Introduction
“The whole book is all about two things. First is the identification of the problems faced by we agnostics, atheists and freethinkers in AA. And these can be broken down into one simple fact: we don’t attribute our sobriety to a supernatural Higher Power. Nor need we in AA. Read Tradition Three. And as Bill W put it, ‘All people must necessarily rally to the call of their own particular convictions and we of AA are no exception. All people should have the right to voice their convictions.‘”
“And second, the book is about how these problems could and should be dealt with as our secular movements gains momentum within AA. There is no longer a ‘fake it until you make it’ approach to being a non-believer in AA. That’s over. That’s history. Let us all acknowledge that ‘To thine own self be true’ is a healthy and essential approach to long term sobriety.”
I’ll be honest, I never quite understood how it was possible to fully do AA as an atheist or someone who believed in an impersonal God or force behind reality. I really admire those who do though, especially if they’ve endured in groups that didn’t adopt revised secular versions of the literature. Here’s one used by We Agnostics Kansas City:
We are Alcoholics Anonymous, members of a world-wide fellowship of men and women united by a common purpose to stay sober and help others to recover from alcoholism. For us alcohol was cunning, baffling and powerful. It took us to that great jumping off place where we met terror, bewilderment, frustration and despair. Without help it was too much for us!
But we found help in Alcoholics Anonymous and the collective experience of those who preceded us in recovery. Here, we learned that honesty, open mindedness and willingness were indispensable if we were to reclaim our lives. Although our personal stories and experiences vary, this is a general description of the path we took.
We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable. This humbling admission was a relief, the fight was over. We came to believe we could be helped through the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, and we made a decision to turn away from obstinate denial, to let go of our old ways, and to follow suggestions.
And so on. Many say that this is far easier to digest than the original How It Works. Here’s a secular 12-steps:
We admitted we were powerless over our addictions – that our lives had become unmanageable.
Came to accept that we needed strengths beyond our awareness and resources to cope with our problems.
Made a decision to use the program to overcome our addiction.
So there are definitely ways to tweak the core idea of a fellowship from AA to suit those with agnostic, atheist, or non-theistic belief systems.
What took me aback then was seeing that the motivation for this book includes “the not uncommon and relatively recent ‘rejection’ of agnostic groups and metings by Intergroups in Canada and the United States.” The author’s home group was kicked off an official list of AA meetings over a dispute about God in the Steps that was escalated to a human rights council. More on that later.
I’ve been adamant that AA is inherently religious. Multiple lawsuits that reached US Circuit Courts have reached the same conclusion. A quick look into the historical development of AA’s spiritual principles reveal explicitly Christian roots through the Oxford Group; in fact the original formula for the group considered regularly reading from the Bible to be more critical than attending meetings.
However, I wasn’t actually aware of the disputes involving dedicated agnostic, atheist, non-theist, or secular groups. My analysis was based primarily on examining the literature and its historical development, not the behavior of present-day AA members and organizations. I know lots of accepting and inclusive religious members of AA, and I in no way want to denigrate them or the support they’ve provided because of a few bad apples. This book dives right into the modern disputes instead, which I thought made for an interesting contrast to my approach. I come at this as a relative newcomer, but Roger C. here has decades of experience on me. As such, I’ll let him relay his experiences and chime in if I’ve experienced it too.
Chapter 1
“the God that is talked about at meetings is often a Christian God, an anthropomorphic (created in man’s image - “Father”, “He” or “Him”) and interventionist (who can solve a problem with alcohol “if He were sought”) supernatural being”
This is definitely the impression I got right away, but I also am willing to give this part the most benefit of the doubt as a relic of the era it was written in. Relatively speaking. I think this alone rises to the level of general religious content, but I could see someone using this framing to still convey secular recovery paths.
Most of us believe that what works in AA to keep us sober are two things: first, tapping an ‘inner resource’ (see Appendix II of the Big Book) that makes us strive to be sober, and better, human beings. And, second, the fellowship. Going to an AA meeting and talking with others who understand the problem of alcoholism is a wonderful form of group therapy.”
My initial approach to a Higher Power was framing my idealized potential as something powerful and beyond me, yet attainable with effort and the support of the right community. From Appendix II of the Big Book: “With few exceptions our members find that they have tapped an unsuspected inner resource which they presently identify with their own conception of a Power greater than themselves.” This seems to be a common intuition among not just among atheists and agnostics but anyone, including devout Christians, who has some hesitance about the way the program asks them to think about God or a Higher Power.
The God talk might even be tolerable except for one thing and that is our second problem: we agnostics in AA are often not allowed to be honest at “traditional” AA meetings and even suggest that we personally don’t believe in God… Many agnostics and atheists are treated with disrespect in AA, if not outright contempt.
I will say that it is not uncommon at all to hear someone express that you cannot get sober without God or that seeking a secular recovery path is the result of fearing surrender more than fearing the consequences of addiction. It’s not most people, but it almost certainly will happen at some point if you attend diffrent meetings regularly. I had an AA old-timer warn me about this really early on in my journey before I experienced it myself, and I admit I had casually dismissed the warning as a generational thing that we would be over in 2026. I have learned since then that many things we had hoped to leave behind in past generations are still thriving in 2026.
