Religious references clearer in first draft of AA manual. The basic text used for Alcoholics Anonymous programs, known as The Big Book, initially used stronger religious language but was reduced to appeal to a wider audience, The Washington Post reported. Hazelden, a nonprofit addiction treatment center, will release the working manuscript of the book written by AA’s co-founder, Bill Wilson, including hand-written edits and comments, according to The Post. The changes marked in red, black and green reveal a debate on how openly God should be a part of addiction recovery in the published manuscript, according to The Book That Started It All: The Original Working Manuscript of Alcoholics Anonymous. The adoption of more vague religious terms in The Big Book, including phrases like “higher power” and the “God of your understanding,” show how Wilson scaled back the religious tone to engage a broader group of people. Worship terms also were taken out of the revised version of the book. The seventh step of the 12-step recovery program, which is “humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings” originally stated “humbly, on our knees, asked him to remove our shortcomings—holding nothing back.
Land-use disputes often involve religious, ethnic minorities. Muslims, Jews and Buddhists figure prominently in religious freedom investigations by the Justice Department, a new report shows. The department released the report on the 10th anniversary of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a law that aims to protect both religious liberty in zoning matters and free exercise of religion for prisoners and residents of government-run nursing homes. Of 51 investigations opened in the last decade, 16 involved Muslims, Jews or Buddhists. Half of the department’s probes of land-use violations involving Christians involved racial or ethnic minorities. This year, against a rise in anti-Muslim rhetoric after an Islamic community center was proposed near Ground Zero, the department has opened eight cases of possible religious discrimination against Muslims since May. A total of 18 cases of possible bias against Muslims have been monitored by the department since the 9/11 attacks.
FBI erred in targeting interfaith center. A Department of Justice inspector concluded the FBI improperly targeted U.S. advocacy organizations for surveillance, including the Thomas Merton Center, an interfaith group focused on nonviolence. A report issued by the Justice Department’s office of the inspector general said the surveillance of a 2002 anti-war rally was the result of an “ill-conceived” assignment to a probationary agent on a “slow work day” to determine if terrorism suspects might be in attendance. Other groups included in the report included the Catholic Worker movement, a network of Christian pacifists.
–Compiled from Religion News Service
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