Download or read book Why Can t Church Be More Like an AA Meeting written by Stephen R. Haynes and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do Christians need recovery? Or is recovery something needed by the church itself? Addiction—whether to a substance or to a behavior—is a problem within faith communities, just like it is everywhere else. But because churches are rarely experienced as safe places for dealing with addiction, co-addiction, or the legacy of family dysfunction, Christians tend to seek recovery from these conditions in Twelve-Step fellowships. Once they become accustomed to the ethos of vulnerability, acceptance, and healing that these fellowships provide, however, they are often left feeling that the church has failed them, with many asking: why can’t church be more like an AA meeting? Inspired by his own quest to find in church the sort of mutual support and healing he discovered in Twelve-Step fellowships, Stephen Haynes explores the history of Alcoholics Anonymous and its relationship to American Christianity. He shows that, while AA eventually separated from the Christian parachurch movement out of which it emerged, it retained aspects of Christian experience that the church itself has largely lost: comfort with brokenness and vulnerability, an emphasis on honesty and transparency, and suspicion toward claims to piety and respectability. Haynes encourages Christians to reclaim these distinctive elements of the Twelve-Step movement in the process of “recovering church.” He argues that this process must begin with he calls “Step 0,” which, as he knows from personal experience, can be the hardest step: the admission that, despite appearances, we are not fine.
Download or read book Report to the Creator written by Jerome Ellison and published by . This book was released on 1955 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Alcoholics Anonymous written by Bill W. and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-09-04 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A 75th anniversary e-book version of the most important and practical self-help book ever written, Alcoholics Anonymous. Here is a special deluxe edition of a book that has changed millions of lives and launched the modern recovery movement: Alcoholics Anonymous. This edition not only reproduces the original 1939 text of Alcoholics Anonymous, but as a special bonus features the complete 1941 Saturday Evening Post article “Alcoholics Anonymous” by journalist Jack Alexander, which, at the time, did as much as the book itself to introduce millions of seekers to AA’s program. Alcoholics Anonymous has touched and transformed myriad lives, and finally appears in a volume that honors its posterity and impact.
Download or read book Alcoholics Anonymous written by Charles Bufe and published by See Sharp Press. This book was released on 1997-12-01 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This well researched, painstakingly documented book provides detailed information on the right-wing evangelical organization (Oxford Group Movement) that gave birth to AA; the relation of AA and its program to the Oxford Group Movement; AA's similarities to and differences from religious cults; AA's remarkable ineffectiveness; and the alternatives to AA. The greatly expanded second edition includes a new chapter on AA's relationship to the treatment industry, and AA's remarkable influence in the media.
Download or read book Breathing Under Water written by Richard Rohr and published by Franciscan Media. This book was released on 2013-11-04 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is America's most significant and authentic contribution to the history of spirituality, says Richard Rohr. He makes a case that the Twelve Steps relate well to Christian teaching and can rescue people who are drowning in addiction and may not even realize it. To survive the tidal wave of compulsive behavior and addiction, Christians must learn to breathe under water and discover God's love and compassion. In this exploration of Twelve Step spirituality, Rohr identifies the Christian principles in the Twelve Steps, connecting The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous with the gospel. He draws on talks he has given for over twenty years to people in recovery and those who counsel and live with people with addictive behavior. Rohr offers encouragement for becoming interiorly alive and inspiration for making one's life manageable for dealing with the codependence and dysfunction (sin) rampant in our society.
Download or read book Not God written by Ernest Kurtz and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-03-26 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating account of the discovery and program of Alcoholics Anonymous, Not God contains anecdotes and excerpts from the diaries, correspondence, and occasional memoirs of AA's early figures. The most complete history of A.A. ever written, this book is a fast-moving and authoritative account of the discovery and development of the program and fellowship that we know today as Alcoholics Anonymous.
Download or read book Addiction and Virtue written by Kent Dunnington and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2011-07-26 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this interdisciplinary work, Kent Dunnington brings the neglected resources of philosophical and theological analysis to bear on the problem of addiction. Drawing on the insights of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, he formulates a compelling alternative to the two dominant models of addiction--addiction as disease and addiction as choice.
Download or read book Common Sense Recovery written by Adam N. and published by . This book was released on 2019-08 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion was once the primary way to understand human behavior. This was certainly true when the book Alcoholics Anonymous was written in 1939. But, we have learned much over the past 80 years. Common Sense Recovery began as the journal of a long-standing member of AA during a time in his life when he was struggling to reconcile the religious language of Alcoholics Anonymous with his new-found atheism and scientific understanding of addiction and the recovery process. The short chapters articulate a non-religious, practical understanding of the fundamental principles at work in the program, and examine the 12 Steps from a secular perspective. Now in its third edition, this work continues to be a valuable guide for many who struggle with the religious nature and language of AA and contains important insights for the future of the fellowship.
Download or read book The Steps We Took written by Joe McQ and published by august house. This book was released on 2005-12-27 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Issued in hardcover for the first time to commemorate its ten-year anniversary, the classic recovery handbook takes readers through the 12-step program at Alcoholics Anonymous.
Download or read book Dream Like Jesus written by Rebekah Simon-Peter and published by . This book was released on 2019-08 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rebekah Simon-Peter explores her own spiritual journey and helps leaders learn to get past the "standard" Christianity and learn to dream like Jesus, thus inspiring individuals and congregations to dream and achieve dreams previously thought impossible.
