Twelve Steps and Seven Principles*

This is also the cover title of an article in this month's (March 2000) issue of our Association's magazine, the "UU World." A number of persons have found their way to Unitarian Universalism by way of their involvement in Twelve-Step Recovery programs: Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, etc. Twelve-Step Recovery is a spiritual process, and I want to look at how this process compares and contrasts with some of our liberal religious ideas about spirituality. What does it mean to "let go" to a "Higher Power" and how consistent is this idea with the value of self-reliance? This is one of the questions I'll attempt to explore on this Sunday.

It seems the older I get the more I keep encountering the phenomenon of not remembering a conversation from the day before, but recalling quite clearly bits of conversation from many years ago. I think this is what the term "senior moment" was coined for. In preparing my thoughts for today I found I could recall almost word-for-word something said at a UU minister's retreat some 20 years ago. As is often the case at such gatherings, one of the early sessions called for us to share some of the formative experiences on our own religious and spiritual journeys. The story I remember so clearly was told by a minister who had returned to the parish ministry after a struggle with alcoholism had necessitated his stepping away from it for a time.

He recounted how, after numerous attempts to keep himself sober--or to get his drinking under control--by his own power of will, he found himself, once again, stretched out on a cot in a de-tox center after yet another bottoming-out episode. He said, "Instead of trying to pull myself back together this time, I just gave up. I decided I had nothing left in me to deal my addiction." But then, as he went on to say, it was his very act of "giving up," that turned out to be the beginning of his recovery. When he stopped relying strictly on his own resources and turned to whatever Powers That Be that were in some sense beyond him, my UU minister friend recounted, he found a strength he didn't know he had in dealing with his addiction. He went on to become involved in Alcoholics Anonymous, and, to the best of my knowledge, has maintained his sobriety ever since.

What struck me about his story, as I've come to know him better over the years is that, theologically speaking, he and I are pretty close. Like me, he's a religious humanist who disavows the idea of a Supernatural Supreme Being who can directly intervene in the working of nature and in human affairs. But the reality of a Power of some kind greater than the self, is a reality that is very real for him, whether it's called "God" or not.

I thought about my friend and colleague when I read the January/February, 2000 issue of our Association's publication the "World" where the feature article was called "Twelve Steps, Seven Principles." It explored the role that AA has played in the lives of many Unitarian Universalists.

I was struck by the very positive treatment given AA in this piece, since I would imagine that a good number of UUs would be more that a little suspect about a movement whose philosophy calls on its adherents to recognize their "powerlessness" and their need to surrender their wills to a "Higher Power." One of the criticisms made of Unitarian Unversalists is that we have trouble imagining any kind of a Higher Power that could possibly be greater than ourselves. Like most slogan-type critiques that one is partly true and partly un-fair. But given the humanism that largely characterizes our movement, with its emphasis upon the power of the human will and the human spirit, such a philosophy as espoused by AA could present its difficulties. While this issue of the "World" did include a critique of the 12 steps, the major drift was about how Alcoholics Anonymous has made a positive difference in the lives of many UUs.

What came through to me as I read this issue was the fact that more and more persons are indeed coming into our UU congregations by way of the recovery movement, and are finding more computability between the 12 Steps and our seven UU Principles than they are finding disparity. As I've spoken with new and prospective members of this congregation, some of them have indicated that it was their involvement with a 12 Step program that awakened their spirituality, and they have now come to this religious community in the hope of developing that spirituality further.

To interject a personal note here, other than managing to kick a cigarette habit some 25 years ago, I have never had to deal with any kind of life threatening or life diminishing addictions. My fixation on computer solitaire worries me a little, but that's about it. I also feel very blessed in that I was raised in a safe, secure (if not overly moralistic) family which, while not perfect, could not by any stretch be called "dysfunctional." So, adopting the path of the 12 Steps as a way out of a personal addiction, or as a way of coming to terms with the effects of being in an abusive or addictive family situation--in the manner of Al Anon--is a decision I've never been faced with. Had I ever been in such a situation, I may well have chosen the Twelve Step path. Who can say what he or she would do if their personal circumstances were desperate enough? As indicated, I know quite well some persons who have put their lives in order via the 12 Steps, and I've had conversations with some of the persons who use our facility here: A Narcotics Anonymous Groups as well as an AA group that is primarily--but not exclusively--aimed at gay and lesbian persons. This has given me some familiarity with the 12 Step process, but still makes my assessment of it that of an outsider.

