1862: At age 26, Jeremiah “Jerry” McAuley
[right]
was released from Sing Sing Prison after receiving a pardon from New York
Governor Horatio Seymour. He initially sought connection with Christians,
but he found their faith “wavering, unstable, half-and-half” which
“staggered” him. The lessons he learned during the 10 years after his release would profoundly shape his approach
when he founded the first rescue mission in North America in 1872.
1944: In an article titled “The Church and the Alcoholic” [left] published in The Christian Century, Rev. Alson Jesse Smith*, he likened Alcoholics Anonymous to a call made by Sebastian Franck† in his 1531 book, Von dem greulichen Laster der Trunkenheit (The Horrible Vice of Drunkenness)
[right]. Franck wrote,
Smith argued that A.A. offers such “new
heads.” Until now, Franck’s book had been an obscure work on the topic of
drunkenness.
[right]
was released from Sing Sing Prison after receiving a pardon from New York
Governor Horatio Seymour. He initially sought connection with Christians,
but he found their faith “wavering, unstable, half-and-half” which
“staggered” him. The lessons he learned during the 10 years after his release would profoundly shape his approach
when he founded the first rescue mission in North America in 1872.1944: In an article titled “The Church and the Alcoholic” [left] published in The Christian Century, Rev. Alson Jesse Smith*, he likened Alcoholics Anonymous to a call made by Sebastian Franck† in his 1531 book, Von dem greulichen Laster der Trunkenheit (The Horrible Vice of Drunkenness)
[right]. Franck wrote, It [drinking or drunkenness] is too deeply rooted and sin has become a habit. All would have to be reborn and receive new heads. Yes, a new world would have to come.
Smith argued that A.A. offers such “new
heads.” Until now, Franck’s book had been an obscure work on the topic of
drunkenness.
*Alson Smith
[left, c. 1936] was a liberal independent scholar, a Methodist Episcopal minister,
and a freelance journalist who had been reporting on the far right since the
1930s.
†Sebastian Franck
[right] (20 Jan 1499–c. 1543) was a 16th-century German freethinker,
humanist, and radical reformer. Despite being an ordained priest, he
combined the humanist's passion for freedom with the mystic's devotion to
the religion of the spirit, and came to believe that God communicates with
individuals through a portion of the divine remaining in each human being.
He dismissed the human institution of the church and claimed that theology
could not properly claim to give expression to this inner word of God in the
heart of the believer. For example, he wrote, “To substitute Scripture for
the self-revealing Spirit is to put the dead letter in the place of the
living Word…” and “God is an unutterable sigh, lying in the depths of the
heart,” which Ludwig Feuerbach called “the most remarkable, the profoundest,
truest expression of Christian Mysticism.”
[right] (20 Jan 1499–c. 1543) was a 16th-century German freethinker,
humanist, and radical reformer. Despite being an ordained priest, he
combined the humanist's passion for freedom with the mystic's devotion to
the religion of the spirit, and came to believe that God communicates with
individuals through a portion of the divine remaining in each human being.
He dismissed the human institution of the church and claimed that theology
could not properly claim to give expression to this inner word of God in the
heart of the believer. For example, he wrote, “To substitute Scripture for
the self-revealing Spirit is to put the dead letter in the place of the
living Word…” and “God is an unutterable sigh, lying in the depths of the
heart,” which Ludwig Feuerbach called “the most remarkable, the profoundest,
truest expression of Christian Mysticism.”
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