Should Prison Fellowships be Promoting AA?

In this regular feature Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call.  Here is this week’s question:  “Dear Mr. Hunt and Mr. McMahon, A friend passed along a copy of Inside Journal, which is produced by Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship.  I was surprised to see this little blurb with the headline:  “Free information from Alcohol Anonymous.”  I am quoting:  ‘If you have struggled with a drinking problem and would like some help, Alcohol Anonymous will send you free information on dealing with alcoholism.  AA will also set up an AA meeting in any prison at the request of the prison administration or a member of the professional staff.  Send request to—and it gave the address.’  Do you think that that’s a good thing for prisoners?”

Tom:

Dave, as you know, we have a book called, Twelve Steps to Destruction, which really deals with AA and the twelve-step program—

Dave:

This is by the Bobgans.

Tom:

Right, by Martin and Deidre Bobgan, and it’s a very informative book and it gives you information.  I’ll quote some things from it as we discuss this, but is it a good thing?

Dave:

It’s not good for a number of reasons.  It does not have the success that they claim, it denies the one true God, teaches you to believe in some higher power that could be a doorknob, it could be a bush, it could be AA itself, teaches you that you are a recovering alcoholic that you never recover. It comes out of the occult.  I have talked to Christians who have been alcohol free for twenty-thirty years, and they still think that they are recovering alcoholics.  God delivers us from this.  It tells you that you can’t do this by yourself, in fact, a lot of people do.  And Tom, you probably have some statistics about that.

Tom:

Well Dave, one of the things that concerns us is that AA will tell you that this is a disease.

Dave:

Right.

Tom:

And now you’ve got some real problems because if it’s a disease then there is really no—a person isn’t responsible, unaccountable.  You know if I catch cold am I accountable or responsible for that?

Dave:

This is a psychological idea, of course, no sin—it’s a syndrome or it’s mental illness.  You can have a physical problem, a nutritional deficiency or some wires crossed in your brain, a physical problem, but mental, the spirit can’t be ill, that’s a moral problem.  And of course, Bob Wilson found a physician—that was a new idea back there—he found a doctor who said, oh, you have a disease—alcoholism.  And, I am sure you have the statistics in front of you—there are plenty of studies by Harvard and others indicating this is not a disease, this is a moral problem.

Tom:

Dave, you know when I have spoken about this at conferences, this is a subject that gets people very angry because, on the one hand they say, “Hey, I have a father, or I have a husband who has been delivered from alcohol by this, even thought they are still in process,” and so on and so forth.  But they get very upset because they have a testimony of it being effective.  On the other hand, there are studies after studies that will tell you that it is not effective.  I’m looking at one here in, Twelve Steps to Destruction.  This is from the effectiveness of alcohol treatment, what research reveals.  I’m quoting:  “Only two studies have employed random assignment and adequate controls to compare the efficacy of AA versus no intervention or alternative interventions.”  It goes on to say—well, I’ll give you an example.  “Based on records of re-arrest 31% of AA clients and 32% of clinic treated clients were judged successful, as compared with 44% success in the untreated group.”  Now this is just one study.  This is Ditman, Crawford, Forgey, Moskavits, and McAndrew 1967.  But there are later ones, 1980, for example, we have—“To be sure, these studies like most any research can be criticized for methodological weaknesses and as always, further research is needed.  Given the absence of a single controlled evaluation supporting the effectiveness of AA and the presence of these negative findings, however, we must conclude that at the present time the alleged effectiveness of AA remains unproved.”  Now Dave, based on all that you’ve said and the few quotes that I gave here we have this through Prison Fellowship which is a Christian ministry introducing this into the prisons.  Now, I’m sure they are sincere and you know they want to help people, but I don’t think they have done their homework.

Dave:

Tom, it’s even worse than that perhaps, because it’s in many churches and some of the largest churches have twelve-step programs, all kinds of twelve-step programs.  Why did twelve steps suddenly become a panacea, the solution to these problems?  It comes out of the occult and I would recommend that anyone who is interested, get this book by the Bobgans, Twelve Steps to Destruction.  They could get it in a Christian bookstore or they could order it on their website.

Tom:

Dave, I want to add to what you said—twelve step programs in churches.  Again, I’m not denying the sincerity of the people involved to help others. But what you find, time and time again is that they begin these programs and then they have to put people in charge of the programs.  In most cases the people are very psychologically oriented and if that’s not the case, in order to sort of bone themselves up to be able to minister, they have to get materials.  Now where do you think the materials come from?  They are also psychologically oriented whether it be Al-Anon or co-dependency groups, the materials that these programs use, even though the pastor wants them to be Christ-centered and biblically-centered, time and time again it ends up—because the only materials out there are written by psychotherapists.

Dave:

Let’s just be blunt about it, Tom, you want to be Christ-centered, biblically-centered, go to the Bible, go to Jesus Christ himself.  The Bible is the manufacturer’s handbook, God is our creator, you don’t need this sort of thing.  What did people do who had, what is now called an addiction, who were given to drunkenness—it’s called drunkenness in the Bible—and they are told not to do it, and you can turn from this if you want to.  This is something new.  What did people do for the last nineteen hundred years or several thousand years before this came along?  Obviously, on that basis alone, it is not true and we know it doesn’t work.  Let’s get back to the Bible, let’s get back to the Lord, and please, don’t bring this into your churches.