Given all this growth, a specific WAAFT member and group were recently highlighted in an article that appeared in a non-recovery news outlet, local to Ohio, called the Columbus Dispatch.
A New Kind of Experience, Strength and Hope
The piece highlights a WAAFT member named Ed, who describes the Higher Power business as “Playing games,” words that would likely offend an AA fundamentalist. Ed meets with other sober people in a Dublin, Ohio Sunday meeting called Secular Sobriety; they’re a group that has not only axed God out of the equation but also all of the steps. Ed says it’s not God who helps him stay sober but the people in the meeting, along with the strong relationships he’s formed with them. He started the group five years ago after maxing out on all the God talk and prayer in regular AA meetings (something I can definitely empathize with).
“Our meeting is like other AA meetings,” he said. “The only difference is we don’t pray. We’re just trying not to drink, trying to support each other. It’s a support group.”
Can You Really Call a Step-less Meeting an AA Meeting?
There’s been some contention around whether WAAFT meetings should be listed in the AA directories put out by central offices. When the Greater Toronto Area intergroup (GTA) shot down two groups called Beyond Belief and We Agnostics back in 2012, a lawsuit eventually was filed.
WAAFT thinks its meetings absolutely belong in the intergroup directories, and it sites the Third Tradition as grounds for doing so—where two or more alcoholics are gathered is an AA meeting, right? In all fairness, it could be many things, including a SMART Recovery or Refuge Recovery meeting. Still, I think the WAAFT folks make a good point.
In the case of Secular Sobriety, the Central Ohio Group Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, which covers 37 Ohio counties, has no problem with slapping Secular Sobriety between its directory’s pages. Patti, the office manager of the intergroup, told the Columbus Dispatch that religion had nothing to do with AA, that instead “it’s about spirituality.” She added, “It’s a matter of knowing there is a Higher Power and I’m not it.”
Should AA Be Down With WAAFT?
In my experience, AA members come in all forms. In any given meeting in Los Angeles, you’ll likely find a plethora of conclusions on the God issue. Some sober folks might say you can make the group your Higher Power (a concept that many who advocate against 12-step programs find cult-like), others may say you can just pray to your bedroom doorknob or maybe your morning omelet, and then there are others who think you really should get your ass in a church or a temple or something and take that G-O-D seriously, dammit.
Whether or not WAAFT meetings will find their way into inter-group directories depends on who’s helping the desk in a given year. As with most contentions in AA, including whether or not you should ban sex offenders or criminals from meetings, World Services rarely goes on record with a definitive stance. Thankfully, they’ve done so with the psych meds question via a pamphlet, but in my opinion they could certainly stand to do so on many other issues.
At the same time, members really love the autonomy and lack of hierarchy (anarchy?) of individual groups, so there’s really no telling if World Services would be down to take an official stand on the question. I say they ought to give WAAFT the thumbs up, but then again I don’t even do AA anymore. Still, with social media exploding and WAAFT growing along with it, I have to imagine that more and more AA’s will become hip to the idea.
Will #GodlessAA trend in 2017? We’re going to have to wait to find out.