“We came to accept and to understand that we needed strengths beyond our awareness and resources to restore us to sanity.”

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Six men who admit they are “powerless over alcohol” recited these words from Step 2 of a Canadian-created, secular Twelve Step program at the beginning of a recent meeting in West Vancouver.

Alcohol has devastated their lives; the impact extending to their partners and children. Yet over many years these men of various ages have got back on their feet — with the help of fellow members of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Not, they believe, with the help of God.

These particular warriors against alcohol are atheists and agnostics. Even though they are meeting in a quiet room of St. Monica’s Anglican Church in West Vancouver, they are tired of the emphasis that some members of Alcoholics Anonymous put on God.

They are not alone. Scores of atheist and agnostic groups like theirs are popping up across North America in the name of combating alcoholism without divinity.

But the emergence of atheist and agnostic Twelve Step groups has come with some sparks of conflict with the two-million-member original Alcoholics Anonymous movement, which was founded in 1935 by Bill Wilson, an ecumenical Christian.

(Bill Wilson is often known as Bill W., out of respect for AA’s tradition of anonymity. The people interviewed for this article are identified only by their first names and last initials.)

Since AA began, Step 3 of the traditional program has called on members to “make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understand him.” Several other steps also mention God or a higher power, leaving the definition open-ended.

Even though the men in the West Vancouver group expressed gratitude for the support they received over the years in AA’s Twelve Step program, they said they are increasingly weary of the “God talk.”

They said they cringe when some AA members enthusiastically insert mentions of God or a higher power into support meetings. Occasionally, they say, some evangelical Christian AA members have started talking like preachers.

“I just had to keep my mouth shut about being an atheist at those meetings. I felt dumped on when I mentioned it. Like I wasn’t really a member of their club,” said George S., as he sits on one of the church’s leather couches that surround a giant coffee table.

In the past, some of the thousands of AA meetings held across Canada each week have included recitation of the Christian Lord’s prayer, but the men acknowledge that practice is largely gone.

Still, many AA groups continue to use 20th-century American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s so-called Serenity Prayer, which goes, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”

To get away from the word, God, two atheist and agnostic alcoholics groups have formed in the past two years in Metro Vancouver. In addition to the West Vancouver group, there is a larger meeting of both sexes on Tuesday nights at Holy Trinity Anglican Church on Hemlock and 12th in Vancouver.