Re: [conculture] Digest Number 360

Adrian Morgan wrote:
> These people certainly are very extreme! But it is true that
> their wine was _weakly_ alcoholic, compared to modern wine.
> Also that wine was much more important than it is here and
> now because of problems of water quality.
Frequently mixed with water, in fact.

> Hardly grounds for
> declaring Biblical imperatives against alcohol, however!
To play devil's advocate, *drunkenness* is certainly condemned in the
Bible, and one could argue that since the justifications for alcohol
(unsanitary water, impossible to avoid some fermentation with grape
juice) is gone now, one shouldn't drink any alcohol at all.  I don't
agree with that, of course, and I've never heard it stated that way.

And Jesus did say "[T]he Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they
say 'Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and
sinners!'", so obviously what he was drinking must've had alcohol for
them to make that judgment.  :-)

> Now I *am* opposed to the idea of wine at communion, unless
> grape juice is also available, because I am opposed to
> anything which makes it morally (or legally) awkward to
> serve communion to children.
Aren't religious usages an exemption to the laws?  If not, then it's at
least an unenforced law!

> church and a few other denominations you have to be a member
> to receive communion, but that's another thing I'm opposed
> to because of Biblical ideas about unity and so on).
Yeah, in the ELCA (I don't think the other branches of American
Lutheranism do this), we invite "all baptized Christians" to receive
communion.

> In addition, I was told an anecdote by an ex-alcholic, who
> still felt in his conscience that he was not yet recovered.
> He went to a church and refused an alcoholic communion, and
> got given absolute hell for it. That is a very sad story
> about people taking things far too seriously. So there are
> at least two reasons why communion should be non-alcoholic,
> or at least have a non-alcholic option.
Many churches offer grape juice as an option.  I agree with you that all
churches should offer that.  But I do think that, for the sake of
tradition and the like, the use of wine should be preserved.

--
"If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men
believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of
the city of God!" - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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