One hundred years ago last month the necessary number of states ratified the 18th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, which banned the manufacture, transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors. The Amendment went into effect the following year. Thus, next January, my fellow dry Southern Baptists may raise a toast to the time when our great republic gave a black eye to demon rum and the evil alcoholic beverage industry.
Or, maybe not. I recall Prohibition being taught in history classes as a failed experiment. That it failed is manifestly true since the country, after a dozen years of it, quickly and decisively repealed the 18th amendment with the 21st amendment in 1933. My parents were born during the years of prohibition and by the time they were older, it had been repealed. My grandparents were young parents, 30s, and lived through it all but I don’t recall a single conversation or comment on the subject.
Prohibition: A Concise History, W. J. Rorabaugh is a brief but fascinating look at the subject. The author, a history professor, covers the subject in a little over one hundred pages. There is a PBS series on Prohibition by Ken Burns that is quite good.
Here are some things I thought interesting about the subject:
- Americans liked their hard liquor “spirits” in the 19th century and consumed it at per capita rates more than double current consumption. But then, beer was not readily available and wine seldom encountered.
- Such was the distaste for the effects of hard drinking, almost all men and much of it in saloons, that many localities and some states passed prohibition laws. Maine was the first in 1850 but it didn’t last long.
- New England, not the South, was the hotbed of anti-alcohol sentiment, mainly because of the strength and fervor of churches there.
- Saloons were squalid, all-male drinking establishments. Temperance female warriors would dress up, go to a targeted saloon, kneel to pray and not leave until the establishment closed its doors. Speakeasies, the term for illegal clubs where alcohol was served, were very popular with women.
- Prohibition in 1920 was to some degree an anti-immigrant measure, since immigrants from Ireland and Germany were much more accustomed to a drinking culture than Americans at the time. (And your favorite beer, what’s the brand? Budweiser? Uh huh, German. Adolphus Busch, charismatic German-born brewer, was a leader of the “wet” lobby.)
- Most often mentioned as stalwart proponents of prohibition were Methodists, moreso than Baptists. That table has flipped and I had a deacon once explain the difference between us Baptists and our Methodist friends down the road: “Well, unlike us, they believe you can drink a little.”
- Some dispute the point usually made that prohibition increased crime rates. I don’t think it is disputable that it generated the types of revenue possibilities that gave rise to organized crime like Al Capone (and, my grandfather was in the same prison in Atlanta that Capone was in although grandaddy was the prison pharmacist rather than a prisoner. He quit after a short stint because he didn’t like being cooped up.)
- Al Capone we know. “The real McCoy” we’ve heard of (named for Captain Bill McCoy a runrunner of integrity who would not dilute his product; hence, “The real McCoy). Billy Sunday the reformed former hard-drinking baseball player turned evangelist we are familiar with. But, Wayne Wheeler, not so much. Wheeler was a brilliant Washington lobbyist for the Anti-Saloon League. His support or opposition was such that elected officials feared him, lest they be defeated. Before he died suddenly in 1927 he may have been the most powerful man in American.
- Enforcement of prohibition was uneven, corrupt, and ineffective. Rich people could drink with impunity. The Yale Club in New York City laid in a huge supply of alcohol. It lasted for over a decade.
- Bootleggers…NASCAR…southerners already know that story.
- Some religious traditions used wine for communion and other religious rites; hence, a special provision for them. Naturally, this corrupted many. Ironic that when my wife wanted rum for a rum cake, I’d enlist a deacon to go get it. Back then, they might have come to me for alcohol.
- Farmers in Carroll County, Iowa came to be big gin distillers. Lots of corn and their priest said it wasn’t a sin.
- Alcohol has always been a big contributor to the tax coffers. Cut that revenue stream out and it has to be replaced by other sources, like income tax.
- Rorabaugh concludes that the most important legacy of prohibition was that it caused a dramatic change in drinking habits. “Per capita consumption of alcohol was reduced for a very long time.”
- The alcohol industry, recognizing that they were vulnerable politically, began to recognize problems and fund research. Early research on alcoholism was funded by the industry, not the government.
- Alcoholic Anonymous was founded a few years after the repeal of prohibition. “AA rejected the prohibtion model to place responsibility for drinking on the individual drinker…”
One thing seems certain, in my state there is no appetite for any move back towards prohibition. A local option to allow Sunday alcohol sales in Georgia passed almost everywhere in the state despite Georgia Baptists’ strident opposition.
Change the heart and you change the individual. Change the law and the state may impact behavior or the law may be so ill-conceived that it makes lawbreakers of most of the citizenry. I’ll vote not to drink, personally. Depends on the circumstances whether or not I’ll vote for you not to drink.
And maybe Dave Miller has a vintage bottle of that Carroll County, Iowa gin. Bring it to Birmingham, bro.
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Photo of Carrie Nation and her hatchet. She would only target illegal drinking establishments but after she had achieved success and notoriety she would do reenactments on Broadway for the paying public.
Carroll County is two counties east of here but I don’t know that I have ever been there.
I have a bunch of corn farmers in my church, a teetotaling bunch.
Sorry, no corn mash from me.
Here’s something that would scandalize the history books: Some fellow Baptists in my area swear by rock and rye or hot toddies for cold remedies, and have used remedies like this in their families for a hundred years or so.
I do see a lot of drug and alcohol abuse wreaking havoc on communities where we’ve gone. One interesting account was in India a few years ago. We had some team members putting together a program for the children in the slums where we were ministering. Not being directly involved in that aspect of the trip, I was biding my time on the fringes of the activity when a little boy ran up and asked me to come pray for his family. I grabbed one of our interpreters and followed him out a short distance to a husband and wife looking mildly distraught. I asked what the matter was.
The wife spoke first, “Please pray for my husband because he drinks too much.”
