AA and the Lord’s Prayer
All [women and] men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his [or her] own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others.
The Catholic Church, Vatican II, 1965
By Roger C.
The Lord’s Prayer – “Our Father who art in Heaven” – is a venerated Christian Prayer. It can be found in the New Testament in two places: in the Gospel of Matthew and with a shorter version in the Gospel of Luke. It was taught by Jesus as the way to pray and it is universally understood as the summary of the religion of Christianity.
In the United States, the Lord’s Prayer – or any other prayer, for that matter – has been prohibited in public schools since 1962. This was the result of a Supreme Court decision in which Justice Hugo Black, delivering the opinion of the Court, affirmed that the State should not in any way “ordain or support” any religion.
In Canada, the public use of the Lord’s Prayer ended in 1988. At that time the Ontario Court of Appeal heard a case in which several parents objected to prayer at the beginning of the school day. Their children – non-Christians – would have to leave the room if they did not wish to participate in the recitation of the prayer.
The Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that the “recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, which is a Christian prayer… impose(s) Christian observances upon non-Christian pupils and religious observances on non-believers” and constituted a violation of the freedom of conscience and religion provisions in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
That ended the use of the Lord’s Prayer in schools not only in Ontario but in all parts of Canada.
For the three decades since then, children in Canadian schools have somehow survived without a daily dose of “Our Father.”
So what about AA and the Lord’s Prayer?
Across North America most traditional AA meetings end with the Lord’s Prayer. People stand up, hold hands, and recite the “Our Father who art in Heaven…” out loud.
And please note: some AA members are extremely dogmatic when it comes to the Lord’s Prayer. I once submitted a motion to have my AA District stop ending its meetings with it and was literally told by the Chair of the meeting to “get the fuck out of AA”.
How could this possibly happen in the AA fellowship?
Well, AA began a long, long time ago. In 1935. In especially Christian communities, such as Akron, Ohio. And, moreover, the “co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous met through the Oxford Group… a Christian organization founded by an American Christian missionary”. (Wikipedia)
Perhaps not surprisingly then, the word “God”, or a variation of it, appears 281 times in the first 164 pages of the book, Alcoholics Anonymous, published in 1939.
And let me add this: by and large, it’s an ancient and out-dated conception of God. I say this as someone who studied religion for almost a decade, and read the books in the New Testament, at the Faculty of Religious Studies at McGill University.
A bit of the Lord’s Prayer:
Our Father who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread…
So this particular god is understood as anthropomorphic, male and interventionist.
Anthropomorphic and male. A god with human attributes and of a male gender: “Our Father who art in Heaven”. A guy in the sky, as it is sometimes derisively put. (Or sometimes not derisively. At my first AA meeting in a rehab, the speaker said he owed his recovery to a guy in the sky. I was, I will admit, stunned.)
Interventionist. This is a characteristic of this god that is most shared within AA. In “How It Works”, chapter 5 in Alcoholics Anonymous, which is read at most traditional AA meetings, Bill Wilson wrote: “God could and would if He were sought”. He could and would do what? Well, get and keep you sober of course. No matter what else is going on in the world, one of His main functions apparently is to help the alcoholic in recovery.
Now let me be clear and interrupt myself for just one paragraph: There are without question other conceptions of god, both in the world at large and yes, in AA. And I am not just talking about religions now. Some of these conceptions of “god” are more personal, contemporary and not in the least related to any form of religious dogmatism. They can be exploratory and, rather simply, a part of spiritual growth. This “spiritual growth” is something that Sam Harris describes in his book, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, as a form of “self-transcendence”, that is, growth in which an individual comes to understand the world beyond the obsessive characteristics of her or his ego consciousness. I personally laud spiritual growth as a part of recovery, indeed, as a part of life itself.
Okay. Back to AA and the Lord’s Prayer.
My message is very simple: AA meetings must stop ending with the Lord’s Prayer.
Two reasons.
First, it is a contradiction and violation of Alcoholics Anonymous itself. AA insists that while it is indeed spiritual, it is not, nor should it be in any way, religious. Well Christianity is a religion. And The Lord’s Prayer is a Christian prayer. To suggest otherwise is an appalling act of ignorance or hypocrisy. Or both.
If you don’t believe that then re-read what the United States Supreme Court had to say. It removed prayer from schools because it recognized that it should not “ordain or support” any religion. You can also re-read what the Ontario Court of Appeal had to say: the “recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, which is a Christian prayer… impose(s) Christian observances upon non-Christian pupils and religious observances on non-believers”.
