Committee No. 3
Question
2:
“Would
the Fellowship review and re-affirm what constitutes an AA Group,
within the Fellowship in Great Britain with specific reference to
Traditions 4 - 6?
Background
Consider
the contribution to the carrying of the message, financial and
practical implications when deliberating each question.”
Extract:
“Tradition
Six
“An
A.A. group, as such, should never go into business.” (Tradition Six, Long form)
“While
an A.A. group may cooperate with anyone, such cooperation ought never
go so far as affiliation or endorsement, actual or implied. An A.A.
group can bind itself to no one.”(Tradition Six, Long form)
If
a group’s purpose is also to be a retail outlet for related
facilities and outside enterprise, for example: non A.A. published
recovery related literature, recovery merchandise, non A.A. organised
workshops and conventions, spiritual retreats, etc; then the group
gives these outside businesses “endorsement, actual or implied.”
This retailing of outside enterprise in an A.A. group is not using AA
name “only in connection with straight AA activities.” Whether
the business is being done on a separate table or under the table, it
cannot call itself an A.A. group. This is a dual purpose.
Considering
the financial and practical implications to this question: the sale
of non A.A. material by a retail outlet masquerading as an A.A.
group, competes directly with official A.A. literature and audio
recordings, diverting money away from the A.A. primary purpose into
the hands of outside enterprises that are exploiting the fellowship.
There
is also the implication for A.A. unity, the dissipation of the A.A.
message and damage to AA public relations:
“Our
literature is a principle means by which A.A. recovery, unity, and
service are facilitated” (Concept XI). “Suppose, for instance,
that during the last twenty five years, AA had never published any
standard literature – no books, no pamphlets. We need little
imagination to see that by now our message would be hopelessly
garbled. Our relations with medicine and religion would have become a
shambles. To alcoholics generally we would today be a joke and the
public would have thought us a riddle. Without its literature, AA
would certainly have bogged down in a welter of controversy and
disunity” (Bill W. “A Message from Bill”, AA Grapevine May 1964; The Language of the
Heart page 348)
There’s
also the human cost of this outside exploitation:
“I
am concerned that we are not reaching people who cannot read well or
cannot read at all. I am new to the program and making my way through
the Steps. I struggle to understand the "Twelve and Twelve,"
even with a college degree and help from my sponsor and other AAs.
Meanwhile, my room-mate, also newly sober and with a grade school
education, can't make any sense of her Step workbook and is about to
give up. How many people do we lose this way? How many, when asked to
read from the Big Book at a meeting, stumble through a few sentences,
acutely embarrassed, and never come back? A literature-based program
effectively shuts out people who desperately need help but do not
have good reading skills…........... We need new ways to reach the
still- suffering alcoholic --- ways that do not depend on the written
word” (June W. Gaithersburg, Md. “Dear Grapevine, Shut Out”
A.A. Grapevine November 2010) http://www.aagrapevine.org/
A.A.
does not produce step workbooks, but they have now arrived in the UK,
I have recently been given one. It doesn’t surprise me that the
newcomer in the USA can't make any sense of hers if it is a copy of
the same one that I have been given. I too wonder how many newcomers
we’re going to lose in the UK. I think it is fair to say that
traditionally the AA message is more a word of mouth programme, one
alcoholic talking to another in “the language of the heart”, not
literature based. We don’t need the new literature ways, but stick
to the A.A.Tradition. What constitutes an A.A. group would not make a
requirement for a newcomer to read a work book or the Big Book for
that matter, because there is no requirement for AA membership other
than a desire to stop drinking; all inclusive to the literate or
illiterate. According to Tradition Six, an A.A. group would never
give endorsement, actual or implied, to any related facility or
outside enterprise such as a step work book.”
Cheerio
The
Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)
