The Jay Stinnett Historical Piece on A.A. - the Oxford Group - and the History of Christian Recovery that Spawned the 1935 Alcoholics Anonymous Society Solution Found and Founded in Akron, Ohio, about June 10, 1935 [the exact June date currently being disputed by some]
There popped up on my screen today an unusual historical compilation by Jay Stinnett.
Though it contains some historical glitches like talking about "six" Oxford Group "steps" where there were none, and "six" A.A. "steps" where there were none, and leaving out Bill Wilson's decision for Christ at Calvary Rescue Mission, the writing contains an immensely useful amount of gathered material on Oxford Group people, Dr. Frank N.D. Buchman, Rev. Samuel M. Shoemaker, and some other Oxford Group people involved in one way or another in the history of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Jay was one of the early ones to uncover and document the real alcoholism solution for Rowland Hazard and Ebby Thacher--the two main figures who helped produce the sobriety of William Griffith Wilson (cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous).
The details as to the decisions for Jesus Christ by Rowland Hazard and Ebby Thacher had long been either an untold or an entirely murky piece of history that was and still is critcally important to A.A. in two ways--particularly for Christians in A.A. and for others who want God's help in their recovery. And Jay Stinnett as well as my good friend and supporter Oxford Group activist and historian Rev. T. Willard Hunter of Claremont, California (now deceased) have become the valued reporters of these facts. These are some of the facts they have documented:
(1) Both Rowland Hazard and Ebby Thacher had each made a decision to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. They did so before Bill Wilson got sober. (3) This information seems to have been passed along to Bill Wilson via two different prongs: (a) Dr. William D. Silkworth told Bill Wilson on Wilson's third visit to Towns Hospital that he would die or go insane if he didn't stop drinking, but that the "Great Physician" Jesus Christ could cure him of his alcoholism. (b) At almost the same time, born again Christian Ebby Thacher visited Bill Wilson evidencing his own "temporary" sobriety, his very clear rebirth (according to Wilson, Stinnett, and Hunter), and prompting Bill to seek the same solution - by his own now well documented decision for Jesus Christ at Calvary Rescue Mission, after which Bill wrote in his autobiography and in a document I found at Stepping Stones that, as Bill put it, "For sure I had been born again." See Dick B., The Conversion of Bill W., www.dickb.com/conversion.shtml.
This element of the A.A. solution -- the cure by "the Lord" of which Bill wrote on page 191 of even the latest edition of the Big Book -- was not only the answer to Bill's problems, but became a requirement for every one of the early AAs in the Akron Christian Fellowship program founded in June, 1939. And its role in the 50% success rate of early AAs is now present for all to see.
Assembling the historical facts over the last twenty-plus years has been a daunting task and for a variety of reasons. For some of the problems, and the way they began to be solved, see Dick B., Turning Point, www.dickb.com/Turning.shtml.
Jay Stinnet has, in the last few years, nonetheless tackled it with fervor for the Oxford Group elements; and readers will be rewarded by reading his article:
http://whatsyourcontext.com/
Congratulations, Jay!
Dick B., Executive Director, International Christian Recovery Coalition
www.ChristianRecoveryCoalition.com
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