Alcohol and Religion
Some alcoholic beverages have been invested with religious significance, as in the ancient Greco-Roman religion, such as in the ecstatic rituals of Dionysus (also called Bacchus). Some have postulated that pagan religions actively promoted alcohol and drunkenness as a means of fostering fertility. Alcohol was believed to increase sexual desire and to make it easier to approach another person for sex. For example, Norse paganism considered alcohol to be the sap of Yggdrasil. Drunkenness was an important fertility rite in this religion.
Some religions forbid, discourage, or restrict the drinking of alcoholic beverages for various reasons. These include Islam, Jainism, the Bahá'í Faith, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Seventh-day Adventist Church, the Church of Christ, Scientist, the United Pentecostal Church International, Theravada, most Mahayana schools of Buddhism, some Protestant denominations of Christianity, some sects of Taoism (Five Precepts (Taoism) and Ten Precepts (Taoism)), and Hinduism.
Many Christian denominations use wine in the Eucharist or Communion and permit alcohol in moderation. Other denominations use unfermented grape juice in Communion and either abstain from alcohol by choice or prohibit it outright.
Judaism uses wine on Shabbat for Kiddush as well as in the Passover ceremony, Purim, and other religious ceremonies. The drinking of alcohol is allowed. Some Jewish texts, e.g. the Talmud, encourage moderate drinking on holidays (such as Purim) in order to make the occasion more joyous.
The Pali Canon, the scripture of Theravada Buddhism, depicts refraining from alcohol as essential to moral conduct because alcohol causes a loss of mindfulness. The fifth of the Five Precepts states, "Surā-meraya-majja-pamādaṭṭhānā veramaṇī sikkhāpadaṃ samādiyāmi." The English translation is, "I undertake to refrain from fermented drink that causes heedlessness." Technically this prohibition does not cover drugs other than alcohol. But its purport is not that alcohol is an evil but that the carelessness it produces creates bad karma. Therefore any substance (beyond tea or mild coffee) that affects one's mindfulness is considered to be covered by this prohibition.
Read more about this topic: Alcohol Consumption
Famous quotes containing the words alcohol and, alcohol and/or religion:
“Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The sacrifice to Legba was completed; the Master of the Crossroads had taken the loas’ mysterious routes back to his native Guinea.
Meanwhile, the feast continued. The peasants were forgetting their misery: dance and alcohol numbed them, carrying away their shipwrecked conscience in the unreal and shady regions where the savage madness of the African gods lay waiting.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)
“As, therefore, we can have no dependence upon morality without religion;Mso, on the other hand, there is nothing better to be expected from religion without morality;Mnevertheless, ‘tis no prodigy to see a man whose real moral character stands very low, who yet entertains the highest notion of himself, in the light of a religious man.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)