I've been part of discussions in ministerial associations across three states and forty years, and can report in that narrow experience, folks like Southern Baptists, Assemblies of God, and non-denom contemporary church independents do not like or trust AA, in large part because of their "conception of God" and lack of explicit Christianity as part of the twelve step model. When SBCs in particular do alcohol/addiction programs, it's Celebrate Recovery, which is on the community level, at least, explicitly presented as the "Christian alternative" to AA, as Trail Life is to Scouting America. So I'd expect to see them low if not off this list entirely. Evangelicals tend to be surprised other ministers "let" AA meet in their buildings, since their version of a "higher power" can (as is famously often said) be "this styrofoam cup or that radiator over there." I think in practice, this is not how AA thinking works, but it is what they say, and they are emphatically non-sectarian as is Scouting, which Evangelicals just have an essential objection to. They don't do pluralism.
I agree. We are an evangelical church and have an AA meeting in one of our buildings but we are outliers. There is a theological aversion to it although it was begun by committed Christians and is based on Biblical principles.
The other "excuse" I've heard for not allowing AA is that attendees refer to themselves as an "alcoholic", etc. But like the reason listed above, saying "higher power" vs God, that will leave out people who are not in a place to deal with or process religion while dealing with addiction. Putting specific requirements on people looking for help will drive many away.
"that will leave out people who are not in a place to deal with or process religion while dealing with addiction."
I have seen something similar with homeless shelters. I used to live in a more rural area with 3 shelters, 1 secular and 2 Evangelical. The secular shelter came into existence because the LGBTQ homeless population were largely unserved. The few folks who did show up with needs were told that their homeless situation was a consequence of their lifestyle. I am sure some of those volunteers were well-meaning, but they did not know how to best serve their brothers and sisters, and they were articulating what I would label a false gospel.
One other aspect: many food pantries in mainline churches operate partially with government grants which help buy the food. A condition of such grants is that they cannot be used for religious purposes. So the church cannot, for example, give out brochures that give the times of services, along with the food.
I understand this directly, having previously served as an officer (pastor) in the Salvation Army. This one of the reasons I left that ministry: severe constraints placed on evangelism, because the Army didn't want to lose federal (and state, county, munincipal) monies. A very sad situation.
We had an unchurched couple start coming to our Sunday services this year because they learned of us from the AA meeting we sponsor.
If we had tried to infiltrate that AA meeting and done a Jesus-bait-and-switch, I have no doubt in my mind that the couple would have never entered our doors again.
I don't know if there is any way to get information on Celebrate Recovery groups, but at least in the areas where I've done ministry that is what evangelical churches support, not AA. Wonder what it would look like if that ministry were included in your analysis of areas that are more evangelical.
As a person without faith I've been worried about the lack of secular community support spaces for over 20 years. There are plenty of community halls AA could hire for ongoing meetings but few hubs that people will go to for many different things that will build a strong sense of local community. I don't know how we address this.
Ref evangelical vs. mainline attitudes to such things. It would be really interesting for there to be an episode that focuses on the ratio of all kinds of community outreach and support, such as those you listed at the start of this episode, vs. the number of attendees and profitability of the different faith traditions in the US. Do more attendees mean more services or are most run by a small core group? Do churches that make more money provide more services?
Ryan -- here's something you may find of interest. AA is on the decline, just like churches. It's attendance numbers have been falling significantly--and certainly our substance abuse issues haven't declined. It seems like it might be caught up in the same social forces as the church. When the church closes, the chapter of AA probably will close too.
One of the questions that I have about this is do churches by and large let AA use their facilities for free. I am just wondering. I currently go to a weight watchers meeting in a church that also houses an AA meeting. I know that weight watchers pays for their meeting but I dont know about AA. I am on the board of our local senior studies group and we do pay a fee to hold weekly meetings in a church. And my synagogue rents out part of its facility to a child day care group.
There might be some other ways to analyze the reality of what happens to the larger community when a church that focuses as a social hub closes. The Prof Archive series on YouTube deals with this phenomon in many of its videos but as something of an agenda to its tone that Ryan's statistics avoids.
i
The problem with AA as the example is that many churches are conflicted in their social missions and set boundaries of who may partake of the church. JACS, the Jewish version of AA which expands to other substances, has its tales of being denied rental spaces in synagogues. We all have a tipsy Cousin Arthur who has to be driven home from Bar Mitzvah receptions and Orthodox congregations where driving is not an issue have men who assemble to the Kiddush Club that assembles in another room with schnapps while the Rabbi gives his weekly sermon. They are aware of the conflict between serving people and having a public face to the community.
