The Anglican Beer Club

Jan. 4, 2016 Update: What Does the Bible Really Say About Alcohol?

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A photo of last night's meeting at Comrade Brewery with the Anglican Beer Club, Denver, CO.  Bishop Stephen Scarlett, Ordinary of the Diocese of the Holy Trinity, Anglican Catholic Church, Original Province, is to my right.  It happened that his birthday was the next day, and it was fun embarrassing him by singing "Happy Birthday". Everyone in the room joined in. I met two military chaplains, one of whom, a fellow Anglican deacon, works at a Marine hospital in Camp Pendleton.  The latter chaplain (the fellow with the clerical collar to my left) is a retired Navy pilot and Vietnam vet, who left the business world to become a military chaplain.  He and I swapped stories about our experiences as chaplains.  At times we had tears in our eyes as we both noted how the Lord has blessed us so richly by the privilege of being chaplains.  He and I will likely be in close contact in the future.

      

Unfortunately, when I posted this photo on Facebook, we were attacked on his Facebook page by a certain ACNA priest, with support from his bishop,  for "ungodly" behavior, in fact, for behavior which differs in no substantial respect, these folks said, from attending a strip club.  I kid you not.   The result of that broadside was that several of us got caught up in a rancorous and uncharitable dustup over the propriety of an Anglican beer club.  To their credit, our opponents are concerned about the nation's alcoholism epidemic, a concern I share as a hospital chaplain.  Things got out of hand however.  After an initial blast from these Anglican folks condemning the idea of an Anglican beer club, I ended up making some comments  that I wish I had not, and I'm guessing the same is true with folks on the opposing side.  I have removed my comments, and happily it appears at this writing that the parties involved are moving toward reconciliation (though the priest who instigated the brouhaha has seen fit to block me at Facebook).  I am glad and relieved to retract angry and uncharitable words, and to ask for forgiveness.  What I cannot retract, however,  is my position.

Anglicanism is not Finneyism.  C.S. Lewis, who regularly drank with Anglican clergymen sporting their collars, had this to say about teetotalism:

Temperance is, unfortunately, one of those words that has changed its meaning. It now usually means teetotalism. But in the days when the second Cardinal virtue was christened 'Temperance', it meant nothing of the sort. Temperance referred not specially to drink, but to all pleasures; and it meant not abstaining, but going the right length and no further. It is a mistake to think that Christians ought all to be teetotallers; Mohammedanism, not Christianity, is the teetotal religion. Of course it may be the duty of a particular Christian, or of any Christian, at a particular time, to abstain from strong drink, either because he is the sort of man who cannot drink at all without drinking too much, or because he wants to give the money to the poor, or because he is with people who are inclined to drunkenness and must not encourage them by drinking himself. But the whole point is that he is abstaining, for a good reason, from something which he does not condemn and which he likes to see other people enjoying. One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting everyone else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons -- marriage or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning. . . .

I have always in my books been concerned simply to put forward 'mere' Christianity, and am no guide on these (most regrettable) 'inter-denominational' questions. I do however strongly object to the tyrannical and unscriptural insolence of anything that calls itself a Church and makes teetotalism a condition of membership. Apart from the more serious objection (that Our Lord Himself turned water into wine and made wine the medium of the only rite He imposed on all His followers), it is so provincial (what I believe you people call 'small town'). Don't they realize that Christianity arose in the Mediterranean world where, then as now, wine was as much a part of the normal diet as bread?

What would Jesus do?

And after these things he went forth, and saw a publican, named Levi, sitting at the receipt of custom: and he said unto him, Follow me. And he left all, rose up, and followed him. And Levi made him a great feast in his own house: and there was a great company of publicans and of others that sat down with them. But their scribes and Pharisees murmured against his disciples, saying, Why do ye eat and drink with publicans and sinners? And Jesus answering said unto them, They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children.

In his blog article "Your Pastor in a Pub?", Randy Robinson writes:

So your pastor preaches a great sermon on Sunday morning. He is clearly in touch with God and his delivery of God's word touches your life. You find yourself drawn into a deeper walk with the Lord.

Then you go to lunch and there's your pastor sitting in the bar, smoking a cigar and drinking a beer.

Uh oh.

