Emmet Fox (1886-1951) was a popular speaker of “New Thought” Christian philosophy in Depression-era New York City. On a Sunday morning, as many as 5,500 people would crowd into one of the larger NY venues to hear his 20-minute sermons.
Fox’s secretary was the mother of Al S. (Steckman), one of Bill W.’s early alcoholic recruits to the Oxford Group. After meetings, Bill and the others would frequently go to Steinway Hall and listen to a lecture by Fox. Fox’s non-traditional, dogma-free approach was attractive to alcoholics who struggled with religion.
Before the existence of AA literature, Fox’s book ‘The Sermon on the Mount’ (1934) was de rigeur reading (along with Henry Drummond’s ‘The Greatest Thing in the World’ [1891] and ‘The Upper Room’, a Methodist periodical that was Anne Smith’s favorite devotional guide).
Some cornerstones of AA that can possibly be attributed to Emmet Fox (at the very least, were reinforced by his teachings) are: To live but one day at a time, to be responsible for one’s own thoughts, to clear up resentments, to establish "conscious contact" with God, and to set perfection as a goal.
Bill W. presents perfection as a worthy but unattainable goal in Step 6 of the Twelve & Twelve, echoing the standard Christian belief in Utopia's loss with Adam's bite of the apple. But Emmet Fox considered perfection to be achievable. Fox points out that Jesus never said "Do your best" or "Progress not perfection"... rather, Jesus said "Go and sin no more." Fox believed the spiritual good to be the enemy of the spiritual best, and that nearly all of us can honestly say to have never tried to attain perfection - having been lectured on its impossibility since birth. (Actually, the doctrine of original sin - that Adam, with his bite of the apple, rendered all of humanity forever imperfect - is a 3rd-century Christian invention.) In Judaism, the traditional interpretation is that Adam's sin was his own.
This author conjectures that "spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection" (Big Book, Chapter 5) is an unidentified but direct rebuttal of this aspect of Fox’s teaching. Bill W. wisely considered it necessary to make this explicit for alcoholics. Apart from the first step, he steered his program for alcoholics away from "Absolutes" which were prevalent in the Oxford Group and the teachings of Fox.
A second possible rebuttal of Emmet Fox’s teaching is this: Fox preached that a change of thinking must precede the changing of one’s life – that a person cannot think one way and act another. This is at odds with AA’s tacit principle of “Bring the body and the mind will follow,” (one of several ways that “Action before motivation” is expressed in AA). Taking action is a critically-important component to staying sober and spiritual growth in the AA program.
This is guesswork, but this author knows of no other possible sources for these two principles (“Progress not perfection”, “Action before motivation”) which have become entrenched in AA.
Although a bit of a non sequitur here, any discussion of Emmet Fox would be incomplete without mention of his “Golden Key” (to harmony and happiness). This was first printed as a short pamphlet, and is probably Fox’s best-known writing. The Golden Key may be summarized as follows:
When your thoughts are troubled, stop thinking about the difficulty, and think about God instead. It makes no difference how or what you think. You may hold any views on religion, or none. Repeat until the return of serenity. Just think about God.
Nothing like Fox’s Golden Key was ever incorporated into AA literature or its “spiritual toolbox,” which is a bit of a mystery to this author. It must have been known, dating from 1931. Perhaps it was simply too unstructured for Bill W.’s taste.
Right or wrong, the synthesis of ideas (both accepted and rejected) that comprise AA is endlessly fascinating.
T. Jack, July 2023
© TJ 2023