Hey, have you heard this one? 

"An atheist cop and a priest walk into a crime scene together..." 

In the first of a two-part series, we look at balancing compromise, or love and tolerance of others as our code, as it were. By design of an inclusive fellowship, atheists have always enjoyed the inalienable right to be part of 12-Step recovery communities. The liberal myth is that everyone's perspective is respected and everyone gets along - kumbya, kumbya. More accurately, inclusion of all is the goal. And also, differing views and experiences can lead to tension and/or hostility. What to do if you feel you hold a minority view when tension arises? Should we make a stand, cower, or de-escalate the situation? Today, we look at how to de-escalate the situation. 

Sometimes, authenticity, integrity and safety are essential; affinity spaces with fewer threats to vulnerability are in order.  Rebellion Dogs' next blog will have some fun and some thoughts on this option. 

This is a 9 to 12-minute read...
 

There is a whole school of non-violent communication and turning down the temperature with empathy, but here are some basics. If you want to expand on this, a Google or AI search can deliver for you in seconds. So for the basis of this conversation, let's consider:

Key De-escalation Techniques

• Remain Calm and Composed: Keep your voice low, steady, and slow to avoid escalating emotions.
• Respect Personal Space: Maintain a safe distance (at least 3-6 feet) and avoid cornering the person. Angling your body to the side (non-threatening body language) vs. facing someone directly (confrontational).
• Active Listening: Give full attention, nod, and avoid interrupting. Focus on understanding the underlying feelings rather than just facts.
• Validate Feelings: Acknowledge the person’s emotions (e.g., "I can see you are very upset") without necessarily agreeing with their actions.
• Use Empathetic Communication: Use simple, direct language and avoid phrases like "Calm down" or "I would love to help you, but I can't". Offering choices gives the other a feeling of control.

Actor Daniel Craig plays the Southeastern American crime detective, Benoit Blanc. Josh O’Connor plays New York priest Jud Duplenticy in this Who Done It!?—Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025).

The story's priest had a come-to-Jesus moment after killing a man in a boxing ring during his previous life. He becomes committed to the lord and Saviour through this change in profession. Our crime detective, Benoit Blanc, is an atheist, as he will explain to us in a moment. I draw on these two characters as a fun way to discuss the range of creed in AA. Neither of these two characters represents AA as a whole because there is no universal AA creed. Being an irreligious AA oldtimer makes this point. But these polar opposites that I have seen at AA meetings from sea to sea on this continent and across the Atlantic. With a quite majority in the middle of AA, anti-spiritual and deeply Christian members are staying sober here, too.

Back to Knives Out, Netflix 2025 Episode: the crime scene is a Catholic church. The atheist detective and the former boxer, now priest, come to that unavoidable discussion about belief in the supernatural and the religious messiah story. Blanc identifies himself as a "proud heretic" who "kneels at the altar of the rational."

The detective explains his position to our priest this way:

"It was like someone had shone a story at me that I do not believe. It is built upon the empty promise of a child’s fairytale, filled with malevolence, misogyny, and homophobia. And it's justified untold acts of violence and cruelty, all the while—and still—hiding its own shameful act. Like an ornery mule, kicking back, I want to pick it apart and pop its perfidious bubble of belief and get to a truth that I can swallow without choking.”

“You’re being honest; that’s good,” the young priest Jud Duplenticy offers.

“Telling the truth can be a bitter herb. I suspect that you can’t always be honest with your parishioners,” Detective Blanc presses.

“You can always be honest by not saying the dishonest part,” says our priest. “You’re right. Religion is storytelling. This church—it’s not medieval—we’re in New York. It is neogothic 19th century. It has more in common with Disneyland than Notre-Dame. The rites, the rituals, the costumes, all of it, you’re right: it is storytelling.

“I guess the question is: Do these stories convince us of a lie? Or do they resonate with something deep inside us that is profoundly true, that we can’t express any other way except storytelling?”

“Touché, Padre,” concedes Danielle Craig’s detective character, with the smile of a man who is unexpectedly impressed.[i]

Both characters meet each other in this story with curiosity and positive regard. Confronted by our detective's challenge, “Is the story of a God and a messiah truth or a lie?” the priest doesn’t take Blanc’s cynicism personally. Father Duplenticy re-frames the issue: Is it so important if the literal story is accurate? Does myth not offer a memorable and relatable lullaby that holds the seed of a greater truth—there is always mystery. Storytelling, like art, lends meaning to the ineffable.

Knives Out storytellers needed to bring these two strangers together. The two of them need to collaborate to solve a murder. That is their shared purpose. 

And is this not, in a way, the AA story? Strangers are brought together; they don’t have to agree with each other about a good many things, but they do have to work together to solve a mystery, together: alcohol use disorder. 

