Daily Mail: Polemics

We were travelling through Grant Park in Atlanta on Sunday afternoon when I noticed a familiar face walking along the sidewalk. He was a former fellow church member who left our church some years ago to follow Eastern Orthodoxy. He was in front of St. John the Wonderworker Orthodox Church. In fact, he was in black garb as he is now a reader for the worship services at St. John's. (By the way, St. John is no reference to the Apostle, but to St. John Maximovitch of Shanghai and San Francisco.)

We chatted briefly and he invited us to a service sometime. He especially recommended Pascha, a midnight Easter service. He then alluded to how we ought to consider attending "a real church." Now, he's a friend, so there was a teasing element to that statement; but it is representative of how the Orthodox really do consider themselves to be the "true Church." So I got home and checked out the church's website and this is what St. John's, a particular body of the "true Church," considers important enough to present to the world:

Saint John the Wonderworker Parish is the first church in the world named after Saint John (Maximovitch) of Shanghai and San Francisco. The Church was formed and named in 1991, at the time called Blessed John the Wonderworker as St. John was not yet canonized. When St. John was canonized in 1994, the name was changed to St. John the Wonderworker. The parish is located in Atlanta, Georgia and joined the OCA as part of the Diocese of the South under Archbishop Dmitri of Dallas in September of 2000.

Over the years the parish has been able to gather several items that this beloved saint wore, including a thigh shield and two of his robes. More recently the Church was given a bone relic from his foot, the only part of his body that was not found to be incorrupt.

On this website you can find a great deal about the life of St. John by clicking on one of the navigational buttons to the left under "The Life of St. John". We also have a collection of testimonies to the ongoing miraculous intercessions of our beloved Saint. Please feel free to browse and learn of this great saint of our own century. We also have a special gift of a computer program written by one of our members called the Menologion (2.0) which includes a daily icon of the saint of the day with his or her troparion and kontakion and also the daily Bible reading. This program is written because of St. John's love of the Saints and because of his desire that all Christians should pray daily and often.

So, I repeat the title of this post--what about Jesus?

That appears to be the case anyway since they passed a resolution a couple of weeks ago condemning the USE of alcohol. That's right, the resolution never mentions the abuse of alcohol (which would have been a biblical stance), but in strong language it declares "our total opposition to the manufacturing, advertising, distributing, and consuming of alcoholic beverages," accusing those who merely use alcohol of "misinterpretation of the doctrine of “our freedom in Christ.”" Now, any reasonable Bible interpreter would have to take this as a condemnation of Christ himself (see John 2, Luke 7, the Last Supper parallels)! But before going further, here is the text of the resolution:

WHEREAS, Years of research confirm biblical warnings that alcohol use leads to physical, mental, and emotional damage (e.g. Proverbs 23:29-35); and

WHEREAS, Alcohol use has led to countless injuries and deaths on our nation’s highways; and

WHEREAS, The breakup of families and homes can be directly and indirectly attributed to alcohol use by one or more members of a family; and

WHEREAS, The use of alcohol as a recreational beverage has been shown to lead individuals down a path of addiction to alcohol and toward the use of other kinds of drugs, both legal and illegal; and

WHEREAS, There are some religious leaders who are now advocating the consumption of alcoholic beverages based on a misinterpretation of the doctrine of “our freedom in Christ”; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Greensboro, North Carolina, June 13-14, 2006, express our total opposition to the manufacturing, advertising, distributing, and consuming of alcoholic beverages; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we urge Southern Baptists to take an active role in supporting legislation that is intended to curb alcohol use in our communities and nation; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we urge Southern Baptist to be actively involved in educating students and adults concerning the destructive nature of alcoholic beverages; and be it finally

RESOLVED, That we commend organizations and ministries that treat alcohol-related problems from a biblical perspective and promote abstinence and encourage local churches to begin and/or support such biblically-based ministries.

That is a shameful resolution. If I were Southern Baptist I would be embarassed (although if I were really Southern Baptist I guess I would think it is great). As you can see, this is not a biblical argument. One can't get where they have with the Bible. Rather, this is essentially a cultural argument and here Rev. Rob Rayburn of Tacoma, WA interestingly explains some of the cultural reasons that grape juice replaced wine in your communion cup:

It may surprise some of you to learn that Welch's Grape Juice was invented precisely for the purpose of providing a substitute for alcoholic wine in the Lord's Supper. Dr. Thomas Welch was a New Jersey dentist and a communion steward at his local Methodist church. He was a committed advocate of temperance and wondered if the new theories of Louis Pasteur, that had already by 1869 been applied to the pasteurization of milk, might be also applied to the juice of grapes. One day, with his wife and 17 year old son, he picked about 40 pounds of concord grapes from his family's yard. They cooked the grapes for a few minutes, then squeezed the juice through cloth bags. They filtered the juice, poured it into quart bottles, sealed the bottles with cork and wax, and then lowered them into boiling water long enough to kill the yeast organisms in the juice and prevent fermentation. For weeks the family waited listening for the explosion that would signify failure, but none came. When the bottles were opened Dr. Welch found he had produced a sweet, unfermented grape juice. He convinced his pastor to try it in the Supper, began processing small amounts of the juice and providing it to other churches in Southern New Jersey, and, unbeknownst to Mr. Welch at the time the American fruit juice industry was born. In 1890 the name of the product was changed from "Dr. Welch's Unfermented Wine" to "Dr. Welch's Grape Juice." Under the influence of temperance convictions, grape juice came to be widely used as a substitute for wine in the Lord's Supper practice of American churches.

It may be hard for some of you to appreciate the strength of conviction that animated the temperance movement of the 19th century, especially in its evangelical Christian form. It is interesting that this was one thing concerning which liberals and conservatives in the great Protestant churches were in general agreement. Prohibition was, largely, the fruit of the Protestant Christian temperance movement. I have a photocopy of a page from a hymnal published by David C. Cook in 1881. The gospel song is entitled "We will not Sip Wine or Beer" and ran this way:
"We will never sip, sip wine or beer,
Tempt us not, tempt us not;
We will ever fight this foe we fear,
Tempt us not, tempt us not.
Drink that hurts us, new or old,
From our lips we will withhold;
Hour by hour, and day by day,
When we work and when we play."
And two more verses like that. It was a powerful movement that gripped American Christianity.

So, why do I care about all of this since I am not Southern Baptist? Well, because I see this as no less than a failure by my brothers in Christ to be salt and light. It is a neglect of the Great Commission's discipling of the nations. It is taking alcohol, which was given by God to 'gladden the heart' and saying to the world, "Here, take this! We don't know what to do with it! God gave it to us, but it takes too much wisdom to use rightly, so you can have it!" And rather than model for the world the proper, biblical, glorious use of alcohol, too many churches (not just Baptists) have shunned it and left the world to figure it out on its own. This capitulation by the Church has resulted in the very conditions the Baptists cite as reasons for not using alcohol in the first place! But rather than realize their surrender they make a bad situation worse and declare victory by not drinking a drop of alcohol, and so they completely abandon their calling on this issue! And American Christianity is still gripped.

That's enough for now . . .