different from James. For James, gradual or educational or volitional religious conversions were not conversions at all as he used the term. He was uninterested in them. If so, that would suggest Bill was thinking of a later writer or speaker who did believe that those were authentic religious experiences. My first guess would be James Bissett Pratt, but to my knowledge Bill never mentioned Pratt or anyone else who might have contributed the “educational” conversion concept. It could easily have come from Sam Shoemaker. Does anyone know more about the development of that idea?

From Glenn Chesnut​ :

Cora, I think you are right in that the real source of the specific phrase “educational experience” did not lie in the V​arieties of Religious Experience,​but elsewhere. This is so, I believe, in spite of the fact that Bill Wilson did in fact claim that this idea came from the VRE.

The Big Book (4th ed.), Appendix on Spiritual Experience, p. 567) says “Most of our experiences are what the psychologist William James calls the ‘educational variety’ because they develop slowly over a period of time.”

The idea of a slow, gradual change of the “educational variety” rather than a sudden, highly emotional experience that totally remakes the soul ­­ along with the characteristic use of this

phrase “educational experience” ­­ comes from the battle within American Protestantism between the frontier revivalists and some of their opponents which began in the nineteenth century and continued over into the early twentieth century. Horace Bushnell (1802­1876), an American Congregational minister and theologian from Connecticut, wrote a book called C ​hristian Nurture​(1847), in which he opposed revivalism and insisted that children brought up within the church should be given a kind of Christian education which was constructed in such a way that they never doubted that God loved them and forgave them their sins and would help them in every way. In a book called T​he Vicarious Sacrifice​(1866), Bushnell attacked Anselm’s substitutionary doctrine of the atonement. A medieval Catholic theologian named Anselm (c. 1033­1109) argued in his book Cur Deus Homo?​ (Why the God Man?) that God’s infinite honor was so offended by even the tiniest human sin, that the divine justice required that an infinite satisfaction be made for this offense against God’s divine honor. Only the death of an infinitely divine man (Jesus) could restore God the Father’s wounded honor and allow him to forgive a human being for his or her sins. Bushnell argued against Anselm and said that God could forgive whomever he wanted to whenever he wanted to. When Jesus gave his life on the cross, this was to give the ultimate proof to skeptical and wary human beings, that God did in fact love them so much that he would sacrifice anything for them. The gospel message was simply that God loves us and accepts us just as we are. (This is sometimes called the Moral Influence doctrine of the atonement, which I think is a very poor label to put on it.) The right kind of Sunday School literature and Sunday School classes therefore did NOT attempt to terrify little children with the idea that God would send them to eternal hellfire if they violated the slightest one of God’s hundreds of arbitrary rules and laws. Instead you taught them to sing songs like “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so; little ones to him belong, we are weak but he is strong. Yes, Jesus loves me; yes, Jesus loves me; yes, Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so.” And in every other way you could think of, you attempted to reassure these little children that God loved them and treasured them, and would love them just as much no matter what they did. When you were in trouble, you told them over and over again, you didn’t run from God in fear, but run to God for comfort and help. The second largest Protestant group in the United States back in those days ­­ the Methodists ­­ became locked in a struggle in the nineteenth century, between their extreme revivalist and perfectionist wing, and a larger group (which ultimately triumphed in the largest American Methodist groups) which turned to Horace Bushnell’s ideas. Eventually, by the early twentieth century, the overwhelming majority of Methodists in the U.S. totally rejected the idea that you HAD to have a revivalist type conversion experience (a highly emotional “born again” experience) in order to be saved.

(See the history of the disputes which gave birth to the “Wesleyan Methodists” in 1841, the “Free Methodists” in 1860, and the “Church of the Nazarene” in 1907­1908, also the history of Asbury College in Kentucky, founded in 1840.)

When a traveling revivalist told my Southern Methodist mother, back when she was 8 years old (this would have been in 1920) that she was “not a Christian” because she had never

been “saved” at a revival, and thereby implied that she was going to hell, it made her so angry that she insisted on formally joining the church in the religious ceremony that was normally reserved for children who were twelve or older. Her father, my grandfather Hind, who was a very liberal Southern Methodist pastor, agreed and made sure that she was allowed to go through the ceremony. In the 1930’s, large numbers of AA members would have come from Methodist backgrounds (the second largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., surpassed in numbers only by the Southern Baptists), or listened to the continual disputes during that period between the Methodists (whose watchword was “educational experience”) and the revivalists (if you hadn’t had a “born again” experience you were going to hell). And every morning, from 1935 down to 1948, these early AA members read the Southern Methodist meditational pamphlet called T ​he Upper Room,​which was intended to be the very embodiment of what the Methodists called an “educational experience.” In my reading, Bill Wilson as a New Englander didn’t know that “educational experience” was a typically Methodist phrase (the Methodists usually weren’t accepted in deeply Calvinist areas like New England, so he wouldn’t have met very many while he was growing up, if any at all). And anyway, linking the idea to James’ VRE was more prestigious. So that’s what he did. I think that there are many sections of the VRE which are in fact talking about a kind of spiritual growth which is a sort of educational experience, in that you spend years growing into a higher and higher understanding of the spiritual life ­­ such as in James’ descriptions of Catholic monastic spirituality for example, where no one EVER talked of a single “born again” experience leaving you free from all sins from that point on, or put you into instant possession of the highest possible vision of God.

The Upper Room and Classical Protestant Liberalism

Glenn F. Chesnut

Classical Protestant liberalism is a term for a movement which took over much of American Protestantism during the first half of the twentieth century. The term “liberal” should not be misunderstood ­­ this is a term which can mean different things in different situations. They were “liberal” in the sense of wanting to liberate Christianity from the medieval doctrines and dogmas which had built up over the past almost two thousand years and which had, in their belief, totally obscured the simple teachings of real first century Christianity. They wanted to liberate Christianity from intolerance and bring it out from under the control of people who burnt other people at the stake and chopped off their heads and burnt crosses in front of their houses and forced native peoples into converting to Christianity at the point of a gun. It was totally different from the sometimes almost insane radicalism that began to appear later in the twentieth century (the radical form critics and demythologizers and Death of God theologians and other such folk). What American church historians call classical Protestant liberalism was a strongly biblically oriented movement which was attempting to get back to the simple spirituality preached by the historical Jesus.

