Emmet Fox and 30s spirituality

[JerryT]

The folks over at AAhistoryLovers on yahoo have been chewing on Emmet Fox of late. Fox was a minister ordained in Divine Science, which was a part of the New Thought movement which also spawned Unity Church.

During the 30s, Fox was a "revival style" speaker who drew large crowds at auditoriums with a message that in the 30s could be considered spiritual. Fox's secretary was the mother of Al Steckman, an early AA member connected to Bill Wilson.

Many of the original AAers who were active at the time the Big Book was written (and who helped in its creation) had read Fox's best selling book The Sermon On The Mount (still in print today), and many of the ideas such as "one day at a time" came from Fox's "living in the moment" doctrine.

Anyone interested in what "spiritual not religious" meant to the folks who first wrote the words should consider reading Emmet Fox. By today's standards, where spirituality is sometimes expressed in terms like the movie "What the #&)(^ do we know," Fox was just another judeo-christian power of positive thinking preacher who pitched a metaphorical view of scripture. He could probably find a home in some of today's megachurches and be considered old skool.

Instead of AA continuing to evolve in the new thought movement, and despite the efforts of Bill W. to hew to the secular in his later writings, AA slowly increased its religiosity. It is a strange irony that the biggest remainder of the New Thought movement are the Unity churches where the outcasts of aa, the freethinkers and the We Agnostics most often meet today.

[Boleo]

Thanks JT;

I did not know the name of Bill W's sponcee who was connected to Emmet till now (Al Steckman).

If you are a big fan of Emmet's and exhaust all of his books, try -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Troward