Some thoughts on beverage alcohol

Rob is right on the money......as always he helps us with a historical look at the topic. In fairness to the first generation of fundamentalists, the context was one of Prohibition. All things were not equal! It's not to say there are no cultural issues that impact the issue of drink here in the states today....there are. But there is and was a difference. Rob speaks to that well here.

Rob thanks for the quick thoughts.

Straight Ahead!

jt

Thanks for the thread. I always enjoy discussions that help set the scene for why humans act and react the way they do.

I don't hear incredulity at the position, but rather incredulity that some have allowed their position to be quilted backwards into how they interpret the Bible.

Sure, and don't-we-ever.

I was not attempting to rabbit-trail this thread. I was merely commenting that I have not seen (in the other threads) a great deal of incredulity of the historical position. I see most people accepting the historical position as a "done deal" not to be railed against except in fairly evaluating the historical preaching/teaching. And, I was seeing this thread as part of that evaluation. It is always important to know the tone of an era before one attempts to analyze the words of the era's great speakers.

Which is why I'm following this thread with interest.

This thread deals with history, and the following quote by JR Graves, one of the most influential men in the Southern Baptist Convention in the 19th century, may prove interesting. Graves advocated Landmarkism, and in his 1880 book Old Landmarkism: What Is It? he had this to say about the wine used in Communion: (You can read the section in his book at Google Books for yourself here.)

Rob, not sure you understood Graves' comment. He is advocating the use of fermented wine for Communion. He is saying unfermented wine is a misnomer. He is arguing against the prohibition-influenced, well-meaning Christians of his day who were saying Jesus used non-fermented wine.

He's actually arguing that grape juice has leaven in it and is unfit for use as Communion wine. I've heard the exact opposite argument made concerning wine, so I thought the comment was pretty interesting.

Graves being American, and very influential among Baptists in the 1800s, makes this a uniquely important quote, too. It was common among Southern American Baptists to use fermented Communion wine.

I have a post on Charles Welch myself at my blog, which goes into the origins of unfermented Communion wine. It's entitled Welch's Grape Juice, Worldly Wisdom and Wine.

No problem, Rob. I'm not quite following your last two lines here. So Graves was slightly incorrect about fermentation and yeast? Or he was right? I'm not exactly sure how that process works. It's interesting that many modern Christians will say alcoholic wine can't be used because it isn't pure, or something like that.

There are different groups of Slavs.

This isn't true for all of them. I'm writing from Poland and they do allow "social drinking" here. They might not like it described that way, but if they drink wine on special occasions or keep beer in the fridge, that is my definition of social drinking.

(And I doubt that the ones who drink wine or beer define it as "to escape reality" )

NOTE: Re-posted from another thread by request.

The Temperance Movement, as a movement supporting total abstinence from all alcoholic beverages, had its birth in the mid 1820’s under the influence of Pastor Lyman Beecher, a Connecticut Minister, and others like him. In 1826, the American Temperance Union – the first such national organization to support total abstinence – was formed. The American Temperance Union rode a powerful wave of religious support and interest at the time, gaining 1.5 million members in the first few years. The issue became inextricably interwoven with religion – and in particular Revivalism. But lurking beneath it all was an American movement now known as Progressivism.

The belief of Progressivism was that it was possible for man to better himself and society through wisdom, technology, and education. It properly belonged to the political left of the time, which, unlike today, had great support in conservative Christian circles. It is viewed by sociologists as a response to the changes in culture and frustrations brought about by the Industrial Revolution. It taught that by law and reform, the social evils that rose to the surface during the Industrial Revolution could be overcome.

This Progressivism movement marched arm-in-arm with a great change in American religion. As Revivalism, particularly in the style of Charles Finney, unseated from favor the Calvinism that had characterized earlier spiritual awakenings, the belief among most Bible believers was that social change would better society as the gospel transformed the hearts of individuals.