The Upper Room​ (which was the meditational book most often used by early A.A.’s) was published by the classical Protestant liberals, who believed that we should start our days with the kind of prayer and meditation contained in its pages. Each day’s page had one or more Bible verses, and meditations stressing the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, living with continual God­consciousness, keeping the all­accepting love of Jesus in our hearts, and treating all our fellow human beings with compassion and love. Both the Old Testament and the New stressed that God’s love was especially extended to those who were helpless and in great need: widows and orphans, poor people without food or clothes, and those who were rejected by society. These were the people for whom classical Protestant liberals felt a special responsibility. (Alcoholics of course also knew what it was like to be rejected and cast off by everyone around them.)

Just as a personal note, my Grandfather and Grandmother Hind were Protestant liberals. He taught bible and history at a Methodist college, and then became a pastor in the North Georgia Conference of the Methodist Church. When I visited them as a child, we would begin every morning by sitting as a family in the living room, and reading from that day’s passage in T ​he Upper Room,​passing the book around the room so that each person got to read one portion. As soon as I was old enough to read a little bit, I was very proud to be able to read the Bible verse for the day, or the thought for the day, when the little booklet was passed to me. Now Methodist pastors were paid very little, and my Grandfather and Grandmother were very poor in terms of this world’s goods. One time, a well off member of the church which my Grandfather pastored gave my Grandmother enough money to buy a set of nice china to put on her table at dinner time. My Grandmother, however, when she went to the store, noticed that you could buy a set of cheap earthenware for half the price. So she bought two sets of the earthenware, and gave one of the sets to another person who attended their church, who had even less than she did. I can also remember her saying, if I ever spoke any unkind words about anyone else, “There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it behooves the none of us, to talk about the rest of us.” And as she went around the house during the day, doing her household chores, she would sing the great old hymns to herself in a quiet voice. She and my Grandfather lived with God continuously. This is real classical Protestant liberalism.

Reform Judaism was a movement within the Jewish tradition which arose during the same historical era as classical Protestant liberalism and was very similar to it in many ways. Reform Judaism arose as a challenge to the elaborate rules and rituals of Orthodox Judaism. Reform Jews have the same attitude towards all the complicated rules which the medieval Jewish rabbis claimed to have deduced from the simple language of the Torah (two sets of pots and pans and plates and silverware, one for meat dishes and one for dairy dishes, and so on), which classical Protestant liberals have towards the medieval philosophical nit­picking of the doctrine of the Trinity and the Anselmic substitutionary doctrine of the atonement and the doctrine of transubstantiation and so on. Reform Jews and classical Protestant liberals both cried out, “it is time to leave the ancient world and the middle ages behind!”

Medieval Christian doctrine was filled with thousands of technical terms and complicated distinctions. These were not Biblical. In terms of the understanding of Christ’s person and work, for example, you may look throughout your New Testament, and never find any talk of three h​ypostaseis​ ​usia,​with (“persons,” or actually “substrata” in this case) united into one o the second hypostasis, the Logos (the Idea of the ideas up in the realm of the Platonic ideas), being incarnate in a Christ who is h ​omoousios​ to us with respect to his humanity and homoousios​ to God the Father with respect to his divinity, having two p​hyseis​(natures), two wills, and two e​nergeiai​(energies) united into a single hypostasis and a single p ​rosopon,​ indivisibly, inseparably, unconfusedly, and immutably (and these last four words are all highly technical philosophical terms too ­­ even though they may look like ordinary English, they aren’t).

In Christianity, many scholars trace classical Protestant liberalism back to Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768­1834), a German theologian who in 1799 published a book called Speeches on Religion to the Cultured Among Its Despisers,​in which he stated that real spirituality was not about doctrines and dogmas and intellectualizations and rationalizations. Real spirituality was based on G​efuehl​ ​nschauung​ (feeling) and A (intuition), the ability to sense the Infinite lying outside the box of space and time in which our minds were normally imprisoned, and an awareness of our absolute dependence upon this Infinite power. Schleiermacher was brought up as a child in what was called “pietism,” a German Lutheran movement which stressed that real spirituality was about what is inside us ­­ our basic attitudes and perceptions and feelings ­­ and not about external conformity to church doctrines and dogmas and elaborate sets of legalistic rules.

Frank Buchman, the founder of the Oxford Group, was a Pennsylvania Lutheran who was brought up in a pietistic German­speaking religious environment. So there were similarities between the Oxford Group and the Methodist U ​pper Room​ in their emphasis upon a spirituality based upon intuition and the deep feelings of the human heart.

Another German theologian, Albrecht Ritschl (1822­1889), was also a major figure in the development of classical Protestant liberalism. Science dealt with facts, he said, while spirituality dealt with the realm of moral value. Stating that such­and­such was a fact said nothing about whether it was morally good or bad. Living the spiritual life meant learning how to recognize and seek that which was good. Science and real spirituality were not in conflict with one another: spirituality dealt with an entirely different dimension of existence.

Many American Protestant liberals were also strongly influenced by the theologian Horace Bushnell (1802­1876), a Congregationalist who was born in Connecticut and educated at Yale. His book C ​hristian Nurture​ (1847) stated that in modern America, more and more people were coming into the spiritual life as the result of a kind of “educational experience,” as opposed to being converted in a single highly emotional religious experience at a revival. The revivalistic conversion experience had been common on the American frontier, but the United States was now turning into something very different from a wild frontier society. By the end of the second decade of the twentieth century, in the northern Methodist church (one of the largest Protestant groups in the United States), the Sunday School literature had been completely taken over by Bushnell’s ideas on Christian nurture, and the

Sunday School books were directed towards helping people grow in the spiritual life as a gradual “educational experience.” The two major northern Methodist seminaries, Boston School of Theology and Garrett Biblical Institute (located in the Chicago area), were at the center of this movement. ​he Upper Room​ The classical Protestant liberal meditational book T (used by so many early A.A. people), likewise came out of Methodist roots and was designed to use appropriate Bible verses and short meditations on those verses as a way of producing this gradual educational experience. It was published in Nashville, Tennessee, the headquarters of the Southern Methodist Church.