Given that some of our fellow UUs are finding an affinity between the 12 Steps and our liberal approach to religion I want to deal with the subject by focusing on three areas. I'll take a look at the origins of the 12 Step movement. Then I want to look at some of the 12 Steps themselves and give particular attention to what terms like "letting go" and "higher power" might mean. Finally I want to conclude by looking at how we can be, I hope, a "welcoming congregation" to persons who have found positive direction for themselves by way of the 12 Steps, as well as for persons who may need an alternative to them.

Most movements--be they religious or not--have a story about their beginnings and AA is no exception. Its founding event took place over 65 years ago this summer in Akron, Ohio in June of 1935. It's a "traveling salesman" story actually, but it's hardly a joke. The salesman was a gentleman named William Wilson. He was from Vermont; and had come to live in New York where he'd had a series of business successes and failures--in the course of which he developed a serious drinking problem. Wilson sought help for his addiction through the teachings of what was called the "Oxford Movement."

The Oxford Movement was an evangelical Christian enterprise that had a measure of success, and notoriety, on our nation's college campuses in the early decades of the 20th century. While it had no formal ties to England's Oxford University, this movement's founder, a Mr. Frank Buchman, set up shop next to it's campus, and gave his organization the name Oxford Movement in order to give it some kind of an aura of academic respectability, I guess. The Oxford Movement stressed the need for complete surrender of one's life to Jesus Christ, confession of all wrongdoing, making amends and repentance, and turning oneself over to the guidance of God, whose guidance would be revealed once the surrender was complete. The Oxford Movement was the forerunner of an organization today known as Campus Crusade for Christ, with which I had some rather interesting dealings back in my campus ministry days. That, however, is another story.

Back to Akron in June of 1935: The business deal Wilson was hoping to close on fell through, and he decided to drown his sorrows in alcohol as he'd done many times previously. But this time he caught himself, and decided instead to seek help from any Oxford Movement adherents who might happen to be living in Akron. Through the assistance of a local minister Wilson located such a person, a physician named Dr. Robert Smith. [You can't get much more basic than Bill Wilson and Bob Smith.] As it happened Dr. Smith was just coming off a pretty heavy round of drinking himself when Mr. Wilson contacted him. The two hit it off; they promised one another that--using their own take on the Oxford principles--they would help and support each other in staying sober. From that meeting in Akron they started an organization.

What became the 12 Steps, and what is known in AA circles as the "Big Book" is essentially Wilson's re-working of the Oxford principles. He took them out of their conservative Christian context in order to make them more widely acceptable across religious and cultural lines, and applied them specifically to combating alcoholism. In very shorthand fashion, then, that is the story of how Bill W. and Doctor Bob started AA.

Over the past 65 years the movement has spread widely. The 12 Steps have been adapted to dealing with other addictions like narcotics, gambling, overeating, sex, and smoking to name a few. Another 12 Step spin off has been aimed at members of the families where there was an addictive parent or elder. So we also have support groups of "adult children" of alcoholics, drug abusers, gamblers, sex abusers, and the like. If you were to chronicle the past 65 years as a progression of Biblical style begats, it would go something like this: Bill W. and Doctor Bob begat AA and the 12 Steps; which begat the treatment of other self-destructive addictions and compulsions; which begat the treatment of family members affected by such addictions; which begat the adult child and inner child victims of dysfunctional families Recovery Movement. By the time you get to that last one the 12 Steps may no longer even be invoked depending upon which part of this amorphous "recovery movement" you are dealing with. But I think the links are there nonetheless, however great the philosophical distance from William Wilson to, say, John Bradshaw may be.