AA needs to respect its own principles, its own self. Weird, but true. As it was put recently in The Fix: “It is baffling why the Our Father – a prayer praising a conventional paternalistic, heaven-dwelling religious deity – still closes many meetings, as it directly contradicts the organization’s stated non-alignment with any sect or denomination, per its Preamble.”
Spiritual not religious? No outside affiliations? Then behave accordingly.
Second, the religiosity of the AA born in 1935 and the Lord’s Prayer is increasingly driving alcoholics out of meetings. AA also needs to quit pumping “Conference approved” literature, virtually all of which is based on the ancient Godly thought of the mid twentieth century, and understand that it is now the twenty first century and that AA needs to recognize that and mature as an organization, a fellowship.
AA needs to grow up, to modernize itself and thus be both more relevant and more inclusive, as if it were 2019 today and not 1935. It needs to discard the Lord’s Prayer. A vote at the General Service Conference by AA Area delegates and AA officials is all that would be needed.
Otherwise, as my friend Joe C put it years ago: “My bold prediction is that if AA doesn’t accommodate change and diversify, our 100th anniversary will be a fellowship of men and women with the same stature and relevance as the Mennonites; charming, harmless and irrelevant.”
Amen.
For a PDF of this article click here: AA and the Lord’s Prayer.
Well, this topic is never going to be settled, is it? Ok, we have one member who is over 50 years sober, and he claims that god is keeping you sober, even if you don’t believe in god. What do you say to that?
I’ve already thrown my two cents in re the LP; I could say a lot more, but the reason I’m here is some of the recent comments bother me. The question has been asked, if you don’t believe in god and Christianity, then why are you not out there in one of those alternative recovery stratagems, whatever they might be?
My answer to that is that I find it vital to my continued well-being to have regular contact with my own kind, and to freely partake of the power of example, which has hugely influenced me over the years. Sure, I get fed up with the all-to-frequent sermons from the floor, but I try my best to let it run off me and trickle out through the open door. The least I can do. The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking. There is little scope for interpreting that as anything other than what it says. Fortunately.
If I want to get on my high horse about something, I think it would be the phrase you can find in chapter 5, of all places: “Our liquor was but a symptom”. WTF? How the hell did THAT get into print? I have been asking this for decades, and nobody can give me a sensible answer.
Just to finish, I gave a friend the address of the Secular meeting in Melbourne, which I found here in the directory. He is down there at the moment, and has told me that meeting does not appear in the list of mainstream meetings. Why am I not surprised? Whether or not we maintain that AA is, and should be, non-denominational, the Christians still think they own it. How can we fix that?
Dear Love13,
Thank you for your courteous and inquisitive post. There are many answers to your questions but let me respond in a couple of ways as an individual member of one of the secular groups. I suspect others will follow and include other important reasons why an atheist (like me) or why an agnostic is happy and especially proud to be a member of AA.
A number of months after Toronto Intergroup had delisted 3 of our secular groups between 2011 – 2012, our District Committee Member (DCM) mentioned to me that there were two things that perplexed him about the whole non-believers versus traditionalists group-delisting kerfuffle.
First, he told me that he was perplexed as to how we non-believers get sober without God since he was a committed Christian and believed that his faith was absolutely essential to his or to any kind of sobriety. Yet, he quickly added that it didn’t ultimately matter what he believed since the last time he checked the only requirement for membership in AA was a desire to stop drinking.
He then said that the 2nd thing that perplexed him was that in his time in AA he would estimate that about 70% of all the people he had met in the fellowship over the years were either agnostics or atheists (judged from his perspective as a committed Christian) so he couldn’t understand why there was such an overwhelming hostility against those of us in Toronto who were openly confessing our un-belief.
So, Love13, I think he would agree with you that AA is fundamentally not a Christian organization and that he didn’t expect it to be — AA is where he meets with others who have a desire to stop drinking, and his service in AA is based on AA’s steps and traditions.
Well, I also think that AA should not be a Christian organization nor affiliated with any religion let alone any sect, denomination, etc. So what I want in AA, as a secular AA member, is consistency: if the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking — and the last time I checked it was — and if AA is never to be aligned with any outside affiliation, then belief in God (even if only implied as requisite) must be definitively recognized as an outside issue and solely the affair of each member’s personal beliefs.