Classical Protestant liberals believed that all the major religions of the earth had something worthwhile and valuable about them. They pointed out that all the great religions had something equivalent to the Golden Rule, for example, the requirement that we show the same kind of love or compassion towards other human beings which we would wish them to show towards us. It might not be phrased in the same words, but the same thought would be there. There were a number of fairly universal spiritual truths.

In the Methodist churches which I went to as a child, I remember them taking us children to a Jewish synagogue on one of the Jewish holidays such as the Feast of Booths, and showing us a movie of the Roman Catholic mass being celebrated, and so on.

The fundamental idea that one did not have to be a Christian in order to be a good and spiritual person was a classical Protestant liberal belief that had a deeply formative effect on ​he Upper early A.A. One effect of these Protestant liberal ideas (as taught particularly in T Room)​can be seen in the observation that there was never a serious question within A.A. about whether Jews or Buddhists or what have you could join A.A. ­­ if you were a suffering alcoholic, the group would welcome you in, and accept your fundamental right to your own religious beliefs.

Had the early AA’s been following only the Oxford Group tenets of that time period, as opposed to being immersed in the ideas of T​he Upper Room,​they would have rejected all non­Christian ideas. There would have been no Jewish AA members like Irwin Meyerson in Cleveland during the 1940’s. The A ​kron Manual​would not have recommended in 1942 that beginning AA members read James Allen’s A ​s a Man Thinketh,​which begins with a quote ​hammapada​ from the Buddhist scripture called the D at the beginning of Chapter 1 (“Thought and Character”) — the kind of New Thought ideas which Allen and Emmet Fox were teaching, as Allen here points out, were based on the concept of karma found in both Buddhism and Hinduism. Richmond Walker put a quotation from a famous Hindu author at ​wenty­Four Hours a Day,​to make it clear that the AA idea of “living in the the beginning of T Now” was in fact drawn from Asian religion.

In fact, early A.A.’s went even further than most of the classical Protestant liberals in terms of insisting that all of world’s great religions had valid truths (going further even than the Unitarian Church). This was one of the reasons why A.A.’s started switching from T ​he Upper Room​ to Richmond Walker’s T ​wenty­Four Hours a Day​ as their central meditational book as soon it first came out in 1948, while Rich was still printing it himself and distributing it from

his own basement. Rich’s little book put most of its message in terms of what he called “universal spiritual truths.” 98% of it had no explicit Jewish or Christian flavor to it. He did include the occasional fairly generic Bible verse, such as “And underneath are the everlasting arms,” and he cited that famous passage from the opening of St. Augustine’s Confessions in more than one place: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.” But he also started off the little black book with a quote from the Hindu tradition that expressed quite beautifully one part of what A.A. spirituality was trying to achieve. Rich believed, just as so many of the classical Protestant liberals did, that there were “universal spiritual truths” found in almost all the great religions of the world, but he took it even further, and he attempted to write a book that would be for everybody on the earth, not just for those who had been brought up as Christians, and in particular not for just a few New England Protestants like himself (and Bill W. and Dr. Bob).

The great manifesto of classical Protestant liberalism appeared at the very beginning of the twentieth century. Written by Adolf Harnack (1851­1930), it was called D ​as Wesen des Christentums​ (“The Essence of Christianity,” published in1900), and immediately began going through printing after printing. The English translation, which appeared the next year in 1901, was given the title W​hat Is Christianity?​and likewise went through printing after printing. All over the Protestant world, thousands of people responded to Harnack’s prophetic message. Now ironically, Harnack was a German theologian who was the greatest scholar of his generation on the history of Christian dogma (his three­volume L ​ehrbuch des Dogmengeschichte,​1886­9) is still enormously useful to scholars today. But in W​hat Is Christianity?​ Harnack said that later medieval Christian doctrine and dogma was constructed of pagan Greek philosophical terms (substance and accidents, hypostases and essences, and so on) which even a simple reader could see never appeared in the Bible at all. The true “kernel” of Christianity lay in the simple teaching of the historical Jesus, as seen in such passages as the Sermon on the Mount. It was about finding a loving and forgiving God, and learning to live with love in our hearts. It meant giving concrete help to our fellow human beings who were in need: the little passage from James, “faith without works is dead,” was one which classical Protestant liberals attempted to live by continuously.

The classical Protestant liberals were attacked from more than one direction as the United States moved further into the twentieth century, and no longer plays such a major role in twenty­first century Protestantism. The Fundamentalist movement arose in the United States ​he Fundamentals as a reaction in part to the classical liberals. The twelve tracts called T (from which the movement got its name) appeared around 1909, and in 1919 the World’s Christian Fundamentals Association was founded.

The biblical scholar J. Gresham Machen at Princeton University was an important early Fundamentalist thinker. And as a side note, it was from a textbook written by him that I learned New Testament Greek during my first year at the seminary at Southern Methodist

University in Dallas, Texas, although none of my teachers were Fundamentalists. But it was a very good textbook!

It was not until 1925 however, when William Jennings Bryan prosecuted J. T. Scopes for teaching the doctrine of evolution to his students in a Tennessee school, that the Fundamentalist movement began to draw more widespread attention. Nevertheless, the Fundamentalist movement was still not that big or influential in the United States even as late as the 1940’s and 1950’s. Things changed at the beginning of the 1980’s, when the country took a turn, not only towards political conservatism, but also towards an increasing religious conservatism. In the over thirty years since then, the traditionally classical liberal Protestant denominations, who once almost totally dominated American Protestantism, have been declining in membership (or have sometimes been taken over by Fundamentalists), while Fundamentalist denominations have been growing in size by leaps and bounds. Classical Protestant liberalism (of the old sort) is a weak force at best in modern American Christianity, and many Americans do not even know what it is anymore. It had a profound influence on early A.A. however. None of the books on the recommended reading list of the Akron Manual in 1942 were Oxford Movement books. Most of them were New Thought or Protestant Liberal works.

