[This week, The Seedbed is proud to participate in a blog tour of Jennifer Woodruff Tait's newly-published book, The Poisoned Chalice: Eucharistic Grape Juice and Common Sense Realism in Victorian Methodism (University of Alabama Press). Facebook fan page for the book is here. Make sure to check out these other stops on the blog tour:

Full Disclosure: Jennifer Woodruff Tait has been a friend of mine since 2001. I also got a free copy of the book as part of the tour. But it is, also, very good, and I am certain I would think so if I didn't know her and had bought my own copy. (Actually as it happens, I did buy my own electronic copy because I left the free copy somewhere while traveling... but I digress.) Anyway: point is, she's great, she's a friend, but the book is great too. And now on to the actual post.]

I have Anabaptist in-laws, as I may have mentioned once or twice here. They don’t have any form of plain or distinctive dress — no cape dresses, no coffee filter hats or doilies or anything, although my husband’s mother and his paternal aunts did wear headcoverings as girls, and my father-in-law remembers the first time he parted his hair on the side and came down the stairs wondering if there would be repercussions. But although distinctive dress is not part of their lives anymore, abstinence from alcohol is less of a distant memory. My parents-in-law still do not drink alcohol. My husband’s sisters have wine only on occasion, and my husband went to a dry college (no dancing, eiher) and has never consumed alcohol to the point of intoxication. (Although he does drink beer, which I hadn’t realized was more controversial than wine until I happened to mention it in passing to one of my sisters-in-law – who is a lovely person, mind you – and she said “Phil drinks BEER?” with the sort of disturbed, italicized inflection that you might use to say… oh, I don’t know… “Phil eats his TOENAILS?” Which, incidentally, he doesn’t.)

None of this is galling to me, although I find it strange and interesting. What has been a little goat-getting, though, is the use of grape juice in communion. Or, no: not just the USE of grape juice in communion, because who cares? But the PRINCIPLED use of grape juice in communion. I mean – as I’ve asked Phil countless times – WHY? Wine is in the Bible. Jews used wine. The first Christians used wine. There wasn’t unfermented grape juice back then. It simply WAS WINE, people.

(Of course, I say this as someone whose father did public relations for a beer company, who got a merit scholarship funded by the national distillers union, and whose parents’ oenophilia to this day might possibly keep a few small California vintners in business. Incidentally, Jen, if you wanted this post to have the sober (ha! I slay myself!) air of a book review in a scholarly peer-reviewed journal: um, sorry?)

But still! For a movement where “approximating the actions of Jesus as closely as possible” is the whole raison d’etre, I could not fathom how this glaring exception got a pass.

Jennifer Woodruff Tait isn’t writing about Mennonites. (Confidential to JWT: Next book? Pretty please?) But she is – as you can probably tell from the title – writing about the use of grape juice in communion by Methodists. And as it turns out, there’s a great deal more theological rationale than I ever considered. As Edwin points out in yesterday’s stop on the tour, this is one of the real strengths of the book: she takes seriously the theological rationale, rather than deciding (as has evidently often been argued) that they all must have been manipulated by, or unreflective about, the surrounding culture.

Not that culture played no role in forming the theological rationale. One of the really fun sections of the book – and there are a lot – comes early when she talks about how much alcohol people consumed in the 19th century. WOW. IT WAS A LOT, YOU GUYS. I mean, people were really drunk, often; and this led to antisocial behavior sometimes, as it does. And then you get people who are sick of the antisocial behavior and want to reform things. Temperance movements, if I understand correctly, married a desire to modulate or eliminate antisocial behavior, with the late-19th and early-20th century love of HYGIENE! and SCIENCE! and CLEANLINESS!

All right, so that was the context: but what was the specifically theological rationale for grape juice in communion? Again, this is really not a time period I’m comfortable with, so you should read the book yourself to hear from an expert. But the idea seems to have been that part of what “we” (good Christians) should be about is seeing things rightly and truthfully. And you can’t do that if you’re not thinking clearly. And what does alcohol do, if not muddle your ability to see things clearly — as in, actually use your senses properly and form truthful ideas based on those sense-impressions? (Alcohol, but also romanticism, emotionalism, superstition, etc.) But surely (the thinking goes), God wills that we see things correctly and reasonably… therefore eucharistic wine can’t possibly require these sense-impairing properties. And out of this comes the two-wine theory: the idea that pure wine is wine in which there is no alcohol, because such wine does not interfere with the use of sense and reason.

(Evidently they also really, really, really liked water. So clean! Washes away the dirt! Let’s sing a hymn about it! Of course Christianity already had the baptism ritual, so that was covered.)

Anyway: there’s a lot more there, but this post is already in danger of becoming tl;dr – worthy. Let me say just two things: First, although this is a scholarly book, I could imagine giving it to my (intelligent, well-read, nonspecialist) father-in-law and having an interesting conversation based on it. So, you know, three cheers for clear academic writing!

Second: I’d like to think that any book I read changes me, a little but. But honestly, this one did more than most. Because it caused me to realize that the “Duh-you-guys-it’s-wine-in-the-Bible” eyerolling move is not only very overdone, but also very class-freighted and, well, snobby. And not even creatively snobby. It’s a product of its time and social location at least as much as eucharistic grape juice is. So: that’s not a comfortable thing to realize, but it’s probably important.

It’ll be interesting to see what the other posts say. Meanwhile, I don’t know if Jen will be able to hang out in the comments, but either way: any questions?