You say AA is not Christian. I agree. But you then equate religion and spirituality in AA as the same thing and ask why we seculars want to belong to AA and not instead to one of the other secular recovery programs. Again, consistency is desired. Each person’s religion, if they have one, is their own affair and any religious affiliation is always an outside issue, so religious identification must never factor into any requirement for membership or as a test of a group’s worth. This is what we continue to work for.
So your question, Love13, is really why do we seculars want to be involved with an organization that describes itself in various ways as a spiritual program of action (using a phrase from the Big Book). Now, we are at the point where your question hits the slippery slope of debate among us and we seculars are, on this, by no means consistent (as distinct individuals) in our attitudes to the language of spirituality in AA. We debate this all the time. For a final resolution of this question, if any, you’ll just have to stay tuned.
But finally Love13, in my judgement, the best answer to your question is that AA is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other to help other alcoholics achieve sobriety. It doesn’t get much more basic than that.
Greetings all . I wanted to make a PostScript to my post but I couldn’t figure out how to do so so I am making a brand-new comment. Around here when I was still going the overwhelming majority of meetings in the more populated areas such as cities as opposed to in rural areas had switched from the so-called Lord’s Prayer to the Serenity Prayer. Granted the more well-known version of The Serenity Prayer does use the word god however it is more of a Universalist thing then Christian. Perhaps as time goes by more and more Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step Fellowship meetings will leave Christian prayers out and use more inclusive prayers that fit better.
Thank you, Joel, for taking the time and energy to answer my question and respond to my post. I appreciate that. I forgot that here where I live I’m blessed to have an abundance of choices. I wish it were that way for everyone. Perhaps someday it will be.
Peace, Love13
Here in NE Connecticut there aren’t many alternatives to AA. A few of us have started 2 secular AA meetings with limited but steady attendance. Sobriety in these meetings ranges from the new comer to almost 40 years.
The discussion at these meetings inevitably ends upon denouncing not just the religiosity and hypocrisy of AA but, the Big Book, The Steps, and Bill Wilson himself. I am at a point myself of accepting what I cannot change. AA has helped millions of people so who am I to say it needs to change. If I find it distasteful and archaic I have the free will to look elsewhere recovery and fellowship.
With a little introspection, maybe I’m just afraid I won’t find the fellowship that saved my life anywhere else.
Hello all. I found this article very interesting. I came over here and have been wandering around trying to figure out why people would even go to AA if they are agnostic, atheist or other. It seems to me it’s a spiritual / religious organization and if someone doesn’t want to be involved with that or around it in this day and age there are so many other choices I don’t understand why people would even bother with it. I came across this article and decided to read it.
One thing that’s bothered me for decades is that people think that Alcoholics Anonymous is Christian because it uses the word God and / or chants the so-called Our Father or Lord’s Prayer at the end of meetings. Granted I have mostly only been to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in Southeastern Massachusetts and I do not have experience personally with Alcoholics Anonymous in other parts of the country and the world. However I am pretty sure that this is true everywhere. I must have gone to a thousand meetings in 27 years and the general philosophy was always you can make up a god in your own alcohol distorted brain and somehow that god that you fabricated with your twisted sick mind is going to be real and actually have power and benevolent feelings to help you get and stay sober. Around here the belief is and people actually say your god can be a coffee cup or a chair or a light bulb!
Over the years I have met people who have had the following as their higher power: a blue-eyed blonde named Gwendolyn, the Great Pumpkin. I kid you not this man had over 20 years sober and his higher power is the Great Pumpkin! One woman’s higher power was the spirit of her dead grandfather. None of this is anywhere near Christian!
If Alcoholics Anonymous is a Christian organization that every single person on this planet is both 6 ft 7 in tall and a virgin! As a real Christian I find it highly offensive that this Pagan New Age group is labeled Christian. I also find it highly offensive and insulting that they dare to chant the so-called Our Father or Lord’s Prayer at the end of meetings. You people are hundred percent correct! It absolutely does not belong in Alcoholics Anonymous. Jesus’ disciples came to him and said Lord teach us how to pray. A disciple is someone who makes a conscious Free Will decision to believe and follow a person and his or her teachings. I can guarantee that the overwhelming majority of indoctrinated zombies who mindlessly chant this have absolutely no clue who Jesus is nor do they want to!