The Spirituality of the Heart

The Romantic tradition in literature emphasized the role of feeling and emotion (as in Wordsworth’s famous definition of poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” and “emotion recollected in tranquility”). And the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, the nineteenth­century founder of modern liberal Protestant theology, then tried to create a theological system based upon “feeling” (​ Gefühl)​in the Romantic sense. The readings in T​he Upper Room​ were beautiful examples of the way in which a spirituality based upon feeling — what the Methodists referred to as the “language of the heart” and the “religion of the heart” — could be used to build a spirituality which combined a love of nature with a warm­hearted and all­forgiving compassion and care for the other human beings around us. And you can still today read T​he Upper Room,​which the early AA’s in both Akron and Cleveland read every morning. People who read and meditate on the devotionals in this booklet every morning for a few months — just as an experimental trial — will be guaranteed to find themselves growing deeper and deeper in the understanding of the simple spirituality of the warm and loving heart.

For more on T​he Upper Room​ see http://hindsfoot.org/uprm1.html

The Upper Room and Early A.A.

Glenn F. Chesnut

Travis Park Methodist church in San Antonio, Texas. Some of the women of this church suggested the need for a publication like T ​he Upper Room to their former pastor, Grover Carlton Emmons, who had by then gone to hold an important post at Southern Methodist headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee.

(Glenn Chesnut, who wrote this article, attended this church when he was a child, and was ​he Upper Room after that man became a Southern ordained by one of the later editors of T Methodist bishop.)

INTRODUCTION

From the time A.A. started in 1935 down to 1948 when A.A. member Richmond Walker ​wenty­Four Hours a Day​ began publishing and distributing T from the basement of his home in Daytona Beach, Florida, most A.A. people carried out their morning meditation by reading The Upper Room​ each day. In the excerpts below, six people from the early days of A.A. talk about its use:

From D​r. Bob and the Good Oldtimers​(1980), the official A.A. biography of the cofounder of A.A., pages 71­72, 137­139. and 310­311​:

“Sue [Dr. Bob’s daughter] remembered the quiet time in the mornings ­­ how they sat around reading the Bible. Later, they also used The Upper Room, a Methodist publication that provided a daily inspirational message, interdenominational in its approach. ‘Then somebody said a prayer,’ she recalled. ‘After that, we were supposed to say one ourselves. Then we’d be quiet. Finally, everyone would share what they got, or didn’t get. This lasted for at least a half hour and sometimes went as long as an hour.”‘

“As T. Henry described it, a typical meeting in 1938­39 went like this …. ‘Usually, the person who led the Wednesday meeting took something from T ​he Upper Room​ [the Methodist periodical mentioned earlier] or some other literature as a subject. Sometimes, they selected a theme such as “My Utmost Effort” or “My Highest Goal.” There would be a quiet time. then different people would tell something out of their own experience.'”

Clarence Snyder’s wife Dorothy S. M., talking about the way Dr. Bob worked with newcomers, mentioned that he would sometimes recommend that they read Drummond’s The Greatest Thing in the World.​”Those were the three main books at that time: that, T ​he Upper Room,​and [Emmet Fox’s] S ​ermon on the Mount.” ​

A Manual for Alcoholics Anonymous​ (from AA Group No. 1, Akron, Ohio, 1942, Part VI)​ :

“Now you are out of the hospital …. First off, your day will have a new pattern. You will open the day with a quiet period. This will be explained by your sponsor. You will read the U​pper Room,​or whatever you think best for yourself.”

​ow It Worked: The Story of Clarence H. Snyder and the Early Days of Mitchell K., H Alcoholics Anonymous in Cleveland, Ohio​ (1999), chapters 3.8 and 5.5​ .

Clarence Snyder told Mitchell that “new people were told they had to read the Bible …. They were instructed to do this on a daily basis. Clarence said that newcomers were also told to ​he Upper Room​ read T ​he Sermon on the Mount​ daily and to read T by Emmett Fox.”

“Clarence believed that in order for a prospective member to get well, his entire family had to get well also …. Family members were invited to attend meetings, were given a copy of the ​lcoholics Anonymous,​and were told to read the U book A ​pper Room.”​

​he Akron Genesis of From A.A. historian Dick B., whose books on A.A. history include T Alcoholics Anonymous,​T ​he Oxford Group & Alcoholics Anonymous: A Design for Living That Works,​and N ​ew Light on Alcoholism: God, Sam Shoemaker, and A.A.​In one of his recent articles on the internet at http://www.dickb.com/goodmorn.shtml, Dick says​ :

In the A.A. “spiritual recovery program which produced such a high success rate in the 1930’s and early 1940’s …. the growth part of the program had a great deal to do with Quiet Time ­­ a Quiet Time that included Bible study, prayer, receiving revelation from God, and the use of devotional books and periodicals such as T ​he Upper Room​ as ancillary study materials and as a spur to spending substantial time with God each morning.”

​he St. Louis Gambler & the Railroad From A.A. historian Glenn C. (South Bend, Indiana), T Man: Lives and Teachers of the A.A. Old timers​(2005), page 246​:

James D. “J. D.” Holmes, the tenth person to get sober in A.A., left Akron in 1938 and moved to Evansville, Indiana, where he eventually was able to start the first A.A. meeting in Indiana. “Although [his wife] Rhoda was not an alcoholic, she and J. D. held something like an A.A. meeting every Wednesday night in their home in order to help him keep sober …. Like so many A.A.’s from the very early period, J. D. and Rhoda used an extremely popular devotional manual called T​he Upper Room​ for their private daily meditation and also to provide a discussion topic for this little Wednesday meeting.”

A note on some of our sources of information: Clarence Snyder, who got sober in 1938, and was one of the major early A.A. leaders, lived down to 1984, and was extensively interviewed by AA historian Mitchell K., who wrote the story of Clarence’s life in a book which has become one of the AA classics. Sue Smith Windows (Dr. Bob’s daughter) lived down to 2002, and was interviewed by a number of good AA historians over the years. J. D. Holmes, who got sober in 1936 (little more than a year after AA was begun) wrote a memoir, now in the New York AA Archives, before his death in 1961.