Whether or not you consider AA to be a "religion" (and I'm not going to argue that one today) it clearly did have religious origins. But religion or not, it has evolved into a very diversified cultural phenomenon that has clearly hit a spiritual nerve, and continues to address a kind of spiritual yearning more than six decades later. For many, many folk these twelve steps have become more than a means of deliverance from an addiction or psychic pain; they have become a way of life in and of themselves. I've included a copy of the 12 Steps in the Order of Service today as they were reproduced in that recent issue of the "World." So, let's take a closer look at them.

At first reading (and probably even second and third readings) many of these precepts will, I'm sure, set off all kinds of alarm bells with UUs and other religious liberals--to say nothing of secular humanists--and I'm not even referring primarily to the masculine references to God. The whole notion of being powerless, and turning our lives over to a Power greater than ourselves, and looking to Him--or even Her, for that matter--to remove our character defects is a bit more than many of us can deal with, I daresay. For this reason there have emerged several more secular alternatives to AA: Rational Recovery, Save Our Selves, Women or Men for Sobriety, and the like. I would recommend then to persons dealing with crippling addictions who have trouble with the 12 Step language and philosophy.

But at the same time I wouldn't give up on, or blow off too quickly, the traditional 12 Steps as meaningless for religious liberals; or--as some have alleged--even harmful or dangerous. I find that when I look through the language of the 12 Steps, rather than simply at it, it takes on some meaning which I, as a religious humanist, can appreciate. The best way for me to explain this is to back up a bit a look at a rather harsh critique of the 12 Steps from a secular, rational, or humanistic perspective--and then offer my critique of that critique. Hang in with me, we'll get there.

One of the strongest criticisms of AA and the 12 Steps that I have found is in a book called Alcoholics Anonymous: Cult or Cure. The title suggests the gist of the book itself. The authors are Drs. Charles Bufe and Albert Ellis, both quite esteemed psychologists. Dr. Ellis is the founder of Rational Emotive Therapy, an approach to psychological treatment that has had a positive effect upon numerous lives. The essence of their argument is that buying into a 12 Step program renders one powerless and largely devoid of any self-esteem, or with any sense of self-control over one's life. While seeing some human value in each of the steps, and while concluding that AA isn't quite a cult after all, Ellis and Bufe also say things like, "It is difficult to see how [Step One] can do anything for those who accept it other than contribute to low self-esteem. This is pernicious..." Of Step Two they say, "it promotes the idea of individual helplessness." Of Step 7, the one about asking humbly for forgiveness, their response is , "Humility is the virtue of those with poor self-images." And so on; you get their idea. I happen to have a certain amount of admiration for the work of Dr. Ellis; I know much less about Dr. Bufe. I would agree with them that the 12 Steps have the potential for producing the consequences they describe; and they probably have produced such outcomes on occasion. It's also true that practically any religious, spiritual, political, or social movement or cause has its fanatics and "true believers" who take their precepts to extreme, even cultic, ends. You probably can find examples of this within the AA, and in similar recovery movements.

Granting all that I still have to take issue with Bufe and Ellis' on two counts: First, their assertions just don't square with my own reality. By that I mean the reality of what I've seen and know of people in these programs. Second, there is a human paradox and subtle interplay between being powerful and powerless, and between "letting go" and being "in control" that these two learned gentlemen, for all their knowledge, are just plain missing.

On that first point, the people I've known who, for various reasons, have used the 12 Steps are anything but helpless zombies devoid of all self-esteem in the manner that Bufe and Ellis suggest. To the contrary, they are usually people who have finally come to feel some sense of personal empowerment and self-worth after years--in some cases after nearly a life-time--of having very little of either. As for the clearly heavily-laden God-talk in these Steps, again the 12 Step people I've known and spoken with say they take what they need of it and leave the rest. By this I mean they adapt the language to their own religious and spiritual perspectives, or use it to build a spiritual base that is their own, rather than just swallowing the verbiage unquestioningly. For example, the phrase "Let go and let God"--often cited as the underlying principle of the 12 Steps--is usually invoked as a way of helping a person lighten up on him or herself a bit rather than swallowing down some pre-packaged notion of "God."

