IDENTIFICATION & UNITY

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Short Form

“The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking.”

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Long Form

“Our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. Hence we may refuse none who wish to recover. Nor ought A.A. membership ever depend upon money or conformity. Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an A.A. group, provided that, as a group, they have no other affiliation.”

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Key Points

• Early intolerance based on fear.
• To take away any alcoholic’s chance at A.A. was sometimes to pronounce his death sentence.
• Membership regulations abandoned.
• Two examples of experience.
  • The man with the double stigma – “What would the Master do?”
  • Atheist salesman called Ed
• Any alcoholic is a member of A.A. when he says so.

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Tradition 3 Inventory Questions

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As Bill Sees It Readings

	24	Alike When the Chips Are Down
	41	Membership Rules?
	46	True Ambition – and False
	186	“The Only Requirement. . .”
	237	No Orders Issued

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IDENTIFICATION

Short Form

“For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority – a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.”

Long Form

“For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority – a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience.”

Key Points

• Where does A.A. get its direction? 
• Sole authority in A.A. is loving God as He may express Himself in the group conscience.
• Formation of a group.
• Growing pains.
• Rotating committees are servants of the group.
• Leaders do not govern, they serve.
• Does A.A. have a real leadership?
• Elder statesmen” and “bleeding deacons.”
• The group conscience speaks.

“The only problem we ever really have is separation from God”

As Bill Sees It Readings

	95	Spiritual Kindergarten
	98	Anger – Personal and Group Enemy
	202	The Hour of Decision
	237	No Orders Issued
	312	Tolerance Keeps Us Sober

Tradition 2 Inventory Questions

UNITY

“Our common welfare should come first: personal recovery depends upon AA unity.“

“Each member of Alcoholics Anonymous is but a small part of a great whole. A.A. must continue to live or most of us will surely die. Hence our common welfare comes first. But individual welfare follows close afterward.”

• Without unity, A.A dies.
• Individual liberty, yet great unity.
• Key to paradox: each AA’s life depends on obedience of spiritual principles.
• The group must survive or the individual will not.
• Common welfare comes first.
• How best to live and work together as groups.

Inventory Questions

Relevant Readings from As Bill Sees It might include:

#9:         Group and World-Wide Community

#73:      Two way Tolerance

#98:      Anger – Personal and Group Enemy

#125:    Look Beyond the Horizon

#155:    Built by the One and the Many

#220:    In Partnership

#249:    God’s Gifts

#302:    Comradeship in Peril

Eddie Rickenbacker