“the third problem, that many of us experience in AA are meetings that end with the Lord’s Prayer. To say that AA is ‘spiritual not religious’ and then recite the Lord’s Prayer, well, that just doesn’t wash. The Lord’s Prayer is found in the New Testament in the Gospel of Matthew (6:5-13) with a shorter version in the Gospel of Luke (11:1-4). It was said to have been taught by Jesus to his disciples and is considered the essential summary of the gospels, of the religion of Christianity.”
This is true, and courts have pointed to this exact feature as unambiguously religious. Even if we replace the Lord’s Prayer with the Serenity Prayer as many meetings do, it’s still a prayer written unambiguously in the context of Christian faith. These prayers are also often done while holding hands in circles, and you are definitely looked at weirdly if you decline. I don’t even want to hold hands with people I like.
For me, as for many other agnostics in AA, it’s the fellowship that makes the difference.
I agree. Addiction is an incredibly isolating disease, and isolation is perhaps the aspect of addiction that spirals quickest into itself. To have access to a group that can share stories and tries to uphold a culture of listening without judging is amazing. You don’t have to relate to most of what people say to at least realize you’re not alone. It’s just a shame that that isn’t enough to be completely welcome at AA when explicitly the only requirement for membership is a desire to quit drinking. As the book points out, William Wilson (Bill W) himself realized that he was pushing the religious angles too hard and scaring away people looking for fellowship.
Chapter 2
The next chapters go back and forth between the controversy with the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) Intergroup and some of the founding history of AA. Right away, we see one of the reasons that motivated the initial impulse to favor autonomy and oppose formal organization within AA’s culture and traditions. Just like any other document that declares principles or rules as a canon whose founders have passed, different interpretations inevitably lead to disagreements about the same exact actions. If we added a few centuries to AA’s existence, we might see AA lawyers emerge.
In this case, the author addresses the argument that he violated Traditions One and Ten by reaching out to the Toronto Star to discuss his home group being booted from the Intergroup registry and being asked to not use the AA name.
From Tradition One:
“Each member of Alcoholics Anonymous is but a small part of a great whole. A.A. must continue to live or most of us will surely die. Hence our common welfare comes first. But individual welfare follows close afterward.”
The author’s response:
“Our common welfare should without a doubt come first, and it includes the welfare of agnostics, atheists and freethinkers. It is appalling - the word ‘sinful’ jumps to mind - that the Intergroup didn’t understand this basic AA principle. But clearly it didn’t.”
“Sinful” feels a bit like the kind of jab I catch myself making and try to avoid. I can’t blame Couvrette for it given the situation he’s describing, but I try to avoid bringing up hypocrisy if it’s not directly related to the matter at hand. Warranted or not, anything that can be interpreted as mean-spirited can turn off a reader unacquainted with the controversy.
If I’m honest, I’ve grappled with this tradition when it comes to my own attendance and participation at meetings. For instance, if someone says that it’s not possible to get sober without God, but I were to raise an objection similar to Couvrette’s, I would unquestionably be disrupting some aspect of the group conscience that provides for the common welfare. In public society, I can justify this by reasoning that a majority has no right to be comfortable if it’s at the expense of others, and that we are only as strong as our weakest link so we should prioritize helping the most vulnerable.
In AA meetings, I understand that each is a privately formed group attempting to maintain a culture best suited to its members. I don’t think it’s an issue if AA meetings want to be religious, provided they do honestly disclose that they include general religious content even if it’s non-denominational. I treat it the same as a friend inviting me to their church choir’s recital. I don’t need the church to match my beliefs or my beliefs to match the church’s in order to appreciate the choir. For that, I can just walk across the street to a Hindu temple that has its own set of functions for festivals.
It changes the calculation quite a bit though if agnostic and non-theistic AA groups are actively excluded from registries that could keep members who would be wary of a program asking for surrender to a Higher Power who is referred to as God for convenience.
I’ve previously bemoaned the fact that the official AA nonprofit organization makes no mention of other recovery paths for existing while those other paths, like SMART and Recovery Dharma, are very open about acknowledging AA. I tried to charitably rationalize it as a form of taking no opinion on outside issues. AA’s official stance is that they cooperate but don’t affiliate with other organizations, so perhaps acknowledging other recovery paths would come too close to their idea of affiliation. After all, they would need some heuristics to determine which groups to cooperate with, and that would unquestionably be a very controversial subject.