If you're in a mainstream evangelical church, this would be scandalous. Yet in many of these same churches, C.S. Lewis is quoted, adored and celebrated. With The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe showing in theaters, Lewis mania has peaked. . . .

Lewis never advocated drunkenness or addiction. Instead, he maintained a balanced -- and dare I say Biblical? -- view of everything, including drinking. He defended it as ferociously and artfully as such essential Christian behaviors as forgiveness and charity. (He had a harder time defending smoking and tried, unsuccessfully, to give it up, but he never castigated it as "sin.")

Lewis is arguably the most influential modern-day disciple. His writings provoke deep thought. They encourage a more meaningful relationship with God. They have even led many hardened skeptics to a spiritual conversion. But his personal behavior remains puzzling to some Christians.

So next time you hear someone praising or quoting C.S. Lewis, picture the man who sat in a pub drinking, smoking, and penning some of the most powerful words since Paul wrote his letters to the early church.

Douglas Gresham, Lewis' stepson, summed up his famous father's attitude recently in an interview with Christianity Today:

The problem with evangelical Christianity in America today, a large majority of you have sacrificed the essential for the sake of the trivial. You concentrate on the trivialities--not smoking, not drinking, not using bad language, not dressing inappropriately in church, and so on. Jesus doesn't give two hoots for that sort of bullshit. If you go out and DO Christianity, you can smoke if you want, you can drink if you want--though not to excess, in either case.

So put that in your pipe and smoke it!

Tip of the pint glass to Mr. Robinson.

For what it's worth, here's a a lesson on μεθυσθῶσιν as it occurs in St. John's account of the wedding at Cana, John 2:1-11, and some further comments about the influence of the Temperance Movement in the Finneyite brand of Evangelical Christianity:

"And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there: And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage. And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come. His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it. And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim. And he saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it. When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom, and saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now. This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him." - KJV

The teaching of Holy Scripture on the question of alcohol consumption is pretty easy to understand. On the one hand, habitual drunkenness is condemned, but alcohol: 1) consumed in small amounts for health reasons; and 2) consumed in larger and sometimes mildly to moderately intoxicating amounts on celebratory occasions is considered a gift of God. See Prov. 20:1; Psalm 104:15; the text above, I Tim. 5:23 and Eph. 5:18 for representative texts from the Old and New Testaments.

Until the advent of the American Temperance Movement, no Christian exegete or theologian, or none that I know of anyway, would have ventured to suggest that the wine consumed at the wedding of Cana was anything but an alcoholic beverage, or that the attendees weren't drinking wine in copious, celebratory amounts. The word μεθυσθῶσιν (English transliteration "methusthōsin") used in this text ("they have well drunk" according to certain sanitizing translations) means that those celebrating the wedding at Cana were drinking alcoholic wine, not grape juice.  It literally means "have gotten drunk", not "have well drunk."

Citing Romans 14:21, the principal concern over at the Facebook discussion was that our beer club sends the wrong message to to the weak and to alcoholics.  Apparently, however,  Jesus was unconcerned about how His facilitation of the flow of wine to people who had already copped a buzz at a wedding celebration sent the wrong message to the weak and to alcoholics, which means, for one thing, that these folks' exegesis and application of Romans 14:21 won't withstand a moment's scrutiny.  John Sawtelle provides us with the proper exegesis of this text:

Two questions need to be answered in order to get a handle on the meaning and application of this passage:
1) who is the "weaker brother"?
2) what does it mean to cause them to "stumble"?

Well, in order to handle this passage accurately, we need to understand this verse in relationship to the rest of the passage. In context Paul is exhorting the weak and strong not to engage in hostility and judging one another on account of how they either restrain or exercise (in the case of the strong) their freedom. So we need to answer the question, who are the weak and the strong? Well, the strong are converted Gentiles, who really don't have any scruples about diets or drinks. The weak are Jewish converts who living in an urban, metropolitan context, are unsure about where the meat sold in the market has come from. Because they are not sure if the meat was actually offered in sacrifice to a pagan god, they won't eat, thinking it could be defiled. Instead of eating meat, they eat vegetables according to the example of Daniel when he was in exile in Babylon (Daniel 1:8). So the weak are converted Jews and the strong are converted Gentiles.

