bleeding deacon
n.— «“If anything is going to destroy A.A.,” says Dr. John Norris, a nonalcoholic physician, friend of Bill Wilson’s and for many years chairman of A.A.‘s board of trustees, “it will be what I call the ‘tradition lawyers.’ They find it easier to live with black and white than they do with gray. These ‘bleeding deacons’—these fundamentalists—are afraid of and fight any change.”» —“The Changing World of Alcoholics Anonymous” New York Times Feb. 21, 1988. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
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