Perhaps a better model might be The Scouts, often sponsored by churches, with a sponsorship proudly publicized. It has a central organization that should make data collection available. And its reach in smaller communities extends beyond the member families of the individual churches.
Another measure might be rental of space for day care or after school care. That also happens in many religious institutions, and would leave a lot of parents in the lurch if the sponsor disbands. It is not centralized, though, which may challenge data collection. Churches also sponsor spaces for seniors to socialize or play mah jongg. Those are a little easier to relocate after a church's closure than Scouts or day care would be.
Food pantries are a little different because they have an element of government financial support as well as volunteers. Moreover, the volunteers come largely from the sponsoring church.
I know it makes sense geographically, but Miami-Dade really isn't a "Southern" city culturally (whichi is the most useful sense here). Closer to New England than anything else (really Miami is its own thing)
I am a committed Catholic and AA member. I found the comments about the concept of higher power v Christian God interesting. Our area has a higher percentage of of Catholics than most. Many of the non practicing believe in God and are very good men and women. I don’t hesitate to mention my Catholic practices(daily Mass etc. I think it is a mistake for Churches not to support AA as it is helping members to be better people and worshipers even if not Church goers. To paraphrase If they are performing miracles in lives they are doing good work not the work of the evil one. If they are not of God they will fade away. It hasn’t happened in 90 years. God Bless! Jim
Great study Ryan. I'm happy you thought of this particular group and the need for space. Most of the local mainline churches in my area host multiple AA meetings stretching across the week. Thanks for doing this one. Interesting material.
Ryan - I assume you are familiar with Ram Cnaan's work out of the University of Pennsylvania on the worth of social services provided by congregations. With the new AI tools to look at data sets, it would be worth a look at replication now 25 or so years on.
It’s interesting to me, the theme of the article is where will Alcoholics Anonymous meetings be held when churches have closed. This seems to presuppose that there will be AA meetings long after the churches that won’t host them have closed. Makes me wonder whether had those churches ministered to those soles that came to those meetings, as Christ our Lord that instructed us good Christians to do, maybe they would have survived.
I have been sober for nearly 15 years through active attendance at AA clubs so I have some knowledge about the alcoholic mind. It takes some time to clear the head of an active alcoholic before they have the ability to consider anything outside of themselves. In those meetings, when you listen one hears a lot of “sayings” like, “ I can’t”, “He can”, “ Think I’ll Let Him”, referring directly to the Lord our God. Listening in those meetings lifted me from a horrible existence to a successful marriage and full membership in a Southern Baptist Church. It takes time and the loving care of another alcoholic strangely enough to accomplish that. However, with your mind open and a willing heart compassionate Christlike angels can lead you back into the fold.
The truth is you don’t stay sober with the Lord. In AA you begin to learn a lot about what is true.
A self-righteous approach to sobering someone up is not the way to help someone who has chosen to drink themselves into oblivion. Celebrate Recovery is one way, AA is another.
Don't forget about reverse causality! Perhaps Evangelism deters alcoholism while mainstream Protestantism promotes it. With respect to AA in particular, it has been extremely difficult to evaluate its effectiveness historically (anonymity, dropouts, selection, ...) relative to alternatives, which would raise question of whether anything is lost. However, recent 2020 Cochrane review is positive about AA effectiveness. With respect to "social service" functions more generally, might church activities, laudable as they are, make it less likely that government will provide the extent of social supports found in other developed (more secular?) countries. Commie Canadian speaking here. If so, loss of churches might "improve" other (government?) ways to support the disadvantaged. Interesting issue.
I think your prediction that if churches did not provide a useful social service to the poor, then the government would come in and fill that need is unrealistic. Historically, the only reason why Western governments started to see problems of the poor as problems at all--let alone problems requiring government assistance--it because the Bible told them so. In the pre-Christian West, there were no hospitals or orphanages because sick people and abandoned infants were left to die. Certainly the Roman state did not say, "wow, these dying sick people and babies are a problem and churches don't exist yet so the government should fix this." Later in history, things like labor laws and support for indigent mothers also come directly out of Christian lobbying, not because the state woke up one day and decided that babies should be fed and workers should get weekends off. This is even the case in European countries that now pride themselves on their "secularism" and social services: the ideology that led them to believe that social services were a good thing in the first place was a Christian one, built on a very long history of religious physical infrastructure for those social services.
Are you part of a church, and/or in need of those services? Because I think if the answer to either of those questions was "yes," you would be very well aware of the social services provided by churches.
As Ryan notes here, meeting spaces for organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous are provided by churches, as are food banks and homeless shelters.
