> "wozza" <wozza96@_NO_SPAM_yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:42b68d46$0$13943$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.a u...
>> "rosie read n' post" <readandpost@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>> news:iuite.16267$lI2.7345@tornado.rdc-kc.rr.com...
>> > RELIGION is for those who are afraid of hell..................
>> > SPIRITUALITY is for those who have been there!
>> >
>> >
>> > imo, AA is not a religion.
>>
>>
>> Unfortunately, your opinion counts for zilch, but the opinions of are
> worth
>> taking notice.
>>
>> A.A. claims that it is a "spiritual" organization, and not
> "religious", and
>> not a religion, but there is no great difference between the words
>> "religious" and "spiritual." The distinction is artificial -- just
> another
>> deceptive word game.
>>
>> In the case of Grandberg v. Ashland County, a 1984 Federal 7th Circuit
> Court
>> ruling concerning judicially-mandated A.A. attendance, the court said:
>>
>> Alcoholics Anonymous materials and the testimony of the witness
> established
>> beyond a doubt that religious activities, as defined in constitutional
> law,
>> were a part of the treatment program. The distinction between religion
> and
>> spirituality is meaningless, and serves merely to confuse the issue.
>> -- Wisconsin's District Judge John Shabaz
>>
>> All of these courts have ruled that Alcoholics Anonymous is a religion
> or
>> engages in religious activities:
>>
>> the Federal 7th Circuit Court in Wisconsin, 1984.
>> the Federal District Court for Southern New York, 1994.
>> the New York Court of Appeals, 1996.
>> the New York State Supreme Court, 1996.
>> the U.S. Supreme Court, 1997.
>> the Tennessee State Supreme Court.
>> the Federal 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, 1996.
>> the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
>> the U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh District, 1996.
>> the Federal Appeals Court in Chicago, 1996.
>>
>> The United States Supreme Court has refused to hear challenges to
> those
>> rulings, or to change or over-turn those lower court decisions. By
> letting
>> them stand, the Supreme Court has made them the law of the land.
>>
>> But there is one very important exception to that statement -- the
> Griffin
>> v. Coughlin decision, from the New York State Court of Appeals, 1996,
> was
>> heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1997.
>>
>> In Griffin v. Coughlin, the prison inmate David Griffin complained
> that
>> state prison officials in 1991 told David Griffin, a self-described
> atheist
>> with a history of drug abuse, that in order to be eligible for
> expanded
>> family visitation privileges, including conjugal visits, he would have
> to
>> attend a prison rehabilitation program patterned after AA's 12-step
> model.2
>>
>> Griffin, then a prisoner at the Shawangunk Correctional Facility in
> Ulster
>> County, refused to attend the program, contending that the 12-step
> approach
>> requires participants to express a belief in a "power greater than
>> ourselves" and to "turn our will and our lives over to the care of God
> as we
>> understood him." These requirements, his lawsuit against the state
>> contended, violate the First Amendment's mandated separation of church
> and
>> state.
>>
>> Griffin lost in two lower courts, but won in New York State's highest
> court,
>> the New York Court of Appeals.
>>
>> In Griffin v. Coughlin, Judge Levine, writing for the court's
> majority,
>> concluded that the AA program is devoted to proselytizing for a
> religious
>> belief. The court's conclusion was based on its reading of several
> profiles
>> of early AA members as they are set forth in the AA Big Book and the
> AA
>> Twelve and Twelve.
>>
>> Judge Levine said "While it is of course true that the primary
> objective of
>> A.A. is to enable its adherents to achieve sobriety, its doctrine
>> unmistakably urges that the path to staying sober and to becoming
> happily
>> and usefully whole is by wholeheartedly embracing traditional theistic
>> beliefs."
>>
>> From its review of AA literature, the majority concluded that the AA
> Twelve
>> Steps amount to a worship service and that the AA fellowship is
> dedicated to
>> converting alcoholics to a belief in a traditional deity. Accordingly,
> the
>> court found that, "The foregoing demonstrates beyond peradventure that
>> doctrinally and as actually practiced in the 12-step methodology,
> adherence
>> to the A.A. fellowship entails engagement in religious activity and
>> religious proselytization. Followers are urged to accept the existence
> of
>> God as a Supreme Being, Creator, Father of Light and Spirit of the
>> Universe."
>>
>> When the U.S. Supreme Court heard the appeal, it sided with the
> atheist
>> convict who said the New York Department of Corrections' attempt to
> link
>> extra privileges for inmates with attendance at meetings modeled after
>> Alcoholics Anonymous violated the constitutionally mandated separation
> of
>> church and state.3
>>
>> On November 14, 1999 the U.S. Supreme Court refused to overturn, thus
>> allowed to stand, a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second
>> Circuit ordering that forced attendance at Narcotics Anonymous
> meetings end
>> immediately, because it was a violation of Freedom of Religion. The
> U.S.
>> Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and the high courts of the
> states
>> of Tennessee and New York have also made the same ruling.
>>
>> -- quoted from http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-spirrel.html
>>


> you clearly have your opinions, as i have mine..........................
> with the help of AA and my HP i will celebrate 23yrs of sobriety in
> august.
> AA has helped me to have a whole new life.

Sorry, I really botched the first line. What I meant to say was the opinions
of the courts are what matter, because they make the laws. Then I quoted
someone else's summary of many court decisions where AA was ruled to be a
religion. Note no court anywhere has ever ruled AA is not a religion.

I'm glad AA has helped you have a whole new life. The steps work well for
the lucky few for whom they work well. But what I care about is for every
one of you, there are 20 who aren't helped. That's the tragedy of AA's
religious program.