Southern Baptists are hitting the liquor again. Theres plenty of booze in the Bible, plenty of brew swallowed by the storied patriarchs of the Good Book. But Southern Baptists arent impressed. At their gathering of messengers this week in Greensboro, N.C., they reaffirmed their hard stand against liquor and spirits. Drink, and you shouldnt be any kind of a leader, they say.Thirty-five years ago, I would pass by the museum home of Frances Willard on my way to classes for my journalism graduate degree at Northwestern University In Evanston, Ill. In 1874, Willard had helped to found the Womens Christian Temperance Union, the famed WCTU, which fought the influence and effects of alcohol on families. She became its president in 1879 and turned the WCTU into one of the largest womens organizations in the 19th century, a group that helped bring about Prohibition experiment of the 1920s and early 1930s.
Over the years, the WCTU came to be regarded as a stern, unbending group determined to get all forms of alcohol removed from the planet. They never had any shortage of cases of human tragedies related to alcohol.
Baptists passed a resolution this week calling for total opposition to the manufacturing, advertising, distributing and consuming of alcoholic beverages. It also urged that anyone serving on a Southern Baptist committee or who is a trustee to abstain from alcohol. Since the churchs founding 161 years ago. some 57 resolutions about alcohol have been passed at meetings.
I opened my Strongs Concordance to the Bible, showing how many times a word is used. It lists “wine” as being mentioned 230 times in scripture, not including wines, winepress and such related words as vineyard and vine. Some examples: … Your vats will brim over with new wine. (Proverbs 3:10). Or The Lord will reply to them, I am sending you grain, new wine and oil, enough to satisfy you fully. (Joel 2:19). At the wedding banquet in Cana (John 2), the wine was gone, and Jesus worked his miracle by changing water into wine. There’s this vineyard references, for example: “You haven’t brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey or given us an inheritance of fields and vineyards. (Numbers 16:14)
The Raleigh News and Observer quoted a Durham, N.C., pastor somewhat conflicted about a potential hypocrisy — the Bible says one thing but Bible-adherent Christians doing something else. Its embarrassing to get into a position where were forbidding what Jesus did, said the Rev. Andrew Davis, saying he has not touched alcohol since becoming a Christian at age 19.
That article noted, In many Southern Baptist churches, abstinence from alcohol is expected of all church leaders, whether they are pastors, deacons or Sunday school leaders. In some congregations, it is spelled out in the churchs constitution or covenant. Who enforces this? How can a good dinner wine turn an upstanding Baptist into a leadership loser?
A blanket Baptist ban on booze may save some vulnerable souls from abuse but it smacks of religious hypocrisy. On one hand, its insisting on the inerrancy of the Bible and its fail-proof, practical teaching for all generations, but then ultimately being selective about what parts ultimately apply.
What about the cheap wine soaked into a sponge and lifted to the dry lips of Jesus as he was about to die on the cross?
Would the Baptists of that day have condemned such a gesture of easing thirst and suffering to ensure a greater goal: that Jesus went to his death entirely sober.