I'm going to use the church I grew up in, Lakewood United Methodist Church in Lakewood, Colorado as an example because it is such a perfect example of the kind of thing that Ryan writes about here. Lakewood United Methodist Church is a mainline Protestant church that was thriving in the 1970s-1990s, with several hundred congregants in attendance across three Sunday services in those decades. This church is now down to one service most Sundays, with just a couple dozen in attendance.
Then and now, LUMC sponsored AA meetings, ran a very highly-accredited preschool with a sliding scale of costs based on parents' ability to pay, and ran a food bank and homeless shelter. You can see more about LUMC's current social works here: https://www.lumc.net/community-hub
The difference is that now LUMC barely has the resources to keep itself afloat because of its radically declining membership. It's able to get by as well as it does because of a history of donations from wealthier Lakewood residents in the past, but so many of these congregants have died off that this will not be able to carry the church forward into the future. What will happen to the homeless shelter, community garden, preschool, and AA meeting space when LUMC shutters is not clear--but it's virtually certain that the government will not swoop in and clean up the mess when it does. After all, homelessness is a known major problem in the Lakewood, Colorado area, and has been for decades. If the government were willing/able to swoop in and fix it, surely they would have done so already.
For more examples of churches and community organizers working together to solve social problems the state is unable or unwilling to solve, I recommend Luke Allen's Substack, here: https://intheteethofallhope.substack.com/
Yes, we are active in a church that is very active providing to the community, working with various faith traditions. One of the larger food banks in our area is in a mosque. What I see little of out on the streets are the large mega churches.
Ah, yes. I don't know what to say about mega churches, not being part of one (and at this point, living in a part of the world where they don't exist). But I also don't know that my ignorance of what mega churches do is evidence that they don't do good works. Perhaps Ryan could write us a future essay on that?
Well, guess what, fam?
I just scraped the location of every Celebrate Recovery meeting location in North America.
I have no idea what I'm going to do with it.
But it was a fun coding exercise.
I've been part of discussions in ministerial associations across three states and forty years, and can report in that narrow experience, folks like Southern Baptists, Assemblies of God, and non-denom contemporary church independents do not like or trust AA, in large part because of their "conception of God" and lack of explicit Christianity as part of the twelve step model. When SBCs in particular do alcohol/addiction programs, it's Celebrate Recovery, which is on the community level, at least, explicitly presented as the "Christian alternative" to AA, as Trail Life is to Scouting America. So I'd expect to see them low if not off this list entirely. Evangelicals tend to be surprised other ministers "let" AA meet in their buildings, since their version of a "higher power" can (as is famously often said) be "this styrofoam cup or that radiator over there." I think in practice, this is not how AA thinking works, but it is what they say, and they are emphatically non-sectarian as is Scouting, which Evangelicals just have an essential objection to. They don't do pluralism.
I agree. We are an evangelical church and have an AA meeting in one of our buildings but we are outliers. There is a theological aversion to it although it was begun by committed Christians and is based on Biblical principles.
The other "excuse" I've heard for not allowing AA is that attendees refer to themselves as an "alcoholic", etc. But like the reason listed above, saying "higher power" vs God, that will leave out people who are not in a place to deal with or process religion while dealing with addiction. Putting specific requirements on people looking for help will drive many away.
"that will leave out people who are not in a place to deal with or process religion while dealing with addiction."
I have seen something similar with homeless shelters. I used to live in a more rural area with 3 shelters, 1 secular and 2 Evangelical. The secular shelter came into existence because the LGBTQ homeless population were largely unserved. The few folks who did show up with needs were told that their homeless situation was a consequence of their lifestyle. I am sure some of those volunteers were well-meaning, but they did not know how to best serve their brothers and sisters, and they were articulating what I would label a false gospel.
One other aspect: many food pantries in mainline churches operate partially with government grants which help buy the food. A condition of such grants is that they cannot be used for religious purposes. So the church cannot, for example, give out brochures that give the times of services, along with the food.
I understand this directly, having previously served as an officer (pastor) in the Salvation Army. This one of the reasons I left that ministry: severe constraints placed on evangelism, because the Army didn't want to lose federal (and state, county, munincipal) monies. A very sad situation.
Shouldn't feeding hungry people be the top priority?
Yes Wesley, to offer them the Bread of Life that they might never hunger again!
We had an unchurched couple start coming to our Sunday services this year because they learned of us from the AA meeting we sponsor.
If we had tried to infiltrate that AA meeting and done a Jesus-bait-and-switch, I have no doubt in my mind that the couple would have never entered our doors again.
So a manipulated conversion in order to live? Yikes.
