A Message from the Executive Director

Guest House Institute

If Alcoholics Anonymous was founded upon the basic spiritual practices of the Oxford Group, why do we insist that religion needs the addition of AA, even for those clergy and religious who seek recovery? Why and how does the relationship work and what may be the interdependencies of organized religion and AA?

According to the American moral theologian and Jesuit priest John Ford, S.J., an early friend of AA, NCCA, and an editor of the Twelve Steps:

1.Alcoholism…is not just a disease, and not just a moral problem. It is both. It is a sickness of body, mind and soul. The sickness of the body refers to whatever physiological factors scientists can point out as contributing to the abnormal drinking.

2. The sickness of the mind is the compulsive or addictive thinking which sometimes takes possession of the alcoholic with regard to drinking.

3. The sickness of the soul is the moral and spiritual deterioration characteristic of the alcoholic… “

He continues, “I think the continual effort to escape from what is difficult or hard or frustrating or painful or causing mental or social anxiety or physical pain, the running away from the hard side of life, does something to a person’s character. It gradually undermines the moral fibers of the character.“ (Ford 1986)

The original experience of AA and the intent of the steps were never to create an alternative to organized religion but rather a cooperative integration of spiritual practice based upon the Christian experience of conversion, purgation, illumination and union. The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous negotiate the relationship of the person to alcohol, God, self, and others in imitation of the Christian spiritual movement from shame to grace, from self-centeredness to transcendence of the self via the relational dynamics that are universal to all spiritual masters.

They clearly evidence the meeting of the transcendence and the immanence of God in the fertile ground of the self, made available- delivered from sin—convicted by the truth in one’s experience, made willing to change, (change meaning a different way of being in all relationships), open to conversion, confession, restitution, service and solidarity with like individuals, ongoing illumination, purgation, and union—that is living one’s life in concert with the will of God (not as one detached and apart but actively in the life of ongoing creation and fully committed to the realization this gift – received, to be shared and vigilantly guarded by unity, service and practice of the principles based upon the spiritual principle of anonymity or Humility). Only the transcendence of self via grace can truly understand this.

The best efforts of science or religion will never convert many alcoholics. The disconnect between what people “know” and what they actually do speaks to this disconnect. We have ears but do not hear; we have eyes but cannot see. One need not look far to see the effects of self will all around us and the destructive conflicts and human suffering as a result. Few models exist and fewer are followed that demonstrate effective ways for humans to cooperate and live together in peace.

Why then the continued question by both those who believe and those who do not believe? Why do so many recovering individuals insist on the separation of religion and spirituality? Why do so many religious individuals fear AA as a “cult” or unsafe or outside the institutional limits for comfort?

Is it not the story of the Christian church that anyone who chooses to enter fully into the Christian movement of the Spirit faces the adversity and the resilience not only of the individual’s ego but the egos of all those who have not yet dared to tread the path of “happy destiny” and surrender to the will of God??

Michael Morton, M.A.

Executive Director, Guest House Institute

Motto attached to the door of the house owned by Carl Gustave Jung, and inscribed on his tombstone:

Bidden or not, the god is present.