Christian Views On Alcohol

Christian views on alcohol are varied. Throughout the first 1,800 years of church history, Christians consumed alcoholic beverages as a common part of everyday life and nearly always used wine (fermented grape juice) in their central rite—the Eucharist or Lord's Supper. They held that both the Bible and Christian tradition taught that alcohol is a gift from God that makes life more joyous, but that overindulgence leading to drunkenness is a sin. In the mid-19th century, some Protestant Christians moved from this historic position of allowing moderate use of alcohol (sometimes called moderationism) to either deciding that not imbibing was wisest in the present circumstances (abstentionism) or prohibiting all ordinary consumption of alcohol because it was believed to be a sin (prohibitionism). Today, all three of these positions exist in Christianity, but the historic position remains the most common worldwide, due to the adherence by the largest bodies of Christians including Anglicanism, Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and significant segments of Protestantism.