The husband then spoke, “Please pray for my wife because I drink too much.”
I couldn’t have asked for a better opening for a counseling session.
It’s not much of a scandal that medicinal use, even contrived medicinal use, of alcohol and other drugs has long been practiced. After prohibition, certain high alcohol content elixirs sold well particularly among women. The opiate laudanum was widely prescribed for menstrual cramps.
I still think of the Andy Griffeth episode with the two old ladies and their “elixir.”
This is an issue about which I have changed my mind over time. As a young person, I hated alcohol. This was due to the destructive effects I had witnessed in some parts of my family. I swore that I would never drink.
There were other family members who used alcohol quite responsibly, but many did not.
I grew up in a tall steeple, high church Presbyterian Church, but as an older teenager, joined a Baptist Church. My pastor in the Baptist church was strongly anti-alcohol, but he would readily admit that the scriptures did not mandate abstinence. It was a question of wisdom and testimony.
I made not drinking alcohol part of the fundamentals of good Christian practice as a teenager, and in college. It was not that alcohol was inherently evil, but I could see that the kids who did drink often engaged in other behaviors that were bad, and they were often not serious about their faith.
By the time I hit law school, the social setting had changed, and I began to meet Christians from other traditions who were fervent about their faith. Law school is more adult. I attended all the parties to which I was invited. No one was trying to get drunk and rowdy. It was just part of their adult lives. I was still abstinent, and felt no pressure to drink. In fact, the law students knew I didn’t drink, and were always careful to have things for me to drink.
The Christians I met in law school were really devoted. Some of them drank. Some did not. It was no longer an issue socially among the Christians I knew. Whether one had a drink or not was no longer any indicator of whether one engaged in illicit behaviors, and it was no longer a help or a hindrance to one’s testimony.
Then I went into law practice. My first job was with a very fine law firm in Atlanta. I was there for 3 years. Many of the people there were high profile Christian leaders in the Atlanta area. Some of you from that area would know their names. Most of the attorneys drank, but nothing was made of it, and I did not ever see or hear of any abuse.
At 28, I had a glass of wine at a firm party in Nashville. Interestingly, some of the staff told me later that they had pegged me for a really legalistic person, and they were surprised to see me have a glass of wine. They opened up to me because they saw me in that way. It was the opposite of what I thought might happen.
By the time I was in my late 20s I began to see the concern about alcohol as a distraction, and really not a help toward our witness or our discipleship. I realize times change. In the 1920s it certainly would have been seen as a very poor testimony in many circles, both religious and non-religious. That is certainly not the case in many places now. In conservative religious circles there are still those who would be offended. For that reason, I see that as a practical matter that many in religious vocations would still need to be abstinent. But in most secular circles, no one cares.
My upbringing was similar to yours, though I both began and ended up a step farther away from alcohol than you:
I grew up in a (non-SBC) Baptist church in which the pastor taught that the the bible forbid all alcohol, and that drinking any amount was sinful. My father, who grew up in similar circles and attended Bob Jones University, nevertheless taught me the more balanced view that alcohol was dangerous, and something to be avoided on those grounds, (He had a brother who had died as a result of a drunk driving accident)…but that he would also defend anyone who tried to condemn a fellow believer for taking a glass of wine occasionally.
In my adult life I have been in several Christian settings where many people drink moderately. I have only over had 1-2 concerns that their amounts might be having adverse affects. I never felt any pressure to drink from Christians or non-Christians. Most people just don’t care that much.
I accidentally tasted some kind of clear hard beverage once, thinking it was Sprite. It did not taste good at all.
I currently attend an SBC church that offers both wine and juice for communion. I still practice no alcohol myself, but will defend those whose conscience and understanding of scripture allow it.
These are a couple of *really neat stories*. I kinda hope it starts a trend where people are willing to share their personal experience in /every/ thread; when you know where someone’s opinion is coming from, you’ll probably read them more charitably and with more nuance.
… – continued from previous comment.
The overall culture has changed on the question of moderate alcohol consumption. I do not believe that today that Christians are given any props or admired for being abstinent. Sobriety is consistent with Christian commitment, and is expected, but total abstinence will not get you anything really. Won’t hurt, unless you make a big deal of it.
I have great admiration for Christians in the past who were abstinent and who fought for prohibition. They were clearly well motivated in most cases.
But I am not sure it was the correct direction for us to pursue.
It did have a lot of unintended negative effects on society.
I find it interesting that the overall society is still very disapproving of drunkenness and alcoholism, drunk driving etc. I think the disapproval of those things have actually increased while the society has become less interested in abstinence.
Generally, I believe that Christians should preach on good morals, including avoiding the abuse of alcohol.
But we need to use some wisdom on how far we can go reforming the morals of society where we are talking about adults and the free choices they make.
With the events leading up the 2018 annual meeting, the recent Houston Chronicle articles, and racial inequality dominating most of the discussions for the SBC these days, I see the discussion of alcohol use becoming more of a minor issue, especially among younger, millennial Southern Baptists such as myself.
I love good bourbons and ryes, and particularly enjoy several different styles of beer. I pastor in a church where several of my people imbibe and where several don’t.
I think we all, especially younger guys like myself, benefit from the William Thornton’s, Paige Patterson’s, Richard Land’s, and David Brumbelow’s of the world who have all spoken against beverage use of alcohol. At the end of the day, my mind remains unchanged in my enjoyment of a good beer, but my discernment does change as I’m exposed to men who have thought carefully and spoken wellon the issue.
I think the SBC is better off for the sometimes heated discussion.
The old Anti-Saloon League, mentioned in William’s post, is now the
American Council on Addiction and Alcohol Problems – Organization warning and educating about the dangers of alcohol and other drugs.
http://sapacap.com/
David R. Brumbelow