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A.A., Reverend Sam Shoemaker, and the Oxford Group: Part 1
A Study of Sam Shoemaker's First Significant Writing
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As Bill Wilson Saw Them: The Shoemaker Difference

Bill Wilson frequently shifted attention from A.A.'s Oxford Group principles and practices by applauding a major role that Bill attributed to Oxford Group leader Reverend Samuel Moor Shoemaker, Jr. Bill claimed that the material for almost every one of A.A.'s Steps came straight from Shoemaker and that Sam was the wellspring in the development of the A.A. program, Steps, and Big Book.

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And the Reverend Samuel Moor Shoemaker, Jr., was a close associate of Oxford Group Founder Dr. Frank N. D. Buchman from at least 1919 to 1941. However these two men had quite different parts to play in the making of A.A. Moreover, their missions were quite different.

Dr. Frank Buchman was older than Shoemaker. Buchman began to assemble his life-changing ideas in the first decade of the 1900's, long before Sam began writing about them in the 1920's. Sam actually made his own life-long and life-changing "decision" in January of 1919 in China while in the company, and with the prodding, of Dr. Buchman. And Sam then went on for twenty years or so to become the most prolific writer on Oxford Group ideas and, at times, Buchman's greatest apologist. But Frank Buchman was definitely unlike Sam Shoemaker in the church arena, in the clergy arena, and with respect to the life-changing focus that was originally the heart of the Oxford Group mission. Buchman was the "soul surgeon" who developed some twenty-eight ideas that were to have great impact on A.A. (See Dick B., The Oxford Group and Alcoholics Anonymous).

Buchman's "soul surgery" techniques for cutting sin out of one's life to make way for a solid relationship with God became the heart of the A.A. path to a relationship with our Creator. But Frank Buchman very soon became focused on "world changing through life changing" and on contacts with world leaders that would enable this to occur.

Shoemaker was a churchman. Buchman was not. Shoemaker sought high posts in the Episcopal hierarchy. Buchman was scarcely noticed in his own Lutheran denomination. Shoemaker spent most of his religious life as an Episcopal rector–first in Calvary Church in New York, and then at Calvary Church in Pittsburgh. Buchman had only a brief year in the pulpit itself. Shoemaker wrote prolifically about a host of religious ideas and subjects. Buchman did not. Shoemaker's life ultimately became focused on parishioners, Bible studies, prayer circles, small fellowship groups, and "staying near the door" which Shoemaker believed would lead people to God. Buchman was scarcely involved in any of these activities. He was followed by a host of admirers who called themselves "activists" rather than a church flock.

All this is not to say that the two men did not share strong common convictions. They did! They both spoke frequently about the power of God Almighty. They both stressed the importance of the Bible. They both, at the beginning, insisted on "surrender" to Jesus Christ. They both incorporated the Holy Spirit in their language and ideas. They both adopted a similar definition of "sin" (that which blocks one from God and from others) and believed it had to be eliminated from one's life. And they both certainly espoused God-guided lives based on yielding to "God control"–God-controlled individuals in God-controlled nations in a God-controlled world

But their actual influence on Alcoholics Anonymous varied in a hundred ways almost as soon as it began. The actual involvement of A.A. as a whole in the Oxford Group itself only lasted from perhaps November of 1934 to August of 1937. For one thing, Bill Wilson had virtually no personal contact with Buchman except in the Fall of 1935 and at an Oxford Group house-party or two. By contrast, Bill was exposed (via Shoemaker's meetings, church, conversations, and power-house friends) to Shoemaker's religious influences from Bill's first days of sobriety in 1934 to his writing of the Big Book in 1938. Moreover, religious influences on Bill in this critical period in A.A. 's development were almost exclusively through Sam Shoemaker and Sam's circle of Protestant clergy and lay helpers at Calvary House in New York–primarily Episcopalian and Presbyterian adherents.

It was Sam Shoemaker who said he had the closest contact with Bill from the very beginning of Bill's sobriety. It was Sam Shoemaker who wrote Bill a letter in Bill's first sixty days of sobriety asking Bill's help with an alcoholic in Sam's parish. It was Sam who was in communication with Dr. Bob's Presbyterian pastor in Akron over the results of Bill's work with Dr. Bob in the summer of 1935. It was Sam who was frequently closeted with Bill in the book-lined study at Calvary House, discussing Christian principles, in the years before the Big Book was penned. It was Sam who said he had reviewed the manuscript of the Big Book before its publication. It was Sam who was asked by Bill to write the Twelve Steps, but declined in favor of Bill's own authorship. It was Sam's own language which seemed to permeate the ideas and even the very words Bill used in the Steps and Big Book. It was Sam with whom Bill corresponded from Bill's earliest A.A. days to Sam's death. And it was Sam whom Bill called a "co-founder" of Alcoholics Anonymous–saying on the occasion of Shoemaker's death–to Sam's daughter Nicki that without Sam there would have been nothing, "nothing at all." And neither Frank Buchman nor the Oxford Group itself nor the clergy of any other major denomination (other than the Episcopalians and Presbyterians) had any significant direct influence or contact with Bill Wilson–and certainly not with Dr. Bob–during the pioneer days of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Oxford Group ideas, then, certainly found their way into Bill's version of A.A.'s spiritual path to recovery. But they appear, in Bill's case, to have been largely the result of what Sam directly or indirectly taught Bill. This important point is best illustrated by a look at Sam Shoemaker's first significant book–almost the first Oxford Group book–that was circulated from the early 1920's to the date of A.A.'s significant beginnings in late 1934.

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