But surely the line makes no sense to draw at “non-theistic AA meetings.” In doing so, I have to question whether cooperation as a decision is more a matter of ideological conformity than organizational principle. After all, from Tradition One:
“No A.A. can compel another to do anything; nobody can be punished or expelled. Our Twelve Steps to recovery are suggestions…
So if an AA group wants to modify the Twelve Steps or the traditional preamble, especially with the explicit goal of making it more welcoming to a newer generation that might have grown up in a more pluralistic religious culture than 1930s America, that shouldn’t be a problem. The Steps are suggestions. Any two meeting of alcoholics can be called an AA meeting; that’s one of the most attractive premises to AA as a fellowship. The promise of that flexibility is why SMART Recovery and Recovery Dharma can say that they have members who keep their AA commitments. It may not be nearly as easy to see that if the Twelve Steps were mandatory as written instead of suggestions and members who think otherwise would be expelled from AA.
As for Tradition 10:
“And finally, we of Alcoholics Anonymous believe that the principle of anonymity has an immense spiritual significance. It reminds us to place principles before personalities; that we are actually to practice a genuine humility. This to the end that our great blessings may never spoil us; that we shall forever live in thankful contemplation of Him who preside over us all.”
It’s true that contacting “press, radio, films, and television” to discuss an internal issue breaks through the “protective mantle which covers our whole Society and under which we may grow and work in unity.”
But critically, anonymity as a principle was for the benefit of the members, who face social stigma and scrutiny for having any kind of dependency or problem in a society that perceives mental health issues as individual weakness. The goal was to keep members humbled from pursuing fame or notoriety, especially in a way that would attract attention to others in the group who had shared very intimate personal details with the fellowship.
The tradition itself acknowledges that bringing AA to the public consciousness or bringing members to AA necessarily required letting go of pure anonymity:
“As a rule, the average newcomer wanted his family to know immediately what he was trying to do. He also wanted to tell others who had tried to help him- his doctor, his minister, and close friends… When opportunities to be helpful came along, he found he could tak easily about A.A. to almost anyone…Though not in the strict letter of anonymity, such communications were well within its spirit.”
Couvrette’s justification is arguably also in the spirit of preserving the character of AA. We’re kind of in the same territory as discussing whether breaking a rule to save the rulebook is justified. He states:
“There are standards that AA has to meet, and not just standards within our fellowship. The Ontario Human Rights Code, adopted in 1962, prohibits discrimination based upon an individual’s belief, or lack thereof, and goes on to say that this principle ‘extends to situations where the person who is the target of such behaviour has no religious beliefs whatsoever, including atheists and agnostics’.”
AA itself says that they are a microcosm of the society it exists in and that no AA member is above the law. Recall that AA has even said that any communication in meetings is not privileged in any way, so if anonymity must compromise to abide by the law, certainly the suggested Twelve Steps can be compromised. Continuing his justification:
“When my home group was booted out of the AA Intergroup, my conscience screamed at me to act. To act immediately… Any delay in a response was going to be a problem that would further hurt those already victimized. And so I acted. And I have no doubt that it was the right thing to do.”
I think it’s plainly obvious that there was harm being caused by this debate about excluding agnostic and non-theistic groups for using a different version of the suggested Twelve Steps. The question is about whether the harm was justified or necessary. I can buy that Couvrette was acting in the spirit of AA’s principles by attempting to use outside discourse to correct exile resulting from an inside issue. After all, AA is not separate from society, but a microcosm of it. If we accept that public accountability of our institutions is one of the most effective checks on their overreach or misapplication of power, that whistleblowers provide an invaluable service in taking personal risk to bring an issue to light, then we should be able to accept the spirit of Couvrette’s actions.
“The action taken by the GTA Intergroup was extreme. But let us be clear: there has always been tension between agnostics and the Christian members of Alcoholics Anonymous. What happened at the Intergroup meeting in that church basement in Toronto merely exposed a long festering wound within AA.”
Chapter 3
“Bill and Bob were both members of a Christian revivalist movement, the Oxford Group. ‘The early meetings were quite religious, in both New York and Akron. There was always a Bible on hand, and the concept of God was all biblical… I started fighting nearly all the things Bill and the others stood for, especially religion, the ‘God bit.’ But I did want to stay sober, and I did love the understanding Fellowship… The consensus seems to have been that they hoped I would either leave town or get drunk.”
The excerpt above cites Sober for Thirty Years by Jim Burwell, who joined AA in 1938 as a “self-proclaimed atheist, completely against all religion”. It is exactly this sentiment that I wish to avoid bringing upon myself by being argumentative at meetings, especially not in our very polarized social climate. To be fair though, Burwell’s objections led to some important changes in the AA literature and philosophy to this day. The first is “God as we understood Him” and the second is adding “suggested” to the Twelve Steps. William Wilson (Bill W) said Burwell ultimatey “had widened our gateway so that all who suffer might pass through, regardless of their belief or lack of belief.” Still, I think it’s noteworthy that even though there was a commendably vocal atheist in the room, the program’s starting point is still with a Biblical foundation that was slightly tweaked to accommodate others.
“Jim Burwell went on to start AA groups in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and San Diego. Among the first ten members of the fellowship on the East Coast, he is often considered the third founder of AA. Jim is the first agnostic AA member to die sober. His sobriety date was June 15, 1938, and he died on September 8, 1974.”