AA’s Pioneer Program: Purity? You Got to be Kidding!

Matt D., Executive Director All Addicts Anonymous (AAA) discusses the original AA program focusing on the Four Absolutes of Honesty, Purity, Unselfishness, and Love. In this episode Matt and Father Bill explore the deeper meanings of PURITY. Of the Four Absolutes, it’s probably the least understood and the most feared and often discounted. It’s also the one that may prove the dangers of “half-measures.” The episode builds on an article from the AAA archives titled Frank Buchman’s Cure. It’s a short read available in the Show Notes.

Show Notes:

· Link to Frank Buchman’s Cure article

· Link to a Wikipedia article on Frank Buchman

· Twice Born Men by Harold Begbie pdf version

· More Twice Born Men by Harold Begbie pdf version

· Link to Professor Bernard McGinn's article on Sexuality and Mysticism

Reference to Wilson putting the Four Absolutes in Steps Six and Seven:

The Four Absolutes first appear in the work of Robert E. Speer, a Presbyterian missionary and scholar who studied the life and teachings of Jesus. Speer concluded that Jesus’ own life reflected a set of absolute moral standards that could effectively serve to guide us in determining the course and content of our thoughts, decisions, and actions. Speer grouped these moral guidelines under the headings of Honesty, Purity, Unselfishness and Love and they later formed the foundation of the Oxford Group program. When Bill Wilson was asked where the Absolutes could be found in his 12-Step formula, he replied, “I put them in Steps Six and Seven.”

(Ernest Kurtz, Not-God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 242-43.)

The Cloud of Unknowing by Anonymous / Translated by Carmen Acevedo Butcher

https://www.amazon.com/Cloud-Unknowing-Book-Privy-Counsel/dp/1590306228/ref=sr_1_1?crid=AWW4CUA4O183&keywords=the+cloud+of+unknowing+translated+by+CArmen+Acevedo+Butcher&qid=1674503347&s=books&sprefix=the+cloud+of+unknowing+translated+by+carmen+acevedo+butcher%2Cstripbooks%2C114&sr=1-1

 Link to All Addicts Anonymous: alladdictsanonymous.org/

Matt D. can be reached via email at: [email protected]