Download or read book The Heart of Addiction written by Mark E. Shaw and published by Focus Publishing (MN). This book was released on 2008-09-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Substance abusers, addicts with a physical dependency, and those who cannot stop some type of pleasurable activity can gain insights and practical help from the hopeful message from the Bible regarding addictive thoughts and behavior.
Download or read book A Testament of Devotion written by Thomas R. Kelly and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 1996-08-02 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since its first publication in 1941, A Testament of Devotion, by the renowned Quaker teacher Thomas Kelly, has been universally embraced as a truly enduring spiritual classic. Plainspoken and deeply inspirational, it gathers together five compelling essays that urge us to center our lives on God's presence, to find quiet and stillness within modern life, and to discover the deeply satisfying and lasting peace of the inner spiritual journey. As relevant today as it was a half-century ago, A Testament of Devotion is the ideal companion to that highest of all human arts-the lifelong conversation between God and his creatures. I have in mind something deeper than the simplification of our external programs, our absurdly crowded calendars of appointments through which so many pantingly and frantically gasp. These do become simplified in holy obedience, and the poise and peace we have been missing can really be found. But there is a deeper, an internal simplification of the whole of one's personality, stilled, tranquil, in childlike trust listening ever to Eternity's whisper, walking with a smile into the dark."
Download or read book The Battle for Bonhoeffer written by Stephen R. Haynes and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2018-09-13 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The figure of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) has become a clay puppet in modern American politics. Secular, radical, liberal, and evangelical interpreters variously shape and mold the martyr’s legacy to suit their own pet agendas. Stephen Haynes offers an incisive and clarifying perspective. A recognized Bonhoeffer expert, Haynes examines “populist” readings of Bonhoeffer, including the acclaimed biography by Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. In his analysis Haynes treats, among other things, the November 2016 election of Donald Trump and the “Bonhoeffer moment” announced by evangelicals in response to the US Supreme Court’s 2015 decision to legalize same-sex marriage. The Battle for Bonhoeffer includes an open letter from Haynes pointedly addressing Christians who still support Trump. Bonhoeffer’s legacy matters. Haynes redeems the life and the man.
Download or read book Changed by Grace written by Glenn Chesnut and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2006-08 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Victor C. Kitchen was a New York City advertising executive who wrote one of the Oxford Group's most important books. He also went to the same Oxford Group meetings as Bill Wilson, who later became the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. This is a book about A. A.'s roots in the Oxford Group, as seen through the pages of Kitchen's work. It explains how the key ideas, which the two movements shared, arose out of the evolution of the modern evangelical movement. The author begins with John Wesley's Aldersgate experience in 1738 and traces this understanding of the healing power of grace down to Kitchen's and Bill W's time, traversing en route the world of nineteenth century revivalism, the Keswick holiness movement, and the early twentieth century foreign missionary effort. The great theme, around which all of this is centered, is that of God's grace as the power to change human character itself. This book shows what faith and grace are really about. It shows how even faith mixed with doubt can lead us into true spiritual awakening, and it explains the basic nuts and bolts required to obtain a constant conscious contact with a God of our understanding. "Each century produces a small handful of great spiritual books. I believe strongly that Changed by Grace is going to prove one of the greatest of our present century. The best way to describe it is to say that it does for us today what William James' Varieties of Religious Experience did for the world of a hundred years ago."-John Barleycorn in The Waynedale News.
Download or read book Humility Pride and Christian Virtue Theory written by Kent Dunnington and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humility, Pride, and Christian Virtue Theory proposes an account of humility that relies on the most radical Christian sayings about humility, especially those found in Augustine and the early monastic tradition. It argues that this was the view of humility that put Christian moral thought into decisive conflict with the best Greco-Roman moral thought. This radical Christian account of humility has been forgotten amidst contemporary efforts to clarify and retrieve the virtue of humility for secular life. Kent Dunnington shows how humility was repurposed during the early-modern era-particularly in the thought of Hobbes, Hume, and Kant-to better serve the economic and social needs of the emerging modern state. This repurposed humility insisted on a role for proper pride alongside humility, as a necessary constituent of self-esteem and a necessary motive of consistent moral action over time. Contemporary philosophical accounts of humility continue this emphasis on proper pride as a counterbalance to humility. By contrast, radical Christian humility proscribes pride altogether. Dunnington demonstrates how such a radical view need not give rise to vices of humility such as servility and pusillanimity, nor need such a view fall prey to feminist critiques of humility. But the view of humility set forth makes little sense abstracted from a specific set of doctrinal commitments peculiar to Christianity. This study argues that this is a strength rather than a weakness of the account since it displays how Christianity matters for the shape of the moral life.
Download or read book Addiction and Pastoral Care written by Sonia E. Waters and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A timely resource treating addiction holistically as both a spiritual and a pathological condition Substance addictions present a unique set of challenges for pastoral care. In this book Sonia Waters weaves together personal stories, research, and theological reflection to offer helpful tools for ministers, counselors, chaplains, and anyone else called to care pastorally for those struggling with addiction. Waters uses the story of the Gerasene demoniac in Mark’s Gospel to reframe addiction as a “soul-sickness” that arises from a legion of individual and social vulnerabilities. She includes pastoral reflections on oppression, the War on Drugs, trauma, guilt, discipleship, and identity. The final chapters focus on practical-care skills that address the challenges of recovery, especially ambivalence and resistance to change.
Download or read book Adult Children written by Adult Children of Alcoholics (Association) and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 646 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the official ACA Fellowship Text that is Adult Children of Alcoholics World Service Organization (ACA WSO) Conference Approved Literature. Adult Children of Alcoholics/Dysfunctional Families (ACA) is an independent 12 Step and 12 Tradition anonymous program.
