Fifty Per Cent

Radio lectures that were half A.A. and half one man's religion would have told a whole country that A.A. was his church. A member had been paid to give twelve talks about A.A. on national radio, and headquarters read the scripts first. Bill W. (A.A. pamphlet P-17, p. 53): "They were about 50% A.A. and 50% our friend's personal religious convictions. This could create a false public view of us. Religious prejudice against A.A. would be aroused. So we objected." Think about who would have been listening. A drinker of another faith, or of none, hears that A.A. is one man's creed, and the door he needed closes before he reaches it. The Big Book had already drawn the line for a member sitting with one drunk (p. 94): "We are dealing only with general principles common to most denominations." The long form draws it for the whole Fellowship: no opinion on "sectarian religion," meaning the teaching of any one church (p. 565). A.A. stopped the broadcast without a word in public, and the man dropped it. Today the same half-and-half turns up in a meeting run as somebody's ministry, where the host's doctrine is read from the front as if it were A.A.'s. Test it tonight: is anything read at your meeting that belongs to one faith and not to A.A.?