Revivalism was, in the mid to late 1800’s, concerned with externals. As Douglas Frank puts it in his great book Less Than Conquerors: How Evangelical Entered the 20th Century, “…revivalism is closely associated with an inordinate attention to appearances. A revival is the most visible and obvious and seemingly irrefutable outcropping of a spiritual reality. In revivals men and women may actually see God at work, may quantify and gauge that work empirically.” Marsden observes “the revivalist particularly centered their attacks on…visible sins and demanded strict abstinence from them as evidence of conversion. Prohibitions on all sorts of observable activities such as drinking, smoking, dancing, Sabbath-breaking, card-playing, and theater attendance thus became indelibly associated with Protestantism in this tradition.”
Most Abstentionist preachers would drink heavily from both Revivalist and Progressivist streams. Drinking was both sinful and destructive to society. It was both wrong and irrational.

The movement for abstinence gained ground for nearly a century before Prohibition. Various denominations abandoned fermented drink for communion (thanks to the science and marketing of Thomas Welch – that’s right, of Welch’s Grape Juice fame)*. Individual states and communities adopted regional abstinence ordinances. Mandatory public school teaching against alcohol and its dangers was mandated in every U.S. state and territory, under the influence of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.

Out of these social streams came the preaching of revivalists such as Billy Sunday and Bob Jones Sr., who could preach on one night an entire sermon against alcoholic consumption of any kind (based almost entirely on Progressivistic arguments that drinking created poverty, child abuse, crime, etc.), and then preach a strong gospel appeal the next night based upon the Scriptures. A simple survey of the sermons of Billy Sunday against drink, or the political friends of Dr. Bob Jones Sr., reveals their tight ideological and social connections with the Progressivist movement and the Abstention-teaching Temperance Movement in particular. Sunday’s sermons against drink are particularly notable for a near total lack of meaningful Scripture use – and in some cases use no Scripture at all! Each sermon is built around Progressive Movement propaganda.

The link between religious Abstinence teaching and Progressivism is best demonstrated by the famous Billy Sunday quote on the night that Prohibition was finally passed: "The reign of tears is over," he asserted. "The slums will soon be only a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs." Note that the issue to him is not the glorifying of God, but the reformation of society. In fact, many towns believed similarly, selling their jails or converting them to other uses – but only for the first few weeks of Prohibition. Within a few years, many of the same towns would need still bigger jails.
____________

*Spend some time studying the Welch’s marketing campaign among American Methodists and you’ll see where the “two wines” view really gains ascendancy. It was actually marketed as “Biblical Wine”. But I have never found any support for this view prior to the marketing campaign by Welch’s.

Interesting article here http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/Controversies/1091124904.html

I find this whole time period very fascinating. The New School Presbyterians (high class) link up with the Methodists (low class) in support of Finney, who isn't even a Christian! Of course, the Methodists started out Arminian and the New School was at least heavily influenced by the Pelagianizing New Haven theology, so there are a lot of similarities. Neither group could relate to the theology of revival present before and during the First Great Awakening, for that was founded in solidly Calvinistic groups. (See Iain Murray's Revival and Revivalism, George Marsden's The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience, and Nathan Hatch's The Democratization of American Christianity for more info.)

In short, the Presbyterians ruined America by selling their own doctrinal convictions and replacing them with social agendas.

Thanks for the post, Mike.

Rob, Mike, and the rest of you.

************ Moderator Action

Congratulations. This has been one of the best (both in content and spirit) "discussions" on the issue dealing with the believer and the use (or non-use) of "drink." It's been fun seeing this thread develop over the last month. As a moderator I want to commend you all for speaking your mind but being "Cbristian" in tone. Rob, you really have done us a favor in bringing a historical Baptist eye from outside North America. Often I think we are blinded by that which has happened on either side of the Pacific or Atlantic both culturally and historically. Now if we can just see this same kind of thing happen when we talk about Fundamentalism, CCM and a few other hot-button items, we'll really be accomplishing something special in our movement(s).

Straight Ahead!

Joel