Tradition 11(short form): Our public relations policy is
based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal
anonymity at the level of press, radio and films.
Tradition 11 (long form): Our
relations with the general public should be characterized by personal
anonymity. We think A. A. ought to avoid sensational advertising. Our names and
pictures as A.A. members ought not be broadcast, filmed or publicly printed.
Our public relations should be guided by the principle of attraction rather
than promotion. There is never need to praise ourselves. We feel it better to
let our friends recommend us.
Do you ever play “the
people watching game” at a restaurant and try to decide the stories of the
other people in the restaurant? “I bet they are on a first date… and that couple
in the corner… look at them. They have been married ten years and have forgotten
how to talk to one another… But what about that group at the corner table?
There doesn’t seem to be any common denominator. There are seven people… and
they like to laugh a lot…”
If you’ve run into that group in your favourite restaurant, you’ve probably run into a 12 step “after meeting”. It is the social gathering
that often happens after an AA meeting – members will gather for a meal
or coffee after their meeting for fellowship and mutual support. Nearly
always these gatherings are boisterous and full of laughter and life. AA’s tend
to have “bigger than life” personalities. When they gather socially it tends to
be loud and laughter-filled. AA’s aren’t who you think they are.
I was talking with a friend of mine who is 19 years clean in
AA. “I’d never know any millionaires if it weren’t for AA,” he said, “but now I
know more than I can count. AA seems to be full of people that know how to make
money and then lose it and make it again.”
Don’t get me wrong, AA’s come in all different personality
types: shy, bold, introverts and extroverts, intuits and sensates, thinkers and
feelers, judgers and perceivers; but all in all it tends to have more than it’s fair share
of highly boisterous extroverts who don’t have to seek the limelight to find it
and who tend to be the life of the party. CEO’s and high powered salespeople
seem to come to AA in droves. People who are highly driven “type A’s” seem to
be cursed with addictive tendencies.
Alcoholics continually sell themselves to the world. Their
insides rarely match what they see on the outsides of everyone else and so they compensate by self-promotion. This tendency to talk endlessly
about their own accomplishments is not unlike the child who needs everyone to
know about his successes so that they will see him the way he wants to be seen,
rather than the way he feels he truly is. Grandiose self-promotion looks ugly. While it is expected in car sales, a lot of insurance sales, and by preachers in
the pulpits, it is a pretty ugly habit.
AA knows alcoholic tendencies and the program is one of
continual growth in humility. So it follows that AA developed a tradition that
goes against the “look at me” (or “look at us”) mentality of the typical alcoholic.
This tradition is born of the certitude that AA effectively changes lives. Anyone
looking at the life of a recovering alcoholic can see the difference that
recovery makes in their life. The recovering alcoholic states, “If I have to
talk about all the changes in my life so that people notice them, how real can
those changes be? It is far more real for people to see the changes in my life
and ask me to share about them. That is not only humility, it is also strength.”
They realize that actions speak louder than words; that they are measured by
their actions rather than their intentions. And what is true for the individual
is also true for the fellowship.
AA no longer practices the promotional tendencies that
described its members for large a portion of their lives. They believe that if
AA really does change lives it will be incredibly attractive to drunks who want
to discover that sobriety can be incredibly fulfilling. They also realize that promotion leads to compromise of the message they carry.
In order to promote, we change the language and change the message to promote it more effectively. AA realized this, and did not want a watered down message.
There is a third reason for this tradition. If a celebrity who
is a member of AA comes out and talks about the difference that AA has made in
their life and how it has completely transformed them and then gets drunk
again. It does not speak well for the fellowship. It brings into question its
integrity. When someone publicly identifies with the fellowship in the press,
radio, on TV or in films; the fellowship’s integrity is endangered by the
alcoholic’s own frailty. The frailty
itself is revealed in the alcoholic’s public identification. Such identification
is an act of the ego. Such an act of the ego is counter to everything the alcoholic
is learning in recovery. It should be counter to everything the Christian has
learned from the Spirit too.
It seems a week can’t go by without a celebrity talking
about being in AA. See Tatam O'Neil’s story,
Lindsay
Lohan’s story, or Martin Sheen’s story.