Two men, as at the start, or two million, as the fellowship looks today, can help achieve sobriety without having to accept the other's worldview or betray their own. In AA language:

“There is room in A.A. for people of all shades of belief and non-belief.”[ii] from the second most circulated AA pamphlet, A Newcomer Asks.

“You do you; I’ll do me,” or from the AA pulpit, “Live and Let Live." This is the inalienable right of every member and group. Is pluralism not promised with association, without fitting a prescribed AA mould? 

“Sobriety cannot be achieved without the mercy of a higher power, whom I choose to call God,” is a popular worldview. Still, others' experience is that, "Sobriety demands kneeling at the altar of reason, and curiosity, free from the drunkenness of dogma.”

This liberal pluralism invites the coexistence of what our Netflix characters called a truth that one can “swallow without choking.” Experiences shared build identification and connection. Explaining these experiences can cause division. Explanations of the nature of addiction or the one truth of AA will create division because it isn't either a universal spiral down or a one-size-fits-all recovery inside AA. As our fictional Knives Out characters describe this: Our stories can “resonate with something deep inside us that is profoundly true, that we can’t express any other way except storytelling.” Kumbya. 

Yeah, but… the “but” is that AA liberalism is “partly truth and partly fiction,” thank you, Kris Kristofferson. 

Sobriety cannot transcend human nature. When my worldview is challenged, and I get activated, my brother or sister can seem like an adversary. And/or I to them, resulting from the same humanness. This is the Alcoholics Anonymous version of Knives Out. Just as a congregation of otherly love can turn on one another when under duress, the yeah-but in AA is that the liberal promise of to-each-their-own, there exists a dominant worldview - supported by foundational AA literature - and minority creeds (non-theistic) who are ridiculed and dismissed in the same foundational literature. "Love and tolerance of others" is our code. That's a good code, but an in-crowd of the many can sometimes shun a few nonconformists. 

Outnumbered, feminists in a toxic-masculinity environment, Queer members in a homophobic bashing tangent, or non-believers being denigrated, to cope, we learn to read a room, avoid escalation by self-silencing, or feigning belief by parroting the party line. 

If it appears that belonging is not available without believing, and we really need to belong—in order to heal—then the need for connection can motivate compromise just to be welcomed into this community. Tolerance alone does not foster connection—Authenticity matters just as much. If I can't be vulnerable, truthful and loved for who I am, that feeling of connection is empty, or at least, too shallow to be ideal. 

As an actress and Fugees singer, Lauren Hill asserts, “I am no longer going to become a fictional character to please people.” This is where affinity meetings and special composition groups play a role in maintaining integrity in the integration process: connection with authenticity. 

In this blog, we have highlighted the many paths to AA recovery: AA is inclusive by design and intent, but not always in practice - not everywhere, every time, anyway. Mutual respect is helpful. Not taking the expression of contradictory views personally is essential. When someone else gets dysregulated by an opposing worldview, I can see this as a reflection of and about them, not me. The same is true of my reactions; if I'm irritated by someone expressing their theism, does it require a counterpoint? Not most of the time.  

But where there has been religious/spiritual heavy-handedness, abuse, or trauma (in or out of the rooms of AA), mainstream AA may inadvertently drive people away whom they aim to help. A quote from the founder of Secular Organizations for Sobriety founder, James Christopher: “AA is a religion in denial.” This is his opinion, but he points to a realism that penetrates the liberal mythology of “But we are spiritual, not religious!” 

If I am to gather my wits, applying de-escalating techniques to defuse tension, this can help me, maybe others too. But this isn't always possible. If I'm dysregulated, fight, freeze, flee, fawn kicks in first. Othertimes, it's not me, it's them. A change of scenery is needed. Come back next week for a look at a trend of not having enough Fu**s to give. 

We will look at others in 12-Step recovery who played nice with a majority that didn't return the favour. We will look at cases where freethinkers' patience grew thin; there were no more Fu**s to give. These minority-creed individuals needed a change of scenery, and Secular AA was just that - a refuge where one does not need to start any sentence with a preamble, "While I don't intend to offend anyone..." 

Save the date or act now and save your space: The International Conference of Secular AA is pleased to announce that “Many Paths to Recovery” is the theme of ICSAA 2026, to be held November 13th to 15th in Phoenix, AZ. For more information about the 2026 ICSAA, visit our website: https://secularaa.org

Originally posted as an article on Secular AA Linked In by Joe C. 

[i]Trailer for Knives Out 3 (2025) https://youtu.be/R19pD-uXek4?si=fd5wO-2GG4ycO1Gx

[ii] AA World Services A Newcomer Asks https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/literature/P-24_1124.pdf