Alcoholics Anonymous has a book titled “The ‘God’ Word – Agnostic and Atheist Members in A.A.” – and it is about how some people have been able to work the steps of the program without believing in a supernatural God. It is full of testimonies by people in the Alcoholics Anonymous program who do not believe in God.
While this book has some great things about it that can be inspiring to read by any Atheist, regardless of whether or not that Atheist has a drinking problem or substance abuse problem of any kind — there are also somethings about this book that make it problematic. All in all, just like A.A. itself, this book is a mixed bag. In this video, I discuss the book – both the good and the bad about it.
The most inspiring thing in the book is how each Atheist in this book mentioned in their testimony what is their “Higher Power” if it is not a supernatural God. In doing, they went behind defining what they are not (i.e., someone who believes in a supernatural God) but defined what they are.
That said – the book, while making the case in theory that the twelve-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous is fully compatible with Atheism, did nothing to address the issue of how an Atheist (or any non-Christian in the program for that matter) can deal with it when other members of the group try to push Christianity on to them.
Why is it such a problem that this issue is not discussed in this book? First of all, putting some discussion of that issue in this book would make a huge difference in addressing a serious problem that does in fact exist in the rooms of A.A. But second of all, the absence of discussion on this topic in this book is very much tied in to the fact that A.A. as a whole does not really take this problem seriously at all.
While the twelve-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous is not the best fit for everyone with a drinking problem – it can be very compatible with the lack of belief in any supernatural God. However, suggesting to people to think outside the box is only one thing that needs to be done to make this compatibility a reality. It is also very essential that Atheists be given some means to deal with efforts to proselytize them in the name of the Steps.
And this book’s failure to even bring up that issue is very much symptomatic to Alcoholics Anonymous’s failure to address the issue altogether.
