You don't have to stay from prayer to prayer. Bill Wilson, co-founder of AA, said: “Never forget that the purpose of AA is to make alcoholics sober. There are no religious or spiritual requirements for membership. Yes, although you may have to do some internal mental gymnastics to do well.
Yes, there are non-religious AA meetings. Although it's a common belief that AA is a faith-based organization, it doesn't have to be. The popular criticism that AA is strictly a religion is not true. Be honest about your views from the start.
Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous don't require you to believe in a certain way. It's the minority of people that give us a hard time, John says. As an organization, Alcoholics Anonymous has long claimed that it is “spiritual, not religious.” It is true that this is the intention of Alcoholics Anonymous. AA absolutely cannot be allowed to be associated with religion and being religious.
It could be said that a large number of people associate religion with religion. There are many members of my home group who have never attended an AA meeting that begins and ends with a prayer and reading old literature based on religious experiences, so they have never been introduced to this concept of “spiritual and non-religious”. These differences are what make people who are not religious feel comfortable in non-religious AA meetings. John offers some ways you can adjust your experience at a traditional AA meeting and find support as an agnostic or recovering atheist.
If the number of AA meetings with lay orientation exceeds the number of religious orientation meetings, then there will be more people who have a lay experience, and perhaps that experience will be reflected in more publications published by the AAWS and approved by the General Services Conference. While it may not be a religion, the fact that AA is religious is clear, no matter how many times AA leaders at all levels claim otherwise. The saying “take what you need and leave the rest” ignores the exclusion I feel at AA religious meetings (which represent the vast majority in my area). In addition to his work with these AA groups, John helps manage a website and hosts a podcast popular in the lay AA community called “AA Beyond Belief”.
You have expressed many of the things that I have thought and observed about AA since I returned to AA earlier this year. I live in a very conservative area of the state and attend traditional AA meetings because there are no secular options. The autonomy of the various AA groups, which in fact are the highest authority in the AA service structure, is, in my opinion, AA's brilliance.
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