How Alcoholics Connected with the Oxford Group In AA, the bondage of an addictive disease cannot be cured, and the Oxford Group stressed the possibility of complete victory over sin. In 1955, Wilson wrote: "The early AA got its ideas of self-examination, acknowledgment of character defects, restitution for harm done, and working with others straight from the Oxford Group and directly from Sam Shoemaker, their former leader in America, and from nowhere else." According to Mercadante, however, the AA concept of powerlessness over alcohol departs significantly from Oxford Group belief. AA gained an early warrant from the Oxford Group for the concept that disease could be spiritual, but it broadened the diagnosis to include the physical and psychological. The Oxford Group also prided itself on being able to help troubled persons at any time. In early AA, Wilson spoke of sin and the need for a complete surrender to God. Therefore, if one could "surrender one's ego to God", sin would go with it. Sin frustrated "God's plan" for oneself, and selfishness and self-centeredness were considered the key problems.
They saw sin was "anything that stood between the individual and God". The Oxford Group writers sometimes treated sin as a disease. Īn Oxford Group understanding of the human condition is evident in Wilson's formulation of the dilemma of the alcoholic Oxford Group program of recovery and influences of Oxford Group evangelism still can be detected in key practices of Alcoholics Anonymous. Later in life, Bill Wilson gave credit to the Oxford Group for saving his life. While Wilson later broke from The Oxford Group, he based the structure of Alcoholics Anonymous and many of the ideas that formed the foundation of AA's suggested 12-step program on the teachings of the Oxford Group. In his search for relief from his alcoholism, Bill Wilson, one of the two co-founders of AA, joined The Oxford Group and learned its teachings. Their standard of morality was the Four Absolutes – a summary of the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount: The practices they utilized were called the five C's:
This came to be known as the Oxford Group by 1928.īuchman summarized the Oxford Group philosophy in a few sentences: "All people are sinners" "All sinners can be changed" "Confession is a prerequisite to change" "The changed person can access God directly" "Miracles are again possible" and "The changed person must change others."
As a result of that experience, he founded a movement named A First Century Christian Fellowship in 1921. Buchman was a minister, originally Lutheran, then Evangelist, who had a conversion experience in 1908 in a chapel in Keswick, England, the revival center of the Higher Life movement. The Oxford Group was a Christian fellowship founded by American Christian missionary Frank Buchman. Those who could afford psychiatrists or hospitals were subjected to a treatment with barbiturate and belladonna known as "purge and puke" or were left in long-term asylum treatment. Those without financial resources found help through state hospitals, the Salvation Army, or other charitable societies and religious groups. In post- Prohibition 1930s America, it was common to perceive alcoholism as a moral failing, and the medical profession standards of the time treated it as a condition that was likely incurable and lethal.
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