American Temperance Roots of Church Attitudes on Drink

I've had this book for several years, but it's never jumped off the shelf at me when I was looking for something to read.  But then a friend asked me about the historical roots of the Southern Baptist tendency to oppose alcoholic beverages, and I realized I didn't know nearly enough about the topic.  Here's the slightly edited text of an email I sent him after getting through this book, addressed at his question (though that's not the focus of the book, which is more of a straightforward academic history of the temperance movement in American in the first half of the nineteenth century):


Why don't Southern Baptists drink?  It's a leftover of the temperance/prohibition movement.  Nothing more.

There have always been special groups or people who abstained from fermented beverages for a time or completely.  For example, those taking the Nazirite vow described in Numbers 6 would abstain from wine or anything containing grapes or grape products.  But these have typically been temporary arrangements or isolated orders that didn't attempt to impose their practices on the world at large.  That began to change in England and the United States (and possibly other places as well) in the first half of the 19th century.  In the US, the "temperance" movement got its start in New England in the 1830s and 1840s.  (The movement carried little influence in the South until after the Civil War.)  Initially it seems to have been supported primarily by conservative "establishment" types concerned that their political influence and leadership was waning.  They decided that the growing presence of hard liquor, or "ardent spirits" as they referred to it, was the cause.  Wine and beer were ignored, and even with liquor, total abstinence was not the goal, but temperance in its use.  This initial movement didn't get very far, but by the 1850s a newer version of the temperance movement led by reformed drunkards and others who weren't necessarily part of the ruling establishment began to take off and meet with great success.  In the first stages of the movement, the emphasis was on getting individuals to reform their behavior and practice temperance or abstinence when it came to liquor.  Only later did the emphasis move to ALL alcoholic beverages, emphasizing "tee-totalism" and also seeking legislative support.  For several years, the battles were fought at the local level, with emphasis on "no license" strategies where few or no licenses would be granted to liquor sellers.  But eventually the temperance movement sought statewide legislation, and their first success was in Maine.  "Maine laws" followed in several other states, but when the promised rewards of prohibition (more productive society, a lighter tax burden for supporting the poor) didn't pan out, states began weakening and eventually eliminating much of these laws.  Temperance and "prohibition" lived on at the local level until the movement got going again in earnest in the early 20th century.  By that time, police forces and the federal authority had been professionalized and expanded to the extent that prohibition laws could actually be enforced, and the 18th amendment outlawed alcoholic beverages nationwide between 1919 and 1933.  Americans are more familiar with the 20th century prohibition experience, and the popular understanding that prohibition gave us cocktails, jazz, organized crime and NASCAR aren't too far off the mark.

So WHY did the temperance movement take off the way it did?  Was it ever an explicitly "Christian" movement?  Yes and no.  It appears that the movement was generally motivated by secular concerns, but Christianity, even evangelical Christianity, is pretty well caught up in everything that happened in early 19th century America, so it's hard to say.  What seems to have happened is that multiple factors combined to make liquor and drunkenness more common, more dangerous and more burdensome to society than it had been previously.  Some of those factors include:

1.  The beginnings of industrialization.  Workers in an agricultural economy have more freedom to drink, both on the job and off, without bad consequences.  Workers in 19th century factories full of dangerous machinery tended to get into accidents when they drank on the job, so factory owners and others interested in the welfare of those workers (either out of general humanitarian concern, Christian love or just because injured workers cause lost production time) were generally supportive of temperance.

2.  A culture soaked in alcohol.  Yes, there's lots of drinking in America today.  But in a "public" sense, not as much as there once was.  In the early 19th century and before, there was a strong connection between elections and alcohol.  Most candidates and political parties would "treat" voters with free drinks at the polls, which themselves were often set up in taverns and inns.  In addition, there were almost no public events or accommodations that did not offer or involve alcohol.  So, for example, for the habitual drunkard, it was a little harder to avoid than it is now.  Also there weren't a lot of alternatives.  Except for some special occasion luxuries like chocolate (which Americans consumed as a beverage in the 18th and early 19th centuries), before refrigeration, you had fresh milk, water, and alcoholic drinks.  Maybe some tea or coffee, too, but no "soft drinks" or fruit juice at all.

3.  Alcohol = 19th century Gatorade.  It was popularly believed that "ardent spirits" were a necessary and proper restorative for a laborer's strength after several hours of hard work.  This is why "grog rations" (mixture of rum and water) were handed out to sailors everyday.  They were handed out to farm workers and other laborers, too, and workers would sometimes strike if they didn't get their rations. Does item #1 begin to make more sense now?  "Drinking on the job" didn't have a bad connotation to it the way it does now.  Instead, it was an EXPECTED part of the job.

4.  Nativism.  It doesn't look like this was really a big motivator for temperance, but temperance and nativism were definitely fellow travelers for a time.  Waves of whiskey-swilling Irish immigrants and beer-drinking Germans posed new challenges for the temperance movement and made easy targets for temperance advocates.

5.  "The American Way, 19th Century Style".  I don't know what else to call it.  Americans -- certainly the economically successful ones, but plenty of others as well -- thought of America as a land of economic opportunity, where hard work, industry and thrift would make you a success.  Many temperance advocates themselves had little experience of alcohol but plenty of experience with hard work and self control.  They generally credited these qualities for their success and assumed that many of the poor were poor because they were lazy, stupid and easily tempted to drink and general ruin.  Therefore, it was an easy step to conclude that, if you removed the temptation of alcohol, the tax burden (for example) of taking care of the poor would drop by a huge amount.

6.  Economic change and dislocation.  Industrialization was occurring, cities were growing, change was happening.  It was easy for some to blame alcohol for bringing about undesirable change.  It's difficult to quantify or even document this point, but there was a lot of social upheaval at the time, and it makes a degree of sense.

In any case, there was a great deal of overlap between the temperance movement and the evangelical churches.  Shared leadership, even shared techniques.  For example, temperance meetings featured "revival style" speakers giving personal testimonies of their salvation from drink.  But temperance and evangelicalism were not the same thing.  At times, temperance leaders didn't like "the preachers getting involved" because they suspected the preachers of just trying to use the temperance organizations to drum up converts for their churches.

There were early calls for churches to eliminate wine and use grape juice for communion, but they were mostly ignored, probably for the practical reasons of the unreliable availability of grape juice in an age before refrigeration.  But that changed by the beginning of the 20th century, thanks to a Methodist dentist:

"Back in 1869, dentist Thomas Welch was elected Communion steward at the First United Methodist Church, Vineland, N.J. He objected to the use of wine for the sacrament and refused to touch it. Meanwhile he heard of Louis Pasteur's new method of killing bacteria in milk ('pasteurization'). He decided to try applying the same principle to preserving the juice of grapes unfermented.

"Dr. Welch, his wife, and son Charles gathered grapes from their trellis, washed and cooked them, and squeezed the juice through cloth bags. He poured it into bottles, stoppered them with cork and wax, then boiled them in water to kill any yeast in the juice that would start the fermentation process. It worked!

"Welch asked his church to substitute his new 'unfermented wine' for the traditional Communion wine. At first the elders viewed his suggestion as 'an unacceptable innovation,' but he convinced them. Word spread. Temperance-minded churches begin asking for Dr. Welch's Unfermented Wine. Thousands sampled it at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. That year, young Charles left his dental practice to market the family juice full time."

(from a Christianity Today article, 2003)

In conclusion, Southern Baptists (and many other evangelicals) don't drink because the churches from which their churches descend adopted the beliefs and practices concerning alcohol of a mostly secular social movement started and run by Yankees in the 19th century.