In the Fall of the Evangelical Nation, secular author Christine Wicker credits Alcoholics Anonymous with “hastening the fall of the evangelical church.”
(John Lanagan – The Word Like Fire) Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? but my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit. (Jeremiah 2:11)
Why have so many rejected the Christ of the Bible? Why have so many created a “Christ” of their own understanding? What happened?
This was driven home yet again when an allegedly Christian church decided on Mother’s Day to worship the Mother Goddess. How can this happen? And how can a book like The Shack, with its serpentine assault on the biblical God, be accepted by so many Christians?
I would like to suggest cultural and spiritual amenability to God in any shape or image began long before the unclean spirit moved on Paul Young to write The Shack. The now deceased Phyllis Tickle, queen of the emergent movement, knew exactly what has happened to the visible church:
“As Phyllis Tickle has noted, the development of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) probably did as much as other, more celebrated events to undermine our concept of religion. Emerging in the late 1930s, AA made it acceptable to talk about a generic God, a ‘higher power.’” [1] (emphasis mine)
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