I don't know if there is any way to get information on Celebrate Recovery groups, but at least in the areas where I've done ministry that is what evangelical churches support, not AA. Wonder what it would look like if that ministry were included in your analysis of areas that are more evangelical.
As a person without faith I've been worried about the lack of secular community support spaces for over 20 years. There are plenty of community halls AA could hire for ongoing meetings but few hubs that people will go to for many different things that will build a strong sense of local community. I don't know how we address this.
Ref evangelical vs. mainline attitudes to such things. It would be really interesting for there to be an episode that focuses on the ratio of all kinds of community outreach and support, such as those you listed at the start of this episode, vs. the number of attendees and profitability of the different faith traditions in the US. Do more attendees mean more services or are most run by a small core group? Do churches that make more money provide more services?
Ryan -- here's something you may find of interest. AA is on the decline, just like churches. It's attendance numbers have been falling significantly--and certainly our substance abuse issues haven't declined. It seems like it might be caught up in the same social forces as the church. When the church closes, the chapter of AA probably will close too.
We aren't JOINING ANYTHING. Yeesh. What a crisis on so many levels.
We've stopped Bowling Alone and Drinking Alone. Sad!
Great point and I agree
One of the questions that I have about this is do churches by and large let AA use their facilities for free. I am just wondering. I currently go to a weight watchers meeting in a church that also houses an AA meeting. I know that weight watchers pays for their meeting but I dont know about AA. I am on the board of our local senior studies group and we do pay a fee to hold weekly meetings in a church. And my synagogue rents out part of its facility to a child day care group.
The ones I've seen did not charge a fee. That would be sad if they did.
There might be some other ways to analyze the reality of what happens to the larger community when a church that focuses as a social hub closes. The Prof Archive series on YouTube deals with this phenomon in many of its videos but as something of an agenda to its tone that Ryan's statistics avoids.
i
The problem with AA as the example is that many churches are conflicted in their social missions and set boundaries of who may partake of the church. JACS, the Jewish version of AA which expands to other substances, has its tales of being denied rental spaces in synagogues. We all have a tipsy Cousin Arthur who has to be driven home from Bar Mitzvah receptions and Orthodox congregations where driving is not an issue have men who assemble to the Kiddush Club that assembles in another room with schnapps while the Rabbi gives his weekly sermon. They are aware of the conflict between serving people and having a public face to the community.
Perhaps a better model might be The Scouts, often sponsored by churches, with a sponsorship proudly publicized. It has a central organization that should make data collection available. And its reach in smaller communities extends beyond the member families of the individual churches.
Another measure might be rental of space for day care or after school care. That also happens in many religious institutions, and would leave a lot of parents in the lurch if the sponsor disbands. It is not centralized, though, which may challenge data collection. Churches also sponsor spaces for seniors to socialize or play mah jongg. Those are a little easier to relocate after a church's closure than Scouts or day care would be.
Food pantries are a little different because they have an element of government financial support as well as volunteers. Moreover, the volunteers come largely from the sponsoring church.
I know it makes sense geographically, but Miami-Dade really isn't a "Southern" city culturally (whichi is the most useful sense here). Closer to New England than anything else (really Miami is its own thing)
I am a committed Catholic and AA member. I found the comments about the concept of higher power v Christian God interesting. Our area has a higher percentage of of Catholics than most. Many of the non practicing believe in God and are very good men and women. I don’t hesitate to mention my Catholic practices(daily Mass etc. I think it is a mistake for Churches not to support AA as it is helping members to be better people and worshipers even if not Church goers. To paraphrase If they are performing miracles in lives they are doing good work not the work of the evil one. If they are not of God they will fade away. It hasn’t happened in 90 years. God Bless! Jim
Great study Ryan. I'm happy you thought of this particular group and the need for space. Most of the local mainline churches in my area host multiple AA meetings stretching across the week. Thanks for doing this one. Interesting material.
Ryan - I assume you are familiar with Ram Cnaan's work out of the University of Pennsylvania on the worth of social services provided by congregations. With the new AI tools to look at data sets, it would be worth a look at replication now 25 or so years on.
One element of the importance of mainline churches may be their age. Some of these AA meetings may have been going on since 1950.
It’s interesting to me, the theme of the article is where will Alcoholics Anonymous meetings be held when churches have closed. This seems to presuppose that there will be AA meetings long after the churches that won’t host them have closed. Makes me wonder whether had those churches ministered to those soles that came to those meetings, as Christ our Lord that instructed us good Christians to do, maybe they would have survived.