I wasted a lot of time and energy trying to change Alcoholics Anonymous. And then finally the Serenity Prayer dawned on me and I accepted the thing I could not change and I left. I have experienced more sobriety, more mental and emotional and spiritual and psychic growth in the three and a half years since my last Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that I did in the previous 27 years!
I’m not trying to be argumentative I am honestly curious, if someone could explain to me why someone who doesn’t want any religion or spirituality would want to be involved in a group that is that I would appreciate it. This is 2019 and there are so many secular recovery groups out there now I just don’t understand it. Thank you very much.
It looks like I posted the same books twice! Here is the other:
Beyond the Influence: Understanding and Defeating Alcoholism by K. Ketcham, W. Asbuury, M. Schulstad, and A. Ciaramicoi
Here in Australia, ending the meeting with the LP is almost unknown. As it should be. There is only one meeting in my area which does this, and it is notorious for its efforts to emulate USA-style meetings in every way possible. The meetings I stick with are the old-fashioned “What it was like, what happened and what it’s like now” straight ID meetings. There is unfortunately a growing preponderance of “analysis” meetings: spiritual concept, ABSI, S&T, “topic” meetings; there was even a “depression” meeting which thankfully closed down due to lack of interest. I suppose these “special function” meetings have some usefulness, but I found a long time ago that what I need is to hear alcoholics talk about alcohol and what it did to them and how it no longer owns them. AA as a whole appears to be drifting away from this concept, much to its detriment, imo.
This is happening in Australia, too, and it has become harder to find a “straight ID” meeting, though they have not yet begun embracing the LP, apart from that one I mentioned. What there is, is an increasing tendency of is holding hands while saying the serenity prayer. Call me old-fashioned, but this practice contributes nothing, and smacks of the kind of new-agey, warm and fuzzy mentality that I really do not like. The whole purpose of AA is to stop drinking and stay stopped. Adding all this other stuff, especially when it blatantly smacks of religion, dilutes this purpose.
I don’t mean to be stepping on any toes; I’ve been to a couple of meetings in Canada recently, and they were unfortunately LP/hand-holding ones. So, it’s not just the Americans. I would have thought that Canadians were more akin to Aussies in that regard.
Anyway, that’s my two cents, I hope I didn’t offend anyone.
Please do. I have opted not to participate in the end of the meeting hokey-pokey for a while now. Doing this opens the door for the more tolerant to ask me why I choose to not participate. This sometimes leads to a rational conversation.
Galen – Thanks for your comment, and it did provoke some thought on my part. I think the answer to your, “How can you say” question is this: the prayer defenders are simply afflicted with cognitive dissonance, they just do not know thy are engaging in self-contradiction. A common manifestation of blind faith.
It may depend on where one lives, but I disagree with John about the off-putting effect of using the Lord’s Prayer. A good number of newcomers, especially young people, are alienated by the seeming religiosity of AA meetings. The Lord’s Prayer is exhibit #1. “How can you say,” people ask, “that AA is not religious when it intones a religious (and Christian) prayer at the end of every meeting.”
When I am at a meeting that uses the Lord’s Prayer, I hold hands, say nothing, and look around the room to see if there are any other conscientious objectors present. This issue is so clearcut, though, that I am thinking of making my non-participation more visible by stepping out of the circle.
This is both interesting and disturbing. I live in Australia. We do not, as a rule, say the Lord’s Prayer at meetings. I know of only one where this is done. On the rare occasions I have attended this meeting, I just look down at my feet while this is going on. Sometimes I look around the room to see how many others’ lips aren’t moving. Usually a fair few.
It is with some pride that I can truthfully say that I have not once mentioned “god” from the floor of a meeting, in the 31 years I’ve been sober. If asked to chair, I will bow to the group conscience and read the word “god” when it appears in “How it works”. That is the extent of my use of the word. Nobody has ever pulled me up on this, although I’ve never made it an issue, either. When I am visiting the USA, I behave the same way I do at home. But I am the only one whose lips aren’t moving. The excessive religiosity of America is largely hypocritical and fully inappropriate at AA meetings, as outlined in this article. I have been saying this for decades. I am also of the opinion that our world would be vastly improved by the elimination of just two things: Religion and Greed.
Richard B.
Gosford, NSW Australia
Hi Liz. Good questions. Here are a couple resources that may help answer them for you: Under the Influence: A Guide to the Myths and Realities of Alcoholism by Robert Milam and Katherine Ketcham and the later follow-up publication, Under the Influence: A Guide to the Myths and Realities of Alcoholism by Ketcham, William Asbury, Mel Schulstad, and Arthur Ciaramicoli.
