Arkansas Blog

We need to balance. When a judge purposely makes such an abnoxious ruling he/she should have to serve the time when the ruling is reversed.

De judge fits in well for NW Arkansas.

Here's another take on the issue of judges "sentencing" people to 12-step programs: Many members of 12-step programs are not happy that judges view 12-step programs as part of the corrections system and would prefer that people were not "sentenced" to these programs.

Many 12-step programs have open meetings. Anyone may attend an open meeting, but some groups will ask visitors or non-members not to participate in the meeting. They may simply observe and listen. The judge in this instance could have given the person being adjudicated the option of attending open 12-step meetings in lieu of some other "punishment."

Stripped bare, this is a case of a judge directing a citizen to go to jail or go to a religious function.

That sounds like forced religion. Since there are numerous religions, forcing one religions sounds like the opposite of freedom of religion.

AA has helped a lot of people and been a big zero to others. There are tons of problems in life that have no quick fix. My family, except for Ma, has zero contact with organized religion. None of us are hiding a secret desire to worship a supreme being. My kids have been inside a church only for weddings and funerals. We do not seek the love of a supreme being, we do not fear the wrath of a supreme being. No one under my roof likes anchovies either...just for the record.

I only bring this up to prove that with zero religion or spiritual beliefs a person can still be a good friend, neighbor, citizen. I have to guess that part of the population must have a vengeful God or the promise of a milk and honey heaven to keep from murdering you for your TV set. If it works for them....fine with me. I don't really care what another person's beliefs are unless the come over in my yard trying to force them on me. I don't knock on neighbor's doors and tell them not to believe in God. I naturally assume they all do in one way or the other......that's OK too.

It does rankle me a little that there would be a giant uproar and fighting in the streets if it was declared that only white people are good. Or only men are good. Yet, everyone in the White House, everyone on the Supreme Court and all 535 members of Congress seemed to be required to be if not Christians, which must make up 99.9% of them, at least be required to express a belief in a higher power. And of course that is why this judge didn't think a thing of sentencing this woman to a program based in trusting some dude no one has ever seen. It's a very odd concept if you think about it for a few minutes.

Unless you count the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, or all the people strapping bombs to their bodies in the Middle East, religion doesn't hurt anyone. Oh....wait...I just read what I typed....scratch that idea. Religion can kill! I doubt the AA is mounting a secret army to kill non-believers like me....but that could be on their list of things to do next year. Like a pack of dogs, a pack of people can often come up with some pretty bad ideas. Google Bush administration and see what you find. Humans are a sad bunch and like sending your dog to a Speed Reading course.....we don't seem to ever learn. But maybe this one judge has learned a lesson and next time will sentence an offender to Hooters. Now there's a religion I could sink my teeth into!

Identifying a 12-step program as a religion is a real stretch, but the 12 steps do refer to God. (The third and eleventh steps, for those of you keeping score.) These two references to God are modified by a phrase that allows the person working the steps to have any understanding of God that suits them. Does anyone out there know of a religion that allows its members to have a free and undirected understanding of God? As I said, it's a stretch to call a 12-step program a religion.

Some groups do conclude meetings with The Lord's Prayer. Whether to do this has been a point of discussion within 12-step groups for as long as the groups have existed, but groups are autonomous, so the use of this prayer or any other prayer is up to the group. Although The Lord's Prayer comes to us from a Christian tradition, this and other prayers within the 12-step program are usually limited to prayers to a higher power --- God as we understand him --- with no particular religious theology implied.

I understand what you're saying Pavel, but a God by any other name is still a god. And the way the 12 step program works, requiring me to pick a god....still won't work for those of us hard-heads who don't wanna pick a god. I don't believe you can bend spoons with your mind. I don't think anyone gets a telepathic message that their dog is choking. I will believe in Martians when I see one. I just don't do mystical. I started out believing I had an invisible friend named DB, Ma tells me about me and DB all the time. But somewhere....maybe it was a poorly cooked fish dinner...something knocked that kind of stuff out of me and if I wanted to get it back...I couldn't. So respectfully, I don't wanna pick a god.

Fortunately I am in no trouble and no one is making me pick a god or pick up trash along the highway....and to be honest if I got my butt in trouble and some judge sentenced me to go to church....it wouldn't hurt me. I'm in no danger of believing something just because it plays over and over on the loud speaker. Plus from passing the meeting place...there are some pretty foxy women attending those meetings. Drunk chicks! Gotta love em! Anyone know of a dry-your-ass-out program that doesn't involve bowing before a supreme being? That might be a nitch industry that needs filling.

Oh, just for the record, a friend of mine who used to run the Fort Baptist drug and alcohol abuse program people got sent to after a DWI fell off the wagon, disappeared for months and finally surfaced weighting about 100 lbs and making cheap pizza for home delivery. He's been fighting his jones for 30 years and ain't nothing helping him out. I guess even with a god involved some poor souls can find no peace.

Pavel, you make the 12-step program's view of God sound a lot like the Unitarians', but I don't think the Unitarians have any steps.