I remember discussing this very point with someone after one of my UU 101 sessions where we'd gotten into a conversation during the meeting about how she'd found her way to UUism via the 12 Steps. She said that when it came to the "Let go and let God" business, the operative words for her in that expression were "let go," and whatever "Let God" might mean would take care of itself. The paradox here is that sometimes when we reach the limits of our own self-reliance--or feel that we have anyway--it is then that we find the means to achieve that very self-reliance.

This brings me to my other issue with Doctors Ellis and Bufe, because I think this is a paradox they have failed to see: The paradox or interplay between letting go and being in control; or between personal power and powerlessness. They don't seem to get it. Recall again my colleague's story that I related at the beginning of these remarks. After he "gave up," as he put it, he went onto say that when he let go of so desperately trying to control himself and his drinking he discovered (and who knows from what source?) some kind of a renewed power that he was able to tap into in order to get his life back in order. Neither he, nor I, could offer a "rational" explanation for that, but he knew it to be the case, and I believed him.

While I cannot offer an explanation for this phenomenon, I can make this observation: The 12 Step process seems to take the immediate weight of whatever the person is struggling with off his/her back in a way that gives that person the freedom and the power to actually deal with it. This, it seems, is the paradox: Once I stop trying so blasted hard to be the "master of my fate and the captain of my soul" I find I actually do have the power to be just that. So call it a "Higher Power," call it "God," call it--and this would be my preference--a "Deeper Power;" call it whatever one wishes. The idea seems to be to find a reference point other than the already overburdened self, as a source of strength and trust that one can rely on.

Now, from my own religious and spiritual perspective, that "Reference Other Than The Self" or "Power Greater Than Oneself" ultimately proves to be some of the deepest wellsprings of the Self. But if you are desperately trying to maintain control of yourself on one level, you can actually be blocking yourself from reaching the wellsprings that are at some other level of your being or psyche. You have to let go at one level, in other words, in order to take control on another. This is the truth I see beyond what I know can be for some troublesome language in the 12 Steps.

Well, I've been pretty long on the 12 Steps and very short on the 7 UU principles today, but let me begin to close by citing two that I think are relevant here. Our Seventh Principles refers to the "Interdependent Web of Existence of which we are all a part." This is not a theological statement so much as it is an affirmation of what I take to be a self-evident truth, namely that we are a part of a larger, inter-connected Web of Life that ultimately sustains and nurtures us. We do not live entirely on the strength of our own will and self-direction alone, crucial as these things are to having a meaningful life. One of the messages contained in this Principle is that we need our connections as much as we need our self-reliance: Our connections to one another, our connections to the Earth and its rhythms, our connections to what it is we know and believe ultimately grounds us, and in which we place our final trust. One of the reasons for a liberal religious community and congregation like this one is to be a place where these kinds of connections can be discovered and celebrated. Maybe a UU variation on the phrase "Let go and let God" would be "Let go and embrace your connections."

The other Principle I would call to mind here is the one that says we covenant to affirm and promote the "Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations." Among the many paths that bring people to our doors and to our community is one that has involved a spiritual awakening of one kind or another which has come in the midst of a time of crises or trial. Some persons come here looking for a place to deal with, and to make some sense of, that awakening. I hope we can offer a safe and accepting place for such persons.

I remember being at a workshop at a District UU conference some years ago where UUs who were recovering alcoholics--and some of whom were in 12 Step groups--spoke of why they needed a liberal religious community to relate to. As one woman put it, "I go to AA on Friday nights to continue my recovery from alcoholism, and then I go to a UU church on Sunday morning to reaffirm and recover my theology." That was nicely put, I thought.

We come here, then, by many journeys of the spirit, by many paths of discovery and meaning. For all of these journeys may we continue to commit ourselves to offering a welcoming home.

*Rev. Steve Edington 3/26/00

Copyright © 2000 by the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Nashua NH. All rights reserved.



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