The Oxford Group of course had the largest single influence on early A.A. Many of the twelve steps were simply developments of Oxford Group teachings. However, the second

most important influence may well have come from T ​he Upper Room.​For the first thirteen years, A.A. members studiously read it every morning and thoroughly internalized its values and conception of the spiritual life. It became so totally ingrained in the spirit and traditional teaching of A.A., that any modern A.A. members reading from issues of T ​he Upper Room published back during that period, can often feel that they are sitting in an A.A. meeting, listening to the good old­timers teaching them about the life of the spirit. The Upper Room​ was a very new publication at that time, a product of the kind of classical Protestant liberalism which had completely taken over the Methodists (the second largest American Protestant denomination) at the beginning of the twentieth century. This kind of liberalism had also deeply affected many other Protestant denominations as well (including groups like the Congregationalists and, except for periodic conservative reactions, even the Presbyterians), so although it had started as a publication of the old Southern Methodist Church, the use of T ​he Upper Room​ quickly began spreading to people from many other Christian denominations also. The Upper Room​ began publication in April 1935, only a month before Bill W. and Dr. Bob met for the first time. The copies I have are little paperback booklets, seven inches high by four and one half inches wide (17.78 by 11.43 cm). The dates show that they were coming out quarterly by that period. The volumes I have are from 1938 and 1939. At that point, Grover Carlton Emmons, who had started T ​he Upper Room​ series, still had his name on the title page as editor. The publisher was the Board of Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in Nashville, Tennessee. Rev. Emmons was Secretary of the Department of Home Missions and Hospitals. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, spread across the Old South from Texas in the west to North Carolina and Georgia and the other Atlantic seaboard states of the old Confederacy in the east, and as far north as Kentucky. It was one of the four large Wesleyan denominations in the United States which eventually were merged to form the present day United Methodist Church. The Southern Methodists were more Catholic­oriented than the other Methodist groups, which perhaps gave them a deeper understanding of the need for continuous spiritual development as we walked the life of faith ­­ and some kind of decent literature to help us along the way. Reading meditations from T ​he Upper Room​ from that early time period (1935­48) can help us enormously in understanding the meaning of a number of traditional A.A. concepts and beliefs. In order to provide some examples of this, I have taken a number of excerpts from different day’s readings and assembled them below, giving all or part of the reading for that day and then making some of my own comments about the way it relates to A.A. teaching.

Character

The Upper Room,​5.1 (April, May, June 1939), for Sunday, May 21, 1939.​ The readings for May 21­27 were on the topic of “The Kingdom Within.”

“Let God take scales of justice to my life.” Job 31:6 (Moffatt*) . . . . In the Old Testament, Job calls upon God to weigh his life in the eternal balance . . . .

In every man’s record there are four chapters: reputation, character, influence, destiny. Reputation is what people think of us. Character is what we are, the real product of our thoughts, our hidden motives. Influence is what we put into the lives of others. It cannot be measured. It cannot be limited. Destiny is determined by one’s record. To the righteous death is not to be feared. It is the open door to a larger and finer life. The secret of the well­kept record is to have the mind and the spirit of Christ within.

This is what early A.A. was talking about when it talked in the Sixth Step about “defects of character.” The Upper Room tells us what that technical term “character” meant to them: it is what we really are. It is “the real product of our thoughts” and “our hidden motives” for acting the way we do.

*The Moffatt translation was the modern translation of the Bible which Dr. Bob and Anne used. James Moffatt (1870­1944) was a Scotsman who pastored churches in the Free Church of Scotland until 1911, when he began teaching, first at Mansfield College at Oxford University and then at the University of Glasgow. He then came to the United States and was Professor of Church History at Union Theological Seminary in New York City from 1927 to 1939. (Reinhold Niebuhr came to Union just a year later, and taught there from 1928 to 1960, so he and Moffatt were colleagues for over ten years.) Moffatt produced the first widely used translation of the Bible in modern colloquial English. His version of the New Testament was published in 1913 and the Old Testament in 1924.

Serenity and the Divine Light within

The Upper Room,​5.1 (April, May, June 1939), for Wednesday, May 24, 1939.

[At the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount] Jesus calls us to life on its highest level in the beatitudes where each “blessed” may also be translated “happy.”

The beatitudes teach us that happiness cannot be found in our circumstances unless it is within ourselves. It is the inner life that is the home of happiness where abide humility, godly sorrow for sin, meekness, a desire for righteousness, peace, courage to face persecution and misunderstanding.

The quest for eternal life brings happiness, but the quest for happiness alone misses eternal life. This explains why there are so many disappointed people about us, why this has been called “the age of the great sadness,” when multitudes seek happiness in ways that can never reach the goal.

The entrance to the realm of happiness is by a “narrow gate,” where Jesus still stands to meet us with the old challenge, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” . . . .

Thought for the Day

“Come, Light serene, and still, Our inmost bosoms fill, Dwell in each breast; We know no dawn but Thine, Send forth Thy beams divine, On our dark souls to shine, And make us blest!”

In early A.A. Richmond Walker, in his meditational book T ​wenty­Four Hours a Day,​further developed this idea of the Divine Light within, and said that building up the “little spark of the divine” until it glows inside our souls is the key to true serenity. Furthermore, Walker said, the kind of Eternal Life that is spoken of here is something that we can possess here and now within our souls, if we surrender totally to God and, quit worrying so much about the past and the future, and concentrate on living in the Light of God in the Eternal Now.

The early A.A. slogan “First Things First” was based on Jesus’ statement in the Sermon on the Mount, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33). T ​he Upper Room​ helps us to better understand how early A.A. people meant that slogan to be used. We are actually apt to gain more in the way of material things and external happiness ­­ or at least we will find that we no longer need to worry about these things all the time ­­ if we stop putting them at the top of our priority list, and instead start concentrating on staying away from alcohol and working on our character defects.

Character allows us to rise above external misfortunes

The Upper Room,​5.1 (April, May, June 1939), for Thursday, May 25, 1939.

“Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all the men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you Nay ….” Luke 13:4, 5 ….