The point that I was trying to make is that 12-step programs do not conform to the conventional definition of a religion. 12-step programs don't have a theology or a defined view or idea of God. People who work a 12-step program are free to have any idea of God that suits them. When they are gathered together, you will find Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Episcopalians, Jews, and every other religion imaginable. 12-step programs are not religions. The reason they work for so many is that the founders of the original 12-step program designed it so that people professing any religious belief would be able to recover in concert and harmony with people who have different religious beliefs. The point of 12-step programs is recovery, not religion.

People who scoff at 12-step programs are free to do so. Many people in 12-step programs refer to outsiders as Earth people, or civilians, or similar terms to express their recognition that outsiders don't always understand 12-step programs or the people who work those programs. To those who are working a 12-step program and recovering, the skepticism of others is of no consequence. 12-step programs are not for people who need them; they are for people who want them. That is why judges shouldn't sentence people to 12-step programs as part of the judicial process, not because 12-step programs look to outsiders like a religion.

The Twelve Step Indoctrination
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that A Power Greater than Ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him,
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove ourshortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

The idea that one can simply change the name of the God one worships identifies one as believing that humans made up God. Replacing the name of a deity (Allah, Yahweh or Allah) with another name (Satan, Shiva or Shang Ti) is also a non-starter. When Marx said "Religion is the opium of the people" he was referring to some people's need to believe in something greater than themselves such as country, corp. or sports team. If people are willing to pray to the "Prince of Peace" to further their aggression, perhaps people in AA might want to pray to the roman god of wine "Bacchus" for temperance.

"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." Voltaire

Once again, Zarathus, the Marx quotation is misapplied. He was discussing the issue of privilege, as in, the privileged classes have access to opiates (his word was opiate, not opium) to relieve their pain and sorrow, while the people have only religion.

This discussion so far has been about 12-step programs in general, but since Zatharus has injected the AA version of the 12 steps (the original on which all other 12-step programs are patterned), I will direct my fellow bloggers to the long form of AA's 10th tradition for that organization's position on sectarian religion:

No A.A. group or member should ever, in such a way as to implicate A.A., express any opinion on outside controversial issues-particularly those of politics, alcohol reform, or sectarian religion. The Alcoholics Anonymous groups oppose no one. Concerning such matters they can express no views whatever.

For those who are curious, the full version of AA's 12 traditions in long form may be found here: http://www.aa-louisiana.org/tradlong.htm

"12-step programs don't have a theology or a defined view or idea of God. People who work a 12-step program are free to have any idea of God that suits them. When they are gathered together, you will find Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Episcopalians, Jews, and every other religion imaginable. 12-step programs are not religions."

I got bigger fish to fry than warring with any 12 step program, but in this list of people I see no mention of non-believers or atheists. Does no god fit in anywhere? I'm thinking not. People with no belief tend to get a little offended when forced to pretend or go thru motions of worshiping something they think is a hoax. I figure that was the burr under the saddle of the woman who was given a choice of jail or pretending to believe in something she doesn't.

I was just as offended during the years I owned a bar and had to pretend the liquor bottles behind the bar belonged to the customers, not me, had to pretend it wasn't a bar, but a group interested in gathering to discuss history, membership list, minutes and all. This wasn't in 1930, this was in 1995. The State knew it was a hoax, the customers knew it was a hoax, even the Baptist customers, but worst of all I knew it was a hoax. Lordy....life is too short to play games when you're trying to make an honest living.

I want every church filled to the rafters with people who believe in the Lord and want to be there. But I'll fight ya if you try to make me go and as pleasant as I try to be at all times, I couldn't sit in an AA meeting and pretend I have turned over my life or the dozen eggs in my fridge to the Lord....cause it's a damn lie. Anyway......may Allah bless AA and may every 12 step program uplift the participants and most of all may Cheney and Bush be behind bars and our troops be home by Christmas. Amen!

Somebody asked about alternatives to the AA god-based approach. Here are two:

http://paganinstitute.org/PI/recovery.html :

"Since the AA model (and that of derivative 12 Step groups) was based on the Evangelical conversion experience, it's not surprising that the founders expected folks in recovery to come to Christianity eventually. Atheists and Agnostics in recovery have turned to Unitarian Universalist alternatives such as AAAA (AA for Atheists and Agnostics) and Rational Recovery. Pagans have had several experiments with adapting AA, joining UU recovery groups, or experimenting with alternatives. "

Rational Recovery at
http://www.rational.org/

This thread highlights the inability of people with different beliefs and oppinions to understand the problems that people with opposing beliefs have.

Right-handed people have no idea the challenges of being left-handed. A right-handed person cannot understand why we left-handers are very poor at or comepletely incapible of using right-handed scissors. Scissors seem so simple till you try to use the wrong ones.

In the thread above, those of a religious bent see no problem with the non-religious just sort of making up a god for the temporary purpose of having one to use in the 12 step.

To one that does not believe in a god, being told to just make one up sounds similar to telling a girl you love her and will forever just to get a little nooky. If a girl says I'll give you some nooky if you say you love me even though both of us know it aint so, makes the guy think she is nuts.

