by Dan M.
One of the most important contributions to AA’s spirituality and accessibility came from Jim B., one of its most vocal atheists. Jim, whose story is told in the Big Book in The Vicious Cycle (p. 219 in the 4th edition), fought hard to keep the program accessible to believers and non-believers alike.
Jim was born in 1898 and spent his early years in Baltimore. After floundering in school and the army, he began a pattern in business where he would do very well until he was comfortable, then disappear on a spree and get himself fired. This pattern continued in finance, oil, and tires; each time he would drink his success away.
Finally, after his first wife had left him and he’d lost his apartment, he ended up at his mother’s house, where Jackie, his future sponsor, came on a 12th step call. They talked for hours and, although skeptical of spiritual talk, Jim could see that Jackie had been through the same hell as he had and was now relaxed, healthy, and laughing.
This was a year before AA had even found its name. Jackie took Jim to New York, and one of the early members he found there was Hank, a man who had fired him eleven years before. He fell in with the group, calling Hank and Bill W. “a swell pair of screwballs.” Bill had been sober three years, Hank for two. Sadly, Jackie would not stay sober and eventually died from alcoholism.
In December of 1938, Bill W. read his Twelve Steps to a small group, and Jim found himself one of the leaders of the opposition. By all accounts, there were heated exchanges about how religious the program was to be.
As things cooled down over the next couple of weeks, they reached a compromise, resulting in four changes to the 12 Steps:
1. Substituting the phrase “a Power greater than ourselves” for “God” in Step Two.
2. Modifying the word “God” to the phrase “God as we understood Him” in Steps Three and Eleven.
3. Eliminating “on our knees” from Step Seven.
4. Adding the sentence, “Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery” as a lead-in to all the steps, so that they became only suggestions.
Bill tells the story of Jim’s revolt in Tradition 3 of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, calling him Ed. Despite Bill’s implying that Jim had some conversion, Jim never came to speak of God. As he says in his own letter to Grapevine, “I feel my spiritual growth over these past thirty years has been very gradual and steady.” He died in 1974.
American author, Susan Cheever (daughter of John Cheever), who wrote, among other books, a biography of Bill Wilson, has said, “Without this nonbeliever, AA would never have thrived.” It is probably not an exaggeration to say that countless lives have been saved due to the contribution of Jim B. to the AA program.
Dan M.’s home group is Fremont Men’s Stag, which meets on Monday nights at 7 at Irvington Presbyterian Church and online: 187 927 449 pc: 774746
Special thanks to Max V., who had already done much of the research for this post.
