Reformers Unanimous?

The big letters on the sign said, ADDICTIONS PROGRAM, while the less conspicuous words were "Reformers Unanimous". The sign itself was a banner that for several months has been hanging outside a Free Will Baptist Church not far from our home, and like thousands of others on this busy street I pass by it several times a day. Obviously it caught my eye.

The idea of an "addiction program" touched a nerve, since for the past 25 years I've been an active and not very anonymous member of another addiction recovery program known euphemistically as "a well known Twelve Step program", but trust me: we don't meet in Free Will Baptist Churches. In this part of the country they're not exactly hot spots for recovering addicts of any stripe, and appear to endorse free will about as much as endorsing Harry Potter. The oxymoronic FWB churches are, as we used to say, "hard shell Baptist." That sign on the lawn appeared to be as incongruous there as a "Saturday nite bingo" banner.

Obviously, nosey me just had to find out more about Reformers Unanimous! So it was that last Friday evening, a few minutes before the advertised 7:00 hour, I drove into the church's parking lot. It seemed to be the better part of wisdom to back the car into a remote parking space so that the hospital clergy sticker on the rear bumper might not be quite so obvious.

About 12 or 15 people were there, mostly men, visiting and chatting, several of whom came over to graciously welcome me and invite me into the sanctuary, where the program began. I discovered that there were three components of the nearly two hour session:

- a 20 minute DVD by the founder of this national program, basically a 20 minute rapid-fire Bible study of out-of-context passages,
- followed by a 30 minute session with a "counselor" talking non-stop to the three of us who were new, giving his "testimony" of Jesus' freeing him from his addiction to alcohol and drugs, than a break for refreshments,
- and finally a 30 minute "preaching" by the minister, another lickety-split Bible study with a fill-in-the-blanks lesson booklet.

All in all, it was a completely undisguised evening of fundamentalist Christian theology. Its relationship to addiction and recovery was remote, to be generous. During one of the breaks, the "counselor" inquired as to what had brought me there, and I told him honestly that I had seen the sign outside, and that I was curious about RU. I added that I'd been in a recovery program for many years, and was also a committed Christian who felt no contradiction between these two parts of my life. Other requests for information, such as where I lived and where I went to church, I ducked. The "counselor" moved on to more fertile ground.

There was, unfortunately to my mind, no talk of any recovery process (once you were saved you were recovered), and they rejected the more familiar program of Alcoholics Anonymous on the grounds first, that AA refers to the need of a self-defined Higher Power instead of RU's specific dependence on being "saved" through Jesus as the key to overcoming addiction, and second, that AA members always and forever identify themselves as "alcoholics" whereas these folks believe Jesus has delivered them from that condition and they were no longer alcoholics. They were now, they claimed, "addicted to Jesus".

We had one more break for refreshments, popcorn and caffeine-free sodas (no coffee), and I was encouraged to visit the RU table where they had a variety of books, pamphlets, CDs, DVDs, t-shirts, ball caps and other memorabilia for sale, (the ball point pens were free) and several members directly asked where I went to church and would I join them on Sunday. I demurred, nor did I buy a ball cap or two.

They certainly were pleasant folks, and obviously deeply believing Christians of a particular variety, but as soon as possible I eased my way out the door, walked briskly across the parking lot, and drove off, clergy sticker shining in the reflected light of the church.