The Real Objection to the Plain Language Bigga Booka

By Bobby Beach

A small number of Facebook warriors continue their battle against the Plain Language Big Book. In many ways, they are (very much) like the folks bemoaning the old news that the Lord’s Prayer was jettisoned from America’s public schools decades ago. C’est un fait accompli, mes amis. On second thought, were the current administration to somehow reverse that decision, I would not be shocked.

This is not to say that the translation project was perfectly executed. It wasn’t. Some dumb mistakes were made. Bobby Beach could have done a better job. Nevertheless, procedures were followed and approval via the group conscience was obtained. The claim that the PLBB was “smuggled in under the cover of Covid” is ridiculous mythology. Proposals for a simplified book date back to 2016.

Before the release of the Plain Language Big Book on November 1st of 2024, there was freaken paranoia in some camps that the AA program was going to be secularized. We were warned that there were hidden agendas beyond the stated purposes of the publication which were:

1. To simplify the language and thus render the text comprehensible to people with Grade 5 reading skills;

2. To make the content more relatable to 21st Century readers.

Why would anyone object to these goals? Wouldn’t members want alcoholics with relatively poor reading skills to have access to a version of AA’s principal text that they could read and comprehend? Wouldn’t it be a good idea to replace dated idiom such as “boiled as an owl?”

Of course, there is an extremely vocal camp of AA members who will battle to the death to prevent any change WHAT-EV-AH to the content of the Bigga Booka!! If Bill Freaken Wilson wrote “boiled as an owl,” then owls must continue to be boiled, even if alcoholics of the millennial brand have no clue as to what in Holy Hell that means.

“I have two degrees from a top-notch university, Bobby Beach, and I didn’t know what Dr. Bob was talking about when he wrote ‘I was caught between Scylla and Charybdis.’”

Quite so, Grasshopper. The fundies are very upset that the PLBB changes that to “I was stuck between a rock and a hard place now.” In executing a project with the core mission of changing words, words were changed. Oh, my!!

“Don’t Big Book Thumpers want readers to understand Alcoholics Anonymous, Bobby?”

Not without the guidance of a sponsor. A special sponsor. A Bigga Booka Thumpa sponsa.

TO WIVES

Let’s be real about what we’re dealing with here, my starry-eyed friend. The First, Second, Third, and Fourth Editions of the Bigga Booka have a chapter titled “TO WIVES.” The upcoming Fifth Edition will have a chapter called “TO WIVES.” That will take us to about 2050 continuing to perpetuate the notion that alcoholics are men and their spouses are women. In 2025, there are about seven or eight hundred thousand women alcoholics who are members of AA. For those who are married to men, we have a chapter that might be of help to their husbands. It’s called “TO WIVES.” Here you go, Tom. Read this and remember to do no nagging!

“But that’s just dumb, Bobby!! The ‘TO WIVES’ chapter has multiple problems but can’t they at least change the stupid title?”

It is amended to “TO PARTNERS” in the Plain Language Bigga Booka and the conservatives are outraged. The mega-dumbness of calling husbands “wives” was divinely freaken inspired, apparently, and cannot be modified. We cannot change a single word of the sacred text, even though in the early years, many words were changed.

In 1938, the working title of the book was One Hundred Men. That was switched because of the presence of a sober Florence Rankin whose “FEMININE VICTORY” unfortunately altered neither the chapter title nor the content of “TO WIVES.” The overall “boy’s club” atmosphere of the young society remained intact.

For the conspiracy theorists, there’s a special deviousness involving the term “partners” owing to the use of that word in the LGBTQ+ community. The General Service Office folks are seen by the anti-PLBB protesters as promoting a “woke” agenda, God forbid.

But back to the supposed secularization—that simply didn’t happen. Not even a little bit.

The PLBB is as Godly as ever.  As one of a hundred possible examples of that, here are the rewritten ABC’s:

1. That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives.

2. That no human power could have stopped or changed our alcoholism.

3. That God could and would help us if we tried to find God.

The original publication offers a Godly solution to alcoholism—a spiritchewal awakening—and so does the Plain Language Big Book. It’s presented in both cases as the only solution to the drink problem. That reality is undeniable and crystal clear.

History 101

Thanks to the urging of people like Jimmy Burwell and Hank Parkhurst and to Bill Wilson’s understanding of the alcoholic’s general wariness of, and even aversion to religion, the Christianity of AA’s solution was toned down in the crafting of the Big Book’s content. The name “Christ” appears only once in the vaunted first 164 pages. It’s an historical reference to Bill W.’s religious exposure as a youngster and his conclusion: “To Christ I conceded the certainty of a great man, not too closely followed by those who claimed Him. His moral teaching most excellent.” The name “Jesus” appears not at all.

Considering AA’s roots in the Oxford Group’s Christian fellowship, Bible reading in meetings, kneeling surrenders, etc., the text departed significantly from the overtly Christian practices of the early members (possibly because such an approach would have adversely affected sales of the book). There can be no denying the profiteering aspects of the publication venture—Ohio AA members were the first to object to what they called “the New York project” and its attempt to commercialize spirituality. Pass It On, a conference-approved volume describing early AA history, has Hank Parkhurst’s son reporting that his father and Bill Wilson expected to make a million dollars from book sales. A book costing thirty-four cents to print was retailed for three dollars and fifty cents. Holy Freaken Gouging, Batman!!

Akron AA was extremely churchy and had those people taken the helm, we’d have seen a fully Christian organization. Perhaps, by now, Alcoholics Anonymous would be a mere footnote in the history of the recovery movement. Things could have been freaken worse.

Parkhurst pressed for far more toning down of the spiritual aspects but he was overruled by Bill Wilson. To be clear, there was no secularization—simply a theism less attached to Christian Protestantism. There was no option of turning to uncapitalized “higher powers.” As Bob Smith famously remarked to a waffling Clarence Snyder: “God is God, Young Man!” The option of choosing one’s own conception of God was offered but the liberality of all that was somewhat muddled by the 1930s language describing a “He-Him” God and the not-so-subtle implications that the prospect would eventually “come around.”

God As you Understand God

The world of spirituality in the America of 2025 is a far broader realm. Far broader. People are connecting with Buddhism, Stoicism, Taoism, etc. to an extent unimagined in 1939. In most areas of North America, church attendance has plummeted. A less Christian presentation of AA’s message would be more relatable to a great many 21st Century prospects.

Understandably, although Bill Wilson wisely broadened the God options for potential members, there is an undeniable Christian tone to the Big Book’s “spiritual” language and the descriptions of the Supreme Being. There are a lot of “He-Him’s.”

“Bobby, I’ve always thought that ‘God as we understood Him’ would be better as ‘God as we understood God.’ Among other things, that’s less offensive to women. That’s another area where society has changed greatly from 1939 until now.”

Grasshopper, it amazes me that God-smacked fundamentalists would object to more instances of the God word in the Bigga Booka but, obviously, the Christers are pressed by their mission to evangelize. The PLBB deviates somewhat from the message that there is ONE TRUE GOD.

It’s worth remembering that these are the same folks who freaked out when some retailers took up the term “Happy Holidays,” thus starting the War on Christmas. Folks love seeing themselves as victims!

“But Bobby Beach, isn’t Alcoholics Anonymous ‘spiritual and not religious?’”

That’s what we’d like you to believe.

---

Bobby Beach has contributed a variety of articles to AA Agnostica.

---