There are folk in my community who insist, when calamity comes to their neighbors, that it is punishment for hidden sins. Jesus refutes this idea. The tower in Siloam fell on certain men of Jerusalem but not because they were any worse than their neighbors.

Jesus is saying that while there seems to be no correlation between one’s character and one’s fortune at the level of merely material things; on the other hand, at the level of moral and spiritual life there is an exact correlation between what we are and what happens to us.

Do not let your inner spiritual life be imprisoned by church dogmas and creeds

The Upper Room,​5.1 (April, May, June 1939), for Saturday, May 27, 1939.

[In Matthew 13:31­32, Jesus said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all seed, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”]

The tiny “mustard seed” is loaded with imprisoned power ready to burst forth when in a correct environment . . . . The “seed” of an idea from God’s kingdom often bursts into astounding results.

Christianity has been greatly handicapped by conclusions which have been embalmed into creeds, when men should have sought for ideas to implant in their creative thinking with a view to valuable fruitage. A seed encased in some artificial coat cannot germinate and grow. Ideas from the kingdom of God solidified into creeds cannot grow either. Creeds are to tell us how far we have come, not where we are to stay.

“Seeds” of the kingdom of God are not of one kind, but many, such as faith, love, brotherhood, justice, good will, purity, honesty, truthfulness, and sobriety.

Prayer

Dear God, help me to find some Christian seed today. Help me plant it and cultivate it, then trust Thee for the harvest. Amen.

Please note that the classical Protestant liberals of the early twentieth century were impassioned and devoted Christians, as appears throughout T ​he Upper Room.​But they were tired of the endless disputes over doctrines and dogmas and ancient church creeds which seemed to be paralyzing so many American religious denominations, and which seemed to be rendering them utterly incapable of adapting to the modern world. They heard what Adolf Harnack had said so forcefully. In fact this is Harnackian language in this meditation ­­ Harnack said we had to learn how to distinguish the true “kernel” of the Christian message as opposed to the dry shell in which it was contained. So real spirituality is about issues like the one mentioned in the reading above: “faith, love, brotherhood, justice, good will, purity, honesty, truthfulness, and sobriety.”

Please note also that the classical Protestant liberals regarded Jesus as their great teacher, and prayed fervently for “the mind and the spirit of Christ within.” But we see in the prayer above that they were already beginning to shift from addressing all prayers to Christ, to addressing their prayers directly to God the Father instead. Early A.A. people realized from

​he Upper Room​ reading T that it was perfectly all right to pray directly to the Higher Power who rules this universe, and most of them seem to have felt most comfortable praying that way. One importance of T ​he Upper Room​ was that they could hear a group of truly devout Christians giving them permission to do this.

The dangers of resentment and the warning contained in the Lord’s Prayer

The Upper Room,​5.1 (April, May, June 1939), for Wednesday, June 28, 1939.

[The Lord’s Prayer, contained in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:9­13, says “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.”]

“I am afraid of the Lord’s Prayer,” is the rather shocking statement which Muriel Lester, outstanding Christian and mission worker, recently made in a religious journal. “For a number of years,” she adds, “we made it a point of omitting it from our service at our Kingsley Hall.”

Why such a statement? . . . When we pray, “Forgive us as we forgive” this means “Father, grant to me that degree of forgiveness that I am willing to extend to my personal enemies.”

Are we willing to say this to God? Can we be Christian and hold grudges and nurse hard feelings against anyone? The pathetic thing about holding grudges is that they hurt us more than the fellow we don’t like, but, worse still, they separate us from God.

The A.A. Big Book says that resentment is the number one killer of alcoholics. Parts of this ​he Upper Room​ meditation in T sound like they could have come straight out of a really good A.A. meeting on the topic of resentment. It is interesting to note that early A.A. eventually refused to allow into its meetings any traditional Christian prayers except for three: the Serenity Prayer, the St. Francis Prayer, and the Lord’s Prayer. This passage from T ​he Upper Room​ helps us to better understand why they insisted on retaining the Lord’s Prayer: there were things said in that prayer that every recovering alcoholic needed to hear, even if it frightened them and made them uncomfortable. Recovering from alcoholism is not about being comfortable and only hearing the things I want to hear.

How to pray: entering the Divine Silence, seeking guidance, saying “not my will but yours be done”

The Upper Room,​4.4 (January, February, March 1939), for Sunday, January 8, 1939. The readings for January 8­14 had as their topic “Lord, Teach Us to Pray.”

We pray not that we may bring the will of God into harmony with our will but that our wills may become identified with the Will of our Heavenly Father . . . . Martin Luther’s translation of the first sentence in Psalm 46:10 is most significant. “Be silent before God and let him mold thee.”

Prayer

“Have Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way! Thou art the Potter; I am the clay.” Amen*

Thought for the Day

A Chinese scholar says: “Prayer is that exercise by which I bring myself into such communion with God that I become possessed of God’s plan, God’s thought and God’s passion for the world.”

*The Prayer for the Day is from Hymn No. 154 in the M​ethodist Hymnal​ used in the United States today (copyright 1966), and was written by Adelaide A. Pollard (1862­1934). In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, American Methodism had a large number of good women hymn writers, and also women writers on spirituality. Mrs. Phoebe Palmer (1807­1874), in her book T​he Way of Holiness​ (1850), taught what she called the “short way,” which was similar in many ways to what St. Therese of Lisieux (the Little Flower) called the Little Way. See Thomas A. Langford, P​ractical Divinity: Theology in the Wesleyan Tradition​(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1983) and W​esleyan Theology: A Sourcebook (Durham, North Carolina: Labyrinth Press, 1984).

The Prayer without Ceasing

The Upper Room,​4.4 (January, February, March 1939), for Monday, January 9, 1939.

For two thousand years, Christian writers on spirituality have discussed the topic of the Prayer without Ceasing. The Eastern Orthodox hesychastic monks on Mount Athos said that it was the continuous repetition of the Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner” until one had a vision of the Uncreated Light. (This was an expansion of the humble Prayer of the Publican in the little story which Jesus told in Luke 18:9­14.)