To tell a nonbeliever to just make up a god temporarily makes the nonbeliver believe the believer is nuts.

Quite often those against the death penalty can not fathom how if people killing people is bad, why is it ok for the state to kill people.

Just think, after we rid ourselves of Bushit and cleanse the gubbermint of Bushit no telling how many cures a rational government can help subsidize, and the alcoholic gene could be the first to get modified.

Right now there is a huge need for a Religiious Recovery Group.Call it religionists anonymous. RA. Those indoctrinated people who got ripped off for their time, money, and addicted to Group Think need help too ya know. Some of the afflicted beat their children (Spare not the rod), made their wives into second class citizens, denied families a healthy diet, and some of them survived the handling of snakes and drinking of poisons. Even their politics were corrupted when they were convinced a vote for Bushit was actually a vote for god. The worse drunk I ever knew was not that indoctrinated.

I suggest they turn their problems over to Voltaire, who once walked the Earth,died and has incorporated himself into every intelligent Frenchman/woman.

Seems the key here is that if the 12-step version of religion was too much, this woman still had the choice of jail. I guess now the judge just goes back to plain old jail with no option. In typical fashion the atheists have saved themselves from nothing but cost the rest their freedom (with a great unintentional pun left in for laughs).

Sign up Theo for the RA program.

I made it to AA because the judge spread the word throughout the legal community that attendance could lessen the consequences of sentencing. In my opinion that is better and legal.

In attending, I found I was an alcoholic and did require "A Power Greater than Oursleves" to quit, but that was/is no specific sect or even religion. For me it allowed me to reaffirm my faith, although I still struggle with my doubts, but the important parts are: 1) My attendance was voluntary for an incentive which allowed me to listen calmly and hear; and 2) I've been sober for many years now.

If anyone suspects they may be drinking to much or have a problem with alcohol give AA a try. AA is in the phonebook and meetings occur daily morning, noon and night. It can work for an alcohol problem, if you let it.

Thanks, L, but you ducked the issue. She wasn't forced into religion - it was religion or the jail (leaving room that Pavel may be right on the religion thing). It used to be religion *and* the jail. That, of course, is the origin of the word "penitentiary" - a place where criminals were sent to read the Bible and become penitent.

This touches on a much larger problem in many jails and prisons across the country. Religious groups are often the only outside "help" allowed in and those who participate, "accept whatever it is the group is dishing out" for better treatment inside and preference for earlier release. If you don't pray, you stay and stay.

<<<<<
Does anyone out there know of a religion that allows its members to have a free and undirected understanding of God?
by Pavel

oh yes, I can think of several.

Actually I didn't duck the issue Theo. For the 7-8 church leaders just across the No Ark boundary line line in Missouri who systematically abused young preteen and teen girls for several years and their followers who condoned it Religionists Anonymous is fitting for them, esp the followers who blindly followed the abusive leaders and never reported the abuse taking place under their own roofs. Likewise the ones in my neck of the Ark woods who are truly wacknuts about religion they also need a 12 step program to help deliver them back to sanity. In fact a very accomplished counselor I know started such a group in Fayetteville about 20 years ago, a religious recovery group mainly for ex-members of a few sects of abusive churches. Her sessions quickly filled with attendees referred to her by law enforcement personnel, therapists and relatives of the abused and abusers.
I strongly suspect in the coming years there will numerous Religious Recovery Groups across this state and across the nation.

Through the grace of God and the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I have been sober --- one day at a time --- for 25 years. Over the course of those 25 years, I've seen many people attend AA meetings under court order. Some of the people attend the required number of meetings and continue to attend. Others leave and return months or years later. Others never return. I have signed countless forms that attest that someone attended a meeting I chaired, but I remain ambivalent about the practice of judges sending people to AA meetings. I wish the judges would tell them to attend open meetings, but when they attend closed meeting, I never object.

As a member of AA, I am content to let court-ordered people come and go as they please. Their reasons for not wanting to attend AA meetings mean nothing to me. As a recovering alcoholic, I really don't care if someone outside the fellowship misunderstands something about the AA program. If someone wants to believe AA is a religion, I don't care. If another person thinks AA is a cult, I don't care. If someone believes no one in AA really stays sober, that's OK, too. The important thing is for me to understand the AA program, and after 25 years, I like to think I'm beginning to get the hang of it. Later today, someone will attend his or her first AA meeting under court order. If they are at the meeting I attend this evening, I will welcome them and tell them to keep coming back.

L, I've thought better of you. Under no illusion that we had much in common, I've thought you generally intelligent and civil if often "wrong". But to equate support for the most basic of nexi between religion and the public square with supporting child abuse is beneath you. There is a horrific ignorance of the history of religion in this country (and no, I don't believe we were ever a "Christian" nation). But the fact is that "constitutional" barriers are continually raised to religious expression in civic affairs that are in direct contradiction of much that was condoned and promoted by our founding fathers.

Note, we aren't bound to the politics and mores of 1787. But appeal to a change in society to change practice, not to a constitution that was never intended to chase faith from the public square. And don't resort to cheap ad hominem arguments worthy of chasv.