So let's address the 2nd question now, what is it to stumble? Well, vv13-14 seem to help clarify that. Paul admonishes believers in v13 to not put stumbling-blocks in the way of a brother, and then clarifies the matter by saying in v14 that the issue is what a person thinks in his mind. If a brother thinks meat is unclean, then to him, it is unclean. In other words, he thinks that if he partakes of the meat, he is worshiping idols and thereby violating the 1st commandment, because of the strong association with meat and pagan worship in this gentile, pagan context. To cause that brother to stumble means that by eating meat in front of him, he may be led to eat meat, and by doing that, violate his conscience and sin against God for doing what he thinks is idolatrous. Just to be clear, he is not sinning because meat is intrinsically evil, he is sinning because he thinks eating meat is a form of participating in the worship of the god to whom the meat was offered to.

Let's take that information and plug it into the prohibition against wine. Douglass Moo in his outstanding commentary on Romans argues convincingly that the "wine issue" in this passage is not about scruples of conscience over whether it is permissible to consume alcoholic beverages, it is about whether the wine has been offered as a libation in a temple sacrifice to a pagan god. Just as the weak refused to eat meat because they thought it was defiled on account of it being part of a sacrifice, so they refused to drink wine because they believed it to be defiled through an act of pagan worship. So again, causing a brother to "stumble" in the matter of wine is to coerce him to violate his conscience about wine by following the strong believers example of drinking a glass of wine. The sin is not drinking wine per se, any more than it would be a sin to eat meat; the sin is drinking wine thinking that it is defiled, and thinking that by drinking it one is participating in the worship of a false god.

To the argument that collared clergymen drinking in public is a "bad witness", I will respond by saying that in the short amount of time I've been attending the Anglican Beer Club, I've noticed that when we Anglican clergymen show up at a drinking establishment sporting our clericals, we get a lot of "looks" - and sometimes laughs -- from people there. I noticed it at the last event at Comrade Brewery. We pay it no mind, and by the time we left, not only had the whole place joined in our singing of "Happy Birthday" to Bishop Scarlett, but we started mingling with the crowd, Bishop Scarlett making introductions to a couple of tables and posing for a photo with one lady, and I struck up a conversation with the guy playing the Gibson SG.

       

I know for a fact that when we left that establishment, we had planted seeds in the minds of some - "Here were some Christians drinking beer, not shunning us, and friendly besides." Exactly what Jesus did when he attended the feasts that earned him the scorn of the Pharisees.  One of the reasons St. Matthew's Anglican Catholic Church, where Bishop Scarlett is the rector, has enjoyed exponential growth  is that they've had an aggressive outreach program in their community that includes feasts open to the public, where collared clergy come to share food, drink and smoke with the folks that show up. Moreover, their clergy aren't at all reserved in their wearing of clericals anywhere they go to eat or drink. Two nights ago when I observed Bishop Scarlett working the crowd, I knew that this was simply in keeping with St. Matthew's style of outreach, and that style of outreach is perfectly harmonious with what Jesus did.  Those who object to collared Anglican clergymen showing up at the local pub or microbrewery need to take the matter up with Jesus, and explain to him exactly why it was inappropriate for him to do what he did at the wedding in Cana.

Concerning their final argument, the founder of the Anglican Beer Club posted the wry comment, "Well, I guess this means they won't support the Anglican strip club that we've been considering."  ;>) It was obviously an absurd comparison, but again, our critics seemed to be opining from some sort of un-Anglican Finneyite framework. 

Anyway, if you're ever in Denver, the Club meets every Thursday night at one of the craft beer breweries in town.  Denver is in the top ten list of craft beer cities in the U.S., and we'd love to have you join us if you're able.  You can contact me through the blog email.   

Comments

[Jesse Nigro]

Christopher,

I love that you found a way to apologize for what was said, whilst sticking to your guns on this issue. The Anglican Beer Club looks fantastic, I only wish that it was a little closer to home!

Jesse

[Judy K. Warner]

This is a terrific piece. It had to be terrific for me to read it all, in white type on black background. Is this format some kind of test, that you can read the website only if you have good vision and a high tolerance for ugliness? I'm in the ACC in Maryland and I'm going to share this piece, but with great reluctance to suggest that anybody else put himself through such extended annoyance. Really, what are you thinking?