All of them violate the tradition. That is OK. AA doesn't take a position on members inability to follow the traditions anymore than they hold a position on a member not working the steps. It is the individual's loss. AA is only concerned that they follow their traditions. None of the celebrities mentioned abover can stay sober. I
wonder if their inability to recover has to do with their inability to fit
into the culture of AA?
Notice that others follow the tradition. Michael J Fox
only alludes to his recovery in his book, Lucky
Man. He writes: “…over the following days, months and years, she along with
an ever widening circle of friends, all of whom prefer to remain anonymous,
showed me it was possible to live life without alcohol.” (p. 162) Is it any
wonder all that we have heard from Fox in recent years is his fight
against Parkinson’s disease and tales of how good a human being he is becoming?
Many others remain completely anonymous and unknown to
everyone except those they attend meetings with. If you notice, AA never
advertises, “Come hear Lindsay Lohan speak at our monthly speakers meeting
about her life in sobriety,” or anything remotely like that. It would violate their traditions.
Meanwhile at the local church Kurt Warner, quarterback for the Arizona
Cardinals is the guest speaker at a men’s meeting, and later that night you can
see the Dove award winner for the
handsome price of $55 a ticket. The church is continually advertising celebrity
to get people to come into their doors.
One church in Portland has billboards
up with a giant picture of their pastors on it, “Come worship with us,” the
billboard implores. Five pastors are pictured, named and interviewed for the Portland
Monthly magazine. If you walk into a Christian bookstore life size
cardboard cutouts of Christian authors greet you at that door. Many churches now have “video venues” which mean campuses
that don’t have the preacher live have a video link to see him at sermon time. Parishioners
go to church to watch TV together. The preacher is the reason people gather
together. Mass evangelists are using a “festival” model for city mission. In
a festival model, top Christian bands play, Christian celebrities share their
testimonies, and the evangelist presents the gospel and calls for a response.
While there is a lot more to it: a mobilization for community service, skate parks and shows abound,
food courts serve, prayer meetings form, the idea is to get people to come for the
show or the celebrity of the event so that they will hear the gospel message. The church seems to focus on personality rather than Jesus in 21st century America.
While I am not making a judgment about any of these
activities, AA would never involve itself in like activities because of their
11th tradition. The model for cultural engagement that these events
embrace is a model of personality first – celebrity first, gospel and Spirit
second. Many argue that the Spirit is in personality, or can be (after
all he made it).So we should use it to further the Kingdom.
They may be right but I do not think that Jesus would ever
hold a rally purchasing TV spots which urged viewers to, “Come hear Jesus, the
Lord of the universe, hope of the world.” He would not preach on
TV or at a video venue. He would not allow himself to be
interviewed by the local paper or magazine in order to get people to come hear
one of his lectures. It simply was not his style. His style was personal, simple, and based on
people seeing the difference between his Spirit-filled life and message and the
life they were living or being sold either by the religious establishment or the Roman
Empire. He was very simply a King walking in an opposing kingdom, inviting
people to live in His instead. The only reason they would choose to do so was
that they saw life in his Kingdom was so much better than the life they
currently lived. If their life was good there is little to no chance that they
would choose to follow a maniac who told them to sell everything to follow him,
or to die to their own desires to follow him. That simply didn’t make sense to
those who already had a life that they liked.
So this is the problem for Christians in West. Unlike the
alcoholic /addict they have good lives, are comfortable and have little need of
God. The alcoholic / addict is at the bottom already. The only reason anyone
has for becoming a member of AA is an acknowledgement that they are
powerless and their life has become unmanageable. I believe that is also the
only reason anyone chooses to follow Jesus.
The church is fighting to share Jesus with people that don’t
want to hear, who don’t think they need to hear and so knowing that the church
has changed strategies. “By all means reach some,” my parents used to argue. I
am not sure that their mantra is in line with Jesus though.
Though AA’s 11th tradition may be too stringent
for the church, I think its self imposed limitations force AA to operate closer
to the methodology of Jesus than the church’s lack of limits in this area.
Changed, peaceful, hopeful, joyous lives are contagious. Communities full of
people with those qualities who also love each other and their world are
amazingly attractive. I wonder if we need to move so that we more closely resemble
the methods of Jesus?
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