Akron · 1937 and after
The first meetings ended with the Lord’s Prayer, most likely an Oxford Group habit, and AA has been working out who joins in ever since.
“The meeting lasted an hour and closed with the Lord’s Prayer.”
In 1937 a salesman from Chicago named Earl T. came to Akron to get sober. Only after eight or nine of the members had visited him was he allowed to go to a meeting. It was in the living room of a home: perhaps eight or nine alcoholics and seven or eight wives, led by Bill D., the first man Bill W. and Dr. Bob had helped to stay sober. There was no AA book yet. Afterward everyone went to the kitchen for coffee and doughnuts and talked until the small hours.
The Akron members still met as part of the Oxford Group, a Christian fellowship, and Bill W. later thought the prayer came from there: “I think saying the Lord’s Prayer was a custom of theirs following the close of each meeting. Therefore it quite easily got shifted into a general custom among us.” AA’s archives, citing Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers, say it was used “from the very beginning in the Fellowship, at least as early as 1938 and 1939.” Earl T.’s memory puts it a little earlier.
The habit outlasted the Oxford Group. Bill counted the Lord’s Prayer and the Prayer of St. Francis as “our two other favorites,” beside the Serenity Prayer. At an early bilingual meeting in Quebec, he heard it in French for the first time.
Not everyone wanted to say it. In the words of AA’s archives, it “has clearly been controversial in some circles almost since the beginning.”
It’s 1937, in a living room in Akron. Perhaps eight or nine alcoholics and seven or eight of their wives have talked for an hour. Now they say the Lord’s Prayer together. Then everyone crowds into the kitchen for coffee and doughnuts, and the talk goes on until the small hours.
The prayer most likely came from the Oxford Group, the Christian fellowship where the first members got sober. When they left the group, they kept the habit.
Not everyone liked it. Over the years, some members weren’t Christian, and some didn’t pray at all. Bill W. wrote that where he lived, the leader asked only those who cared to join in, and the rest just had to listen. In 1962 an answer given at AA’s General Service Conference called it a matter of personal conscience.
Many meetings still end with the Lord’s Prayer. Some close with the Responsibility Declaration instead. Either way, nobody has to say a word.
Four answers
AA never made the prayer a rule, and never dropped it. Here is how it answered the members who didn’t want to say it.
Bill W.’s letters are quoted as AA’s archives newsletter, Markings, printed them in Spring 2008. It dates them 1955 and 1959; see Go deeper.
Akron, 1937–1939
The first members met inside the Oxford Group, which, Bill believed, ended its meetings with the Lord’s Prayer. When they went their own way, New York in 1937 and Akron in 1939, the prayer went with them. “This practice probably came from the Oxford Groups who were influential in the early days of A.A.,” Bill wrote.
Kept from the Oxford Group
Bill W., 1959, in Markings, 2008
1955
Bill granted that “there are always those who seem to be offended” by any prayer at a meeting. Still, since most members believed in some kind of God, he thought it “only right” that at least the Serenity Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer be used. Where he lived, the leader asked to join him those “who feel that they would care to do so.” As for the rest: “The worst that happens to the objectors is that they have to listen to it.”
Join in if you care to
Bill W., 1955, in Markings, 2008
1962
At AA’s General Service Conference, someone asked what to do about members who refuse to stand for the Lord’s Prayer. The answer: “Participation—or non-participation—in recitals of the Lord’s Prayer should be considered a matter of personal conscience and decision.”
Up to each member
The Conference’s Ask-It-Basket, 1962, in Markings, 2008
2001
In a story added to the Big Book, a Jewish member tells his sponsor that closing with the Lord’s Prayer bothers him. His sponsor first told him to “say it in Jewish.” It would still be the Lord’s Prayer, the member said. “Then say something else that you like.” His Higher Power was helping him, the sponsor said, and he needed to say thank you.
Your own words
“A Drunk, Like You,” Alcoholics Anonymous, 2001
Each group decides
There is no AA rule for how a meeting ends. AA’s pamphlet on groups says only that many close with “a moment of silence followed by a prayer, or perhaps by reciting the Responsibility Declaration or other A.A. text.”
For a closer look
The declaration some groups say instead of a prayer, a letter that may be two letters, and the first meeting for nonbelievers.
In July 1965 more than 10,000 people came to Toronto for AA’s thirtieth-anniversary convention. Its keynote was a short declaration written by Al S., a former AA trustee: “When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of A.A. always to be there.” It begins and ends with the words “I am responsible.”
In 1971 AA’s Conference recommended reaffirming “both the spirit and the wording,” and in 1977 that the declaration not be changed. At the 1970 convention in Miami Beach a second declaration followed, on unity: “This we owe to A.A.’s future: to place our common welfare first; to keep our Fellowship united.”
AA’s archives newsletter, Markings, quotes Bill’s lines about the Lord’s Prayer from two letters: one of 1959, on where the custom came from, and one of 1955, on the objectors.
A copy that circulates among AA groups, marked as coming from AA’s archives in New York, puts all the same lines into a single letter to a member named Russ, dated April 14, 1959. One phrase differs too: it has “there will always be” where Markings has “there are always.”
Bill may have repeated himself, or one of the copies may carry the wrong date. These pages follow Markings.
The first AA meeting explicitly for atheists and agnostics is usually dated January 7, 1975, in Chicago. A member named Don W. started it, in a Unitarian church, and it took the name Quad A: Alcoholics Anonymous for Atheists and Agnostics.
According to a history of the group on the website AA Agnostica, getting it into Chicago’s meeting list took persistence.
The argument was older than the group. Before the Big Book went to the printer, the members fought over how to speak of God in the Steps; that story is in 3 · How It Works.