I have been sober for nearly 15 years through active attendance at AA clubs so I have some knowledge about the alcoholic mind. It takes some time to clear the head of an active alcoholic before they have the ability to consider anything outside of themselves. In those meetings, when you listen one hears a lot of “sayings” like, “ I can’t”, “He can”, “ Think I’ll Let Him”, referring directly to the Lord our God. Listening in those meetings lifted me from a horrible existence to a successful marriage and full membership in a Southern Baptist Church. It takes time and the loving care of another alcoholic strangely enough to accomplish that. However, with your mind open and a willing heart compassionate Christlike angels can lead you back into the fold.
The truth is you don’t stay sober with the Lord. In AA you begin to learn a lot about what is true.
A self-righteous approach to sobering someone up is not the way to help someone who has chosen to drink themselves into oblivion. Celebrate Recovery is one way, AA is another.
My piece for Emory University's Center for the Study of Law and Religion: "For Whom the Bell Tolls: Congregations, of Course, but Municipalities, Too." https://canopyforum.org/2023/05/05/for-whom-the-church-bell-tolls-congregations-of-course-but-municipalities-too/
Don't forget about reverse causality! Perhaps Evangelism deters alcoholism while mainstream Protestantism promotes it. With respect to AA in particular, it has been extremely difficult to evaluate its effectiveness historically (anonymity, dropouts, selection, ...) relative to alternatives, which would raise question of whether anything is lost. However, recent 2020 Cochrane review is positive about AA effectiveness. With respect to "social service" functions more generally, might church activities, laudable as they are, make it less likely that government will provide the extent of social supports found in other developed (more secular?) countries. Commie Canadian speaking here. If so, loss of churches might "improve" other (government?) ways to support the disadvantaged. Interesting issue.
I think your prediction that if churches did not provide a useful social service to the poor, then the government would come in and fill that need is unrealistic. Historically, the only reason why Western governments started to see problems of the poor as problems at all--let alone problems requiring government assistance--it because the Bible told them so. In the pre-Christian West, there were no hospitals or orphanages because sick people and abandoned infants were left to die. Certainly the Roman state did not say, "wow, these dying sick people and babies are a problem and churches don't exist yet so the government should fix this." Later in history, things like labor laws and support for indigent mothers also come directly out of Christian lobbying, not because the state woke up one day and decided that babies should be fed and workers should get weekends off. This is even the case in European countries that now pride themselves on their "secularism" and social services: the ideology that led them to believe that social services were a good thing in the first place was a Christian one, built on a very long history of religious physical infrastructure for those social services.
Even Bart Eirman says that Christians began those causes, but I certainly don't see it as much currently.
Are you part of a church, and/or in need of those services? Because I think if the answer to either of those questions was "yes," you would be very well aware of the social services provided by churches.
As Ryan notes here, meeting spaces for organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous are provided by churches, as are food banks and homeless shelters.
I'm going to use the church I grew up in, Lakewood United Methodist Church in Lakewood, Colorado as an example because it is such a perfect example of the kind of thing that Ryan writes about here. Lakewood United Methodist Church is a mainline Protestant church that was thriving in the 1970s-1990s, with several hundred congregants in attendance across three Sunday services in those decades. This church is now down to one service most Sundays, with just a couple dozen in attendance.
Then and now, LUMC sponsored AA meetings, ran a very highly-accredited preschool with a sliding scale of costs based on parents' ability to pay, and ran a food bank and homeless shelter. You can see more about LUMC's current social works here: https://www.lumc.net/community-hub
The difference is that now LUMC barely has the resources to keep itself afloat because of its radically declining membership. It's able to get by as well as it does because of a history of donations from wealthier Lakewood residents in the past, but so many of these congregants have died off that this will not be able to carry the church forward into the future. What will happen to the homeless shelter, community garden, preschool, and AA meeting space when LUMC shutters is not clear--but it's virtually certain that the government will not swoop in and clean up the mess when it does. After all, homelessness is a known major problem in the Lakewood, Colorado area, and has been for decades. If the government were willing/able to swoop in and fix it, surely they would have done so already.
For more examples of churches and community organizers working together to solve social problems the state is unable or unwilling to solve, I recommend Luke Allen's Substack, here: https://intheteethofallhope.substack.com/
Yes, we are active in a church that is very active providing to the community, working with various faith traditions. One of the larger food banks in our area is in a mosque. What I see little of out on the streets are the large mega churches.
Ah, yes. I don't know what to say about mega churches, not being part of one (and at this point, living in a part of the world where they don't exist). But I also don't know that my ignorance of what mega churches do is evidence that they don't do good works. Perhaps Ryan could write us a future essay on that?