A.A.’s “The Big Book,” Rev. Sam Shoemaker, and
Bill W.
By Dick B.
Lois Wilson’s Observation as to Sam Shoemaker’s Big
Book Role
The biography of Lois Wilson states: “Dr.
Shoemaker was to play a significant role in Bill Wilson’s
spiritual development and his writing of Alcoholics
Anonymous, which became known as “The Big Book.”” See
William G. Borchert, The Lois Wilson Story: When Love Is
Not Enough (Center City, MN: Hazelden, 2005), 156.
Bill Wilson’s Specific Remarks about
Sam Shoemaker’s Role
Bill Wilson himself said:
Every river has a wellspring at its
source. A.A. is like that too. In the beginning, there was
a spring which poured out of a clergyman, Dr. Samuel
Shoemaker. ‘Way back in 1934 he began to teach us the
principles and attitudes that afterward came to full flower
in AA’s Twelve Steps for recovery. The Language of the
Heart: Bill W.’s Grapevine Writings (NY: The AA
Grapevine, Inc., 1988), 177.
More than twenty-five years ago, he
channeled to the few of us who then saw and heard him, the
message, the understanding, the loving concern, and
therefore the Grace that enabled our small band and all the
countless thousands who followed afterward to walk in the
Consciousness of God—to live and to love again, as never
before. Bill Pittman and Dick B., Courage to Change:
The Christian Roots of the 12-Step Movement (Grand
Rapids, MI: Fleming H. Revell, 1994), 218.
It was from him that Dr. Bob and I in
the beginning absorbed most of the principles that were
afterward embodied in the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics
Anonymous, steps that express the heart of A.A.’s way of
life. Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age: A Brief
History of A.A. (NY: Alcoholics Anonymous World
Services, Inc., 1957), 2.
Where did the early AAs find the
material for the remaining ten steps? Where did we learn
about moral inventory, amends for harm done, turning our
wills and our lives over to God? Where did we learn about
meditation and prayer and all the rest of it? The spiritual
substance of our remaining ten Steps came straight from Dr.
Bob’s and my own earlier association with the Oxford
Groups, as they were then led in America by that Episcopal
rector, Dr. Samuel Shoemaker. The Language of the
Heart, 298.
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