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- Title
INTRODUCING THE NON-RELIGIOUS IN ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS.
- Authors
MUNRO, ZACHARY A.
- Abstract
The religious dimensions of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) have long caused tensions for the non-religious involved in the fellowship. In response to these challenges, an increasing number of secular meeting groups have begun emerging, offering non-religious approaches to AA's Twelve Step model of recovery. Drawing on qualitative interview and observational data with members of secular groups located in Toronto, Canada, this article explores how non-religion manifests as meaningful difference in the lives of the non-religious navigating AA. As religion is encountered, participants describe how their non-religious identities became problematized, characterized as active impediments to recovery, and how non-religion is often experienced as a source of struggle and conflict. Despite such challenges, as the non-religious persist in active engagement with AA they participate in new labours of non-religion, producing new agential spaces and new interpretations and expressions of AA's Twelve Step model of recovery. In recognizing non-religion as meaningful difference and attending to the ways it manifests and operates within AA, this article argues that attention to non-religion in AA provides new opportunities for both research into the substantial features of non-religion and integrative paths for the non-religious in AA and Twelve Step fellowships more broadly.
- Subjects
TORONTO (Ont.); ALCOHOLICS Anonymous; PEOPLE with alcoholism; SCHOLARSHIPS; INTERVIEWING; LABOR; STRUGGLE
- Publication
Implicit Religion, 2019, Vol 22, Issue 2, p194
- ISSN
1463-9955
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1558/imre.37683