John Wesley (the founder of the Methodists) said that the Prayer without Ceasing should be Moses’ prayer, “O Lord, I pray Thee, show me Thy glory” (with an understood reference of course to the concept of the divine glory proclaimed in the Cherubic Anthem in Isaiah 6:3, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory”).

The women among the Amish and conservative Mennonites who live in my part of northern Indiana wear distinctive little cloth hats at all times, which they call prayer bonnets. They believe that women should not pray with their heads uncovered, so having the prayer bonnets on at all times allows them to pray whenever they want to during the day without interrupting whatever task they are working at. They do not have any one prayer which they believe should be recited over and over, but the idea of carrying out some sort of prayer without ceasing is extremely important to them.

​he Upper Room​ This meditation in T sets out an extremely full and rich understanding of the different dimensions of good prayer:

“Men ought always to pray.” “Pray without ceasing.” “Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray.” Luke 18:1; 1 Thessalonians 5:17; Psalm 55:17 . . . .

A college professor said, “I can’t pray.” We can all pray, if we remember

(1) God is not far off. “Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.”

(2) “He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”

(3) “Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire, uttered or unexpressed.”

(4) Peter, sinking, cried, “Lord, save me.” How natural. How simple. Prayer is the soul’s cry to God.

(5) “Come boldly unto the throne of grace, that ye may obtain [mercy and find grace to help in time of need].”

(6) Delays are not denials. They are testings.

(7) The secret of successful prayer is, “We receive the things we ask of Him, because we keep His commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.” . . .

Thought for the Day*

“Sweet hour of prayer! sweet hour of prayer! That calls me from a world of care, And bids me at my Father’s throne Make all my wants and wishes known.”

*The Thought for the Day is from Hymn No. 275 in the M ​ethodist Hymnal​ used in the United States today (copyright 1966), written by William Walford (1772­1850). As his dates indicate, he was a hymn writer from the period of the great evangelical tradition of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

The Prayer of Silence and the Prayer of Listening

The Upper Room,​4.4 (January, February, March 1939), for Tuesday, January 10, 1939.

Prayer is opening the heart to God . . . . It has its listening side. Prayer is more than speaking to God; it is giving God an opportunity to speak to us. Oftentimes we are so persistent in our appeals that God has no opportunity to answer. We must learn to be silent while He speaks.

After a period of communion and petition, if one will listen ­­ simply wait with worshipful heart while the Spirit quickens the conscience and understanding ­­ God will speak in accents as clear as the voice of a friend.

The meditation goes on to say that the proper attitude is to say to God, “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.” Where we get into trouble is when we start praying instead, “Hear, Lord, for thy servant speaketh.”

This understanding of prayer is one which we see repeatedly in the stories about Dr. Bob’s wife Anne Smith and the way she prayed. It is also the one which appears in Richmond ​wenty­Four Hours a Day​ Walker’s T when he speaks of entering the Divine Silence as the real heart of prayer.

Opening the shutters of my mind to allow in the Sunlight of the Spirit

The Upper Room,​4.4 (January, February, March 1939), for Wednesday, January 11, 1939.

The sun is shining outside as I sit in my study. But if I want the light to shine in, I must open the shutters. The control is at my end.

Scores of people, good and bad, come to my study each year. They are blocked by all sorts of fear, frustrations, tensions, and defeat. They are problem­conscious rather than God­conscious . . . .

But they find the answer [when they surrender their lives over to God’s will]. When the shutters are opened, the sun shines in. When barriers are surrendered, God becomes real. The other day a business man turned to God saying, “I give up.” And when he ceased to resist Divine Love, he found peace. It works!

Or as early A.A. people put it, “It works if you work it!” And if you refuse to make the surrender to your Higher Power which is required by the Third Step, you will never be able to enter the Sunlight of the Spirit.

Resentment blocks us from praying

“First be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.” Matthew 5:24 [the Sermon on the Mount].

All of us have had the experience of kneeling down to pray, and becoming aware that all was not well between our soul and God. The prayer had gone haltingly . . . .

What was more, we knew wherein lay the reason. We were trying to present a gift at God’s altar, conscious all the time that God could not receive it because we were bringing it with unclean hands and impure heart. Enmity toward another [that is, the burden of anger and resentment] lay heavily upon us, and we knew it, and we knew that God knew it too. How could we expect to pray, and to have our prayer heard, with such a thought haunting our mind!

Not only so, but we never shall be able to pray ­­ that is, to pray with the complete abandon of perfect fellowship ­­ until in all the world there is no one for whom we wish anything but good.

Nearer is he than breathing, closer than hands or feet

One cannot have any real idea of God and not call upon Him.

One may have learned some big words about Him, and have no inward idea of Him. One may have learned [in a theology class] that God is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and not feel [in one’s heart what this means, that is] that He is all powerful, everywhere present and all­seeing . . . .

When one knows that God is present everywhere, creating all life in all things, and fulfilling all laws of nature from atoms on up to solar systems, he can begin to appreciate Tennyson’s appeal:

“Speak to Him thou, for He heareth, And spirit with spirit doth meet, For nearer is He than breathing, And closer than hands and feet.”

Can one be conscious of such a God, ever present, with all power, who sees and understands every secret heart throb, and into whose ear every word is spoken, and fail to call upon Him? A true conception of God creates faith, inspires prayer and brings the personality into vital touch with the Infinite.

One Day at a Time

The Upper Room,​4.4 (January, February, March 1939), for Thursday, January 19, 1939.

“Be not therefore anxious for the morrow: for the morrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Matthew 6:34 [the Sermon on the Mount] . . . .

So many live in the past, in the future, and in the present. Jesus wants us to discard two­thirds of this burden and share the other one­third with him ­­ “for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

He wants you to commence today with Him:

“I met God in the morning, when my day was at its best; And His Presence came like sunrise, And His glory filled my breast.”

He wants you to conclude today with Him:

“All day long the Presence lingered, All day long He stayed with me; And we sailed in perfect calmness O’er a very troubled sea.”*

*”I Met God In The Morning,” poem written by Methodist Episcopal Bishop Ralph Spaulding Cushman (1879­1960). He was born in Vermont, pastored churches in Massa­chusetts,

Connecticut, and elsewhere in the north and east (1902­17), and later served as bishop in Denver (1932­39) and Minnesota (1939­52).

