Sample Letter – Clergy

Dear Clergy:

Greetings to you from Overeater’s Anonymous, as we warmly, and without asking for any money, extend an offer of OA services which you can share with members of your congregation who may have eating disorders. OAs Responsibility Pledge states that we are “Always to extend the hand and heart of OA to all who share my compulsion; for this I am responsible.”

Do any of your congregants:

• continue to eat compulsively in spite of medical advice to control their weight?
• find that they cannot stop bingeing, purging, or restricting?
• find their efforts repeatedly ending in demoralizing failure, despite firm resolutions?
• have weight concerns, body image issues, food attitudes, or behaviors that cause health problems?

Like alcoholics and drug addicts, people with compulsive food behaviors suffer from what we in OA regard as a physical, emotional, and spiritual disease. In our experience, compulsive overeating cannot be cured, but it can be arrested. OA is a worldwide fellowship, open to all who have the desire to stop eating compulsively. Compulsive eating behaviors may include overeating, undereating, restricting, bingeing, purging, or any combination of these actions.

Overeaters Anonymous is a fellowship of individuals who share the problem of compulsive eating and compulsive food behaviors. We join together to share experience, strength, and hope, to work in the solution, and to help other compulsive overeaters to do the same. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop eating compulsively. There are no dues or fees for OA members.

Overeaters Anonymous has no religious requirement, affiliation, or orientation. Hence, ours is a spiritual program, not a religious one. The Twelve Step program of recovery is considered spiritual, because it deals with inner change. Members are free to hold whatever religious beliefs they choose to or none at all. OA has members of a myriad of religious beliefs, as well as atheists and agnostics. Everyone is welcome. Many of us discover we eat compulsively because of emotional or spiritual hunger. As we search for spiritual fulfillment, some of us become more involved in the religion of our choice.*

Additional information is available at our OA World Service Organization website,  oa.org.

If you have any questions, or we can help provide support to you, or to a congregant, please feel free to ask.

Sincerely,

* When Should I Refer Someone to Overeaters Anonymous? Pamphlet, oa.org