January 12, 2011
patheos.com
By Thomas S. Kidd
In the book Fire From Heaven: Life in an
English Town in the Seventeenth Century, the late Yale historian David Underdown tells a story of how the Puritans of
We have lived much of our life as a believer walking
under the notion that God hates alcohol of every kind. We have lived under the notion that many
bible believing Churches use no alcohol in Holy Communion lest if one day a
reformed alcoholic comes to church and partakes of wine in communion and
suddenly fall away into drunkenness again. We have lived under the imagined
doctrines that when the bible says while it was one part wine to seven parts
water, for water purification only. We
have lived under the teaching that wine and all alcohol is of the devil, that as fermented is spoiled and corrupted as is all
alcohol.
The Lord some time ago began to speak that it is
virtually only in the US and US exported bible believing denominations,
churches, and ministries that this doctrine is taught. This we were left to
ponder for more than a year. The Lord
then returned and asked how is it that the wine of marriage is to bring
joyfulness and mirth? How is it that Jesus Christ sat and ate and drank alcohol
with harlots, drunkards, and publicans so much so that he was spoken of as a
winebibber a drunk and lush Himself? How
is it that this same Jesus in His first miracle made water into wine, hundreds
of quarts by measurement, and then when the man over the wedding feast tasted
it he asked why have you saved the best wine, wine of such good quality for
last? Speaking of that once the drinkers at the wedding have drunk enough wine,
they can no longer discern how watered down, cheap or of poor taste what they
drink thereafter?
It was after the understanding that all I had been taught
here was the doctrines and traditions of men, that
began in the 1800’s with the temperance movement and was quickly codified in Evangelical
and Fundamentalist doctrine. So that
once more we are faced with the fact that God said what He meant and meant what
He said, and that all the departure from God’s word on wine and alcohol has
done is to demonize these beverages, to demonize its makers and distributers,
and to demonize all those that partake thereof even in modest amounts. The effect that the church
could not sit at the table where Christ sat and partook, and so could not speak
to those at that table as well. Further
the church stripped away the wine the joy and mirth at marriage, they stripped
away that that young couple in the wedding of Cana received a gift of Christ of
the remainder of wine which we estimate to have been about a Hin of wine, a quart of wine every night for a full year –
during the year that the husband and wife were to dwell as one, not work, and
not go to war but to love each other, do things together and have lots of
joyous invigorating sex with wine so as to create a deep bond that was to last
to death do us part.
All of which are foreign ideas and notions to
Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, Pentecostals, and Charismatics of this day as
they all sing from the same piece of music that was written in the 1800’s.
We judge the fruit of this doctrine to be evil fruit, on
a number of levels as stated above. We
further see the evil fruit of pride, self righteousness, and being holier than
thou (A scripture verse) that has driven a deep wedge
and source of resentment among the poor lost.
We also see the poor and evil fruit this doctrine has caused in marriage
which is self evident by all the fornication and adultery being committed by
Christians young and old. By Christians that have been married with no deep
bond created. And even by the high number
of fornicators and adulterers in the ministry who now live off the support of
adulterers and fornicators which stand before God as polygamists when they
unrighteously divorce and remarry. And when they unrighteously do not have
proper sex so as to overflow the desires and hungers of themselves and their
partner, much less to unrighteously divorce and cause their partner to become
an adulterer when they remarry – however in this case the NT is clear that this
sin falls not upon the head of the one forced into such a position but rather,
the unrighteous husband or wife that forsook their partner. We are specifically speaking here of what was
written in 1 Corinthians 7.
We will toss into the mix here of those that are
polygamists in Africa and Asia that come to Jesus Christ and are made to toss
out in the street all of their wives, and let them live in utter poverty. Many
of these women who are then out casts in those societies end up selling their
bodies to get bread for themselves and their children. Where comes the
commandment of God to do such and evil thing? And whereby does so great a sin
and evil make one righteous before God both of the convert and the missionary?
Rather we find in Leviticus the commandment for one or more wives that they be
fed clothed and receive of their husband sexual duties. And again in the book of 1 Corinthians we
read what God hath joined (Sexually) let no man put it asunder. No man their
being either parents, relatives or those in church ministry.
The doctrines and traditions of men are but to kill rob
and spoil. And we see this evil fruit in
missionary work when it breaks up not only marriages have the husband cast off
these extra wives, but of their children as well.
Fast forward to
2011. Much has changed
in some conservative Christians' view of alcohol. Far from being a tool of
charity, or even a sign of God's favor, as it was to David in Psalm 104 (God
brought forth "wine that maketh glad the heart
of man"), many see alcohol as evil, in and of itself. Not a drop is to
pass the lips of a believer.
As old-fashioned as this argument
may sound to outsiders, Southern Baptists are at one another's throats about it
yet again. (Readers should note that I am a Baptist.) Shortly after Christmas,
when the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina proposed to "study"
whether alcohol consumption could be permissible for church leaders,
anti-alcohol Baptists erupted with indignation, insisting that teetotalerism is
an essential Baptist distinctive. Indeed, the Southern Baptist Convention in
2006 made "total opposition to the manufacturing, advertising,
distributing, and consuming of alcoholic beverages" the official policy of
the denomination.
Obviously the Puritans of
Dorchester did not believe that Christians could not take a drink; no Puritans
believed that, contrary to our stereotype of them as history's great killjoys.
When did American Christians adopt a stance not just against drunkenness (which
is clearly prohibited in scripture), but against drinking per se? The notion of
total abstinence from alcohol emerged in the early 19th century, in the midst
of new reform movements associated with the Second Great Awakening.
Teetotalism responded to a
serious evil, alcohol abuse, which was more prevalent in antebellum
The temperance movement reacted
to a real social and medical problem. We should not dismiss it as a product of
Victorian prudishness. But then a focus on reducing alcohol abuse morphed into
the conviction that it was a sin for any person to take a drink, period. This
was a simpler approach, but it is not biblical.
Whatever teetotalers may say,
they cannot get around the fact that Jesus turned water into wine, and that
Paul told Timothy in 1 Timothy 5:23 to stop drinking water alone, but to use
wine to help his stomach ailments. (Teetotalers will respond that these
beverages had very low alcohol content, an assertion not revealed in scripture,
either.) A strict ban on alcohol for all Christians is a position of recent
vintage (pun intended), with almost no precedent in church history before the
1800s.
Of course, nothing would prevent
any Christian, as a matter of conscience, from voluntarily abstaining. There
are good reasons to do this: a history of alcoholism in one's family, a wish to
maintain one's reputation before others who might object to drinking, or a
simple distaste for alcoholic drinks. I have a number of Christian friends who
abstain for one or more of these reasons.
But imposing abstinence from
alcohol as a non-negotiable behavioral standard for all Christians is a moral
requirement unknown to scripture. It also causes unnecessary fights among
conservative Christians. Evangelicals—and Baptists more than anyone—will no
doubt continue to squabble about these kinds of non-essential issues. And to
the extent that they do, they will communicate that the Christian faith is mainly
good for fostering pickiness and backbiting. Their churches will also go on
losing members. Personally, I'd rather throw in my lot with the loving,
charitable, and beer-peddling Puritans of Dorchester.
Thomas S. Kidd teaches
history and is a Senior Fellow at Baylor University's Institute for Studies of
Religion, and is the author of God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution
(Basic Books, 2010). Follow his writings via Facebook.