History of Alcoholics Anonymous - The Oxford Group

The Oxford Group

The Oxford Group was a Christian fellowship founded by American Christian missionary Dr. Franklin Nathaniel Daniel Buchman. Buchman was a Lutheran minister who had a conversion experience in 1908 in a chapel in Keswick, England. As a result of that experience, he founded a movement called A First Century Christian Fellowship in 1921, which had become known as the Oxford Group by 1931.

Buchman summed up the group's philosophy in a few sentences: "All people are sinners"; "All sinners can be changed"; "Confession is a prerequisite to change"; "The change can access God directly"; "Miracles are again possible"; and "The change must change others."

The practices they utilized were called the five C's:

• Confidence
• Confession
• Conviction
• Conversion
• Continuance

Their standard of morality was the Four Absolutes—a summary of the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount:

• Absolute-Honesty
• Absolute-Purity
• Absolute-Unselfishness
• Absolute-Love

In his search for relief from his alcoholism, Bill Wilson, one of the two co-founders of AA, joined The Oxford Group and learned their teachings. While Wilson later broke away from The Oxford Group, their teachings influenced the structure of Alcoholics Anonymous and many of the ideas that formed the foundation of AA's suggested twelve-step program. Later in life, Bill Wilson gave credit to the Oxford Group for saving his life.

An Oxford Group understanding of the human condition is evident in Wilson's formulation of the dilemma of the alcoholic; Oxford programs for recovery and influences of Oxford evangelism can still be detected in key practices of Alcoholics Anonymous. The Oxford Group writers sometimes treated sin as a disease. They saw sin was anything that stood between the individual and God. Sin frustrated God's plan for oneself, and selfishness and self-centeredness were considered the key problem. Therefore, if one could surrender the ego to God, sin would go with it. In early AA, Wilson spoke of sin and the need for a complete surrender. The Oxford Group also prided itself on being able to help troubled persons at any time. 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 as well as the spiritual and psychological.

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 departs significantly from Oxford Group belief. In AA, the bondage of an addictive disease cannot be cured, while the Oxford Group stressed the possibility of complete victory over sin.

In 1931, an American business executive, Rowland Hazard, sought treatment for alcoholism with psychiatrist Carl Jung in Switzerland. Jung, who had broken away from Freudian psychoanalysis years earlier, coined the term synchronicity for "meaningful coincidences" that happen in life. Common references in AA deal with "Spiritual Awakenings" and "Spiritual Experience". When Hazard ended treatment with Jung after about a year, he soon resumed drinking and returned for further treatment. Jung told Hazard that his case was nearly hopeless (as with other alcoholics) and that his only hope might be a spiritual conversion with a religious group.

Back in America, Hazard went to an Oxford Group meeting in New York, whose teachings were the source of such AA concepts as meetings and sharing witness (public confession), finding a higher power, making restitution, and rigorous honesty. Hazard underwent a spiritual conversion with the help of the group and began to experience the liberation from drink he was seeking. He became converted to a lifetime of sobriety while on a train ride from New York to Detroit after reading "For Sinners Only" by AJ Russell.

Members of the group introduced Hazard to Ebby Thacher. Hazard brought Thacher to the Calvary Rescue Mission, led by Oxford leader Dr. Sam Shoemaker. Over the years, the Mission had helped over 200,000 needy people. Thacher also attained periodic sobriety in later years and died sober. In keeping with Oxford teaching that a new convert must win other converts to preserve his own conversion experience, Thacher contacted his old friend Bill Wilson, who he knew still had a drinking problem.