From William Schaberg's Writing The Big Book, Pages 134-136:

[D]uring March and April 1937, Bill's relationship with the local Oxford Group began to deteriorate at an alarming rate. That spring, Wilson discovered the alcoholics at the Calvary Mission had been forbidden to attend the weekly meetings at his home in Brooklyn and had been told they could not visit the Wilson house for dinner. Worse than this, he learned that word was spreading throughout the congregation saying the Wilsons were "not maximum," meaning they were not sufficiently committed to the Oxford Group program. This is perhaps the strongest criticism that could be leveled against a Group member without directly accusing them of sin. The end came when an associate pastor at Calvary Episcopal Church delivered a Sunday morning sermon directed against the "divergent work" of a "secret, ashamed sub-group" within the congregation; a clear and caustic indictment of Bill Wilson and the work he was doing with alcoholics.

The Decision to Leave the Oxford Group

The sermon was the final blow, crystallizing all of Bill's dissatisfactions with the Oxford Group. Deeply committed to his work with drunks and now finally admitting the "impossibility of carrying [on] the alcoholic work in the atmosphere of the Group," he decided it was time for a complete break. But Bill did not make the decision to quit the Oxford Group by himself. According to [Bill] Ruddell:

    ...the final parting came in the spring of 1937 because Kathleen and I
    started coming to meetings in your home in February of 1937, and we
    attended with you meetings on Sunday nights in Sam Shoemaker's church
    ... As we remember it, the decision to disassociate  from trh Oxford
    Group was made at a meeting in your home, and at that time it was a
    very serious decision. You talked it over at one of the group meetings
    and the decision was made. This was, as we remember it, two or three
    months after [February of 1937.]

A little over three years later Bill was pressed for an explanation regarding New York's break with the Oxford Group and he responded with a long and thoughtful letter, detailing at length, detailing at least eight reasons that made this separation necessary. Those reasons can be summarized as follows:

    1. The "aggressive evangelism" of the Oxford Group
    2. Their reliance on "excessive personal publicity or prominence"
    3. The unacceptability of the word "absolute" before the virtues of honesty,
    purity, unselfishness and love (four virtues that Bill rather testily claimed
    were "as much practiced [by A.A. members] ... as by any other group of people.
    4. The coercive nature of "guidance for others" and of the subsequent "checking"
    by those who had received that guidance to ensure that it was being followed.
    5. The practice of writing down guidance during 'quiet time' which, according to    
    Bill "was too often made ridiculous by novices scribbling messages from God in notebooks."
    6. "We found" he observed with some irritation and judgement, "that the
    principles of tolerance and love had to be more emphasized in their actual
    practice than they were in the O.G., especially tolerance."
    7. There could be no "religious requirement" for membership in A.A.
    8. The kind of dogmatism demanded by the Oxford Group necessarily precluded Catholics from           joining A.A. ...

This decision to leave the Oxford Group in New York was one of the most critical turning points in the history of Alcoholics Anonymous, marking a decisive step away from any preexisting organization or belief and a commitment to both an evolving operational structure and a set of principles that would increasingly be determined by pragmatic results rather than the dictates of any specific doctrines. Finally liberated from the structure, dogmas, and culture of the Oxford Group, the New York alcoholics were free to create a set of beliefs and practices based on their collective experiences, a process that soon evolved into something that looks very much like today's Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Page 134-136

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