The poisoned chalice: Eucharistic grape juice and common-sense realism in Victorian Methodism

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)The Poisoned Chalice tells the story of how temperance-minded Victorian Methodists confidently overturned centuries of tradition to switch from wine to grape juice at communion. Jennifer L. Woodruff Tait argues that these reformers were not behaving as unscientific fundamentalists (122), but as Victorians utilizing current scientific thinking and biblical exegesis. It not until after the rise of fundamentalism the 1920s that grape juice and individual communion cups became seen as antiseptic compromises with middle-class culture (123).This is a relatively slim volume, but not because it lacks depth or rigor. Indeed, it is filled with wit and crisp analysis, written with an ease that renders short form what otherwise might have been a long and tedious discussion. Almost one third of the book is taken up with endnotes, indicating the thoroughness of Woodruff Tait's research. This is a book deeply rooted the primary and secondary sources of nineteenth-century Methodism and temperance reform.The crux of Woodruff Tait's argument is that grape juice part of a larger crusade for reform, firmly connected to common-sense realism. Alcohol a poison that interfered with a person's ability to perceive the real world, the foundation of all knowledge. Grape juice was pure, unstimulating, healthful, and wholesome, and drinking it aided in the development of moral character (3). When Methodist dentist Thomas Welch and his son Charles figured out how to mass-produce unfermented grape juice, beginning the 1870s, it seemed like the perfect answer to the threat of alcohol.In terms of biblical exegesis, temperance advocates adopted the two-wine theory. So, at the feast of Cana, Jesus turned the water into luscious juice, food for the healthy and medicine to the sick, as one writer put it (34), and at the Last Supper it juice the cup. Temperance advocates of this period thought that they were employing the latest scientific thinking to harmonize their views of nature and the Bible. Juice made by God, alcohol by man. They hardly ever mentioned Darwin, or any conflict between Christianity and science, writes Woodruff Tait (89). Drinking wrong because it clouded a person's ability to think clearly, whether the realm of science or theology.For reformers, drinking only part of a larger crusade against worldly amusements that sapped a person's moral vigor, including novel reading, dancing, card playing, and the theater (44), which they replaced with music, sports, gardening, and geology (56). …