Roger – The historical and explanatory parts of the essay are interesting and informative.
As useless and insulting as the Lord’s Prayer is to those of us that sign on to AA Agnostica, I doubt that it is a primary cause for driving newcomers out of AA. Your reference to the 281 appearances of the word God in the Big Book, the ubiquitous use of the word throughtout all of AA literature, and the sanctimonious use of the word by a huge number of sober alcoholics during the meetings are far more powerful influences.
As some of the respondents have said, don’t expect any help from New York. Even if they were to take a stand in support of your position, group autonomy would prevail, and the pro-prayer squadron would become more deeply entrenched. It takes about 25 or 30 seconds to listen to the prayer – 50 or 75 seconds a week – should not be the deal breaker if sober alcoholics who think like we do never pass up the opportunity to share some secular/agnostic experience, strength, and hope before, during, and after meetings.
AA got lucky, they got that little bit of backing and publicity from the Rockefeller incident, and they got some timely and influential print media coverage that saved their ass when they were about to fade away. Let’s face it, 100 members after three years. Not too impressive.
And, over the years without the flow of attendees from treatment facilities and the court systems, here in the U.S. AA attendance would be cut by at least one-third. “Attraction not promotion” has not proven to be an effective business development plan. None of us know what the future holds for recovery support groups. Will we secular/humanists, agnostics, atheists, and all-around skeptics remain a mouthy minority? I hope not! But if you read Bill White’s book, Slaying The Dragon: The History of Addiction Treatment and Recovery, a clear picture emerges: some really weird garbage has prevailed in public attitudes and screwball treatment programs. With our help, maybe science, common sense, and the coming of the “nones” will dictate the future and and our view will prevail. In addition to supporting sites like this one, each one of us can shoulder the responsibility of “proselytizing in the wilderness”.
One more thought. Joe C. may be correct. If AA does not modernize, and it won’t, maybe by 2035, it will have become a non-entity, but was it necessary to make fun of the Mennonites to make his point? Those folks are one of the most peaceful, productive, self-reliant sects known to mankind. Hints a bit like intellectual arrogance.
For those of us that found sobriety despite the “Lord’s Prayer,” it’s far easier to say we found a way to deal with it. Remember, meetings are supposed to be for the newcomer. He/she should always be kept in mind in every group. I’ve heard many an oldtimer opine that the program isn’t for everyone. “I got over it, (god talk) they should too!” Really?? It’s not 1935 anymore. The wider the door to recovery, the better!
I’m a recovering theist. Rejecting my Catholic faith 15 years into sobriety, I learned to embrace a four letter word: LOVE. The love I received by all of you who showed me how to love myself.
Yeah, I just hold hands at the end of the meeting, sometimes say the Serenity Prayer (if I’m in the mood) and usually just stay silent during the Lord’s Prayer if it’s said. I have noticed that meetings in urban areas tend to skip the Lord’s Prayer more often (probably because they’re more progressive in general). I don’t really get too hung up on it one way or another. There are other battles to fight.
Thank you, Roger. I could not agree more with everything you’ve said here. As a Buddhist, I’ve never understood why the Lord’s Prayer is in AA meetings or why Central Office in the U.S. does not allow the steps to be re-worded. As much as I love the fellowship, I have to decline requests to read from Chapters 3 and 5 at meetings because I simply will not say something out loud that I do not believe in. Likewise, I stand and join hands with my fellows after a meeting but my lips do not move during the Lord’s Prayer. People do chuckle though, when I say, “God could and would if he wore socks.”
I agree.
Why the need to ask “god” to lead us not into temptation? Surely god would know that there’s no need.
I’ve just started remaining seated inside the circle, although on the edge. I think it makes them feel more uneasy than it does me.
It ends here and now with us.
The AA Preamble says “we are not allied with any sect, denomination, politics or organization”. What, to me, is conspicuous by its absence, is the word religion. We certainly are not allied with any particular denomination of any religion, but we certainly are allied with Christianity. When we all (not me) hold hands in a circle and recite a group Christian prayer, what else can reasonable people think?
What really kills me is how little these Bible thumpers know about their own book. The Gospel of Matthew says “go to thy room and shut thy door and this is how you shall pray… do not stand in the streets with the zealots etc. etc.”.