CONCLUSION

THE UPPER ROOM TEACHES THE RELIGION OF THE HEART

Early twentieth­century American Methodists were the children and grandchildren of t​ he circuit riders,​the young men who went out on horseback alone into the wildest parts of the American Frontier, marveling in their diaries in ecstatic language about the extraordinary beauty of the towering mountains and wild forests and little springs of pure water. And in their diaries they also recorded how they would weep with overflowing joy, tears rolling down their faces, whenever they found three or four who listened to their message, and committed themselves to forming a little group dedicated to God, in the middle of the trackless wilderness. As the children and grandchildren of these T ​heophoroi,​these ecstatic God­Bearers, early twentieth­century Methodists above all taught the Religion of the Heart. This was what T ​he Upper Room​ above all taught early A.A. ­­ true spirituality is not about doctrines and dogmas and creeds and elaborate theological argument. It is about that great depth of meaning which can only be encountered through feeling and intuition. In other words, as a German philosopher would put it, it not a matter of finding a B ​egriff​or a Vorstellung,​but has to do with the realm of G ​efühl​and A​hnung.​Bill Wilson spoke of it in the Big Book as learning how to enter a kind of totally new and different dimension of reality. Early A.A. was about the Spirituality of the Heart, and learning how to both speak and hear the Language of the Heart. This was what allowed A.A. to transcend every artificial boundary and to spread all over the earth. The twentieth­century Methodists were also the only large group that I know of in the history of Christian theology who went so far in defending the idea of a deeply personal God. First the Methodist philosophers called the Boston Personalists, and then a generation later the Methodist seminary professors called the Process Theologians, went much further than any other large group of philosophical theologians in Christian history in developing sophisticated philosophical and metaphysical arguments defending belief in a warmly personal God. St. Thomas Aquinas for example, the great thirteenth­century Catholic thinker, had said that the only literal statement which a philosopher could make about God was that God was Being Itself. This meant that God at the ultimate philosophical level was basically just an impersonal ground of being. Any talk of a personal God was no more than symbol, metaphor, or analogy. We were forced to talk in that sort of symbolic way, St. Thomas said, in order to talk about God at all, but strictly speaking, referring to God in himself as a personal being was not literally true. These twentieth­century Methodist philosophical theologians said that the idea of a personal God was not symbol or metaphor, it was perfectly real. In fact the Personhood of God was the Great Reality upon which everything else in the universe was founded.

Early A.A. people did not try to write technical philosophical theology, but from reading T​he Upper Room,​they certainly understood what was at stake. The best Methodist theologians of that era, the seminary professors and the teachers in Methodist colleges and universities, oversaw the material which appeared in T ​he Upper Room,​and frequently contributed readings themselves. These meditations were designed to be read by ordinary laypeople, but great pains were taken to make sure that they did not violate good theological principles. So the meditations in T​he Upper Room​ made it clear that God is personal ­­ this is not a metaphor or an overdrawn use of symbolic language ­­ and our human lives gain their real meaning only from entering into a deep personal relationship with God, where we become the Friends of God, and walk through the day side by side with the Living God. We talk with him as our best friend. He dries our tears, strengthens our spines, and sometimes even laughs with us, with the great rolling laughter of Heaven echoing among the galaxies and stars. I do hope that anyone who tries to write about the history of early A.A. and how these good old­timers thought and felt, will take the time to read through some of the meditations from T​he Upper Room​ from that period of history when A.A. was first developing (1935­48), and also learn something about the thought world from which this little set of books emerged ­­ works like Adolf Harnack’s W​hat Is Christianity?,​Horace Bushnell’s C ​hristian Nurture,​and Mrs. Phoebe Palmer’s W ​ay of Holiness.​ ​he And as part of this reading project, it wouldn’t hurt to also toss in Rudolf Otto, T Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non­Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational.​In the period right after the First World War, Rudolf Otto and Karl Barth were considered the two greatest Christian theologians of their time. Reinhold Niebuhr was one of Karl Barth’s most talented disciples. Otto’s ideas however can be more useful in understanding some of the perspective from which T ​he Upper Room​ was written. Doing some kind of reading in this area is necessary however to the good A.A. historian. People who do not learn to appreciate that world of T ​he Upper Room​ and the great theological ideas which lay behind it, will never understand some of the most important aspects of the A.A. understanding of life.

About the Author

The author of this article did his seminary work at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist, and was ordained as a Methodist minister in 1964. Although he spent most of his career teaching history and religious studies at Indiana University, he has taught as Visiting Professor of Theology at Boston School of Theology, which was one of the two great Methodist centers of classical liberal theology. He was brought up as a child in the piety of The Upper Room and began reading aloud from its pages at family morning devotions from the time he first learned how to read. His grandfather on his mother’s side, who pastored Methodist churches in Georgia and also taught history and bible at Kentucky Wesleyan College for a number of years, received part of his graduate theological education at Garrett Biblical Institute just outside Chicago, which was the other of the two great Methodist centers of classical liberal theology. On his father’s side of the family, his Aunt Jenny was the daughter of one of the last of the Methodist circuit riders, so family lore

preserved a memory of the Methodist tradition going all the way back to the Frontier Period. While the author was in seminary during the early 1960’s, Methodist theological education was being taken over by the Neo­Orthodox movement ­­ Karl Barth, Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, Rudolf Bultmann, and their followers ­­ so that he had firsthand contact with many of the best known theologians in that group, and witnessed the demise of classical Protestant liberalism during that decade. As far as he knows, there are no major theologians (among the Methodists or anywhere else) who are classical Protestant liberals of the old school any more. A.A. outlived them, just as A.A. outlived the great days of the Oxford Group. The A.A. people did this in a totally pragmatic way by taking what they saw actually worked and had been demonstrated to be genuinely necessary, and leaving the rest behind. But many of the major teachings of T ​he Upper Room​ are part of what actually worked, and worked well – the part of early AA that we absolutely must preserve and take with us today, if A.A. is to continue to carry out its task.