Bible Geek pointed me at this and this at razormouth.com, about Christian attitudes towards drink.
Those articles make my glad my parents brought me up with a responsible attitude towards alcohol.
I grew up as (and still am) a Methodist, a church which has historically been very anti-alchohol, a reaction against the gin palaces prevalent in John Wesley’s day – “Drunk for a penny, Dead drunk for tuppence, Straw to lie on free” was their slogan, I’m told. Alcohol is still a Big Issue in some sections of the church, although far less nowadays than it used to be. I remember the church amateur dramatics group back in the 1970s blue-pencilling lines in plays with any reference to alcohol.
I know a Methodist minister who’s claimed that every alcoholic he’s ever had to deal with was either the child of an alcoholic, or the child of a total abstainer. This lends weight to the attitudes in the articles, although the fact that there are genetic factors involved in alcoholism could well be a another factor.
We British seem to have problems with our alcohol culture, with far too much so-called “binge drinking” often resulting in drunken violence, as seen in many town and city centres on a Friday night. Our continental cousins don’t seem to have anything like the same problem, despite drinking as much or even more alcohol than we do in total. I think we have lessons to learn from them.
I don’t know so much about the situation in America, but the “demon drink” meme seems stronger there, maybe as a legacy from the days of prohibition. On the other hand, the seemingly out-of-control ‘war on drugs’ appears to indicate that at least some Americans haven’t learned any lessons from the prohibition laws.
