Wine and religion

Abstract

Between 1700 and the present, wine and other alcoholic beverages were challenged by religious movements, beginning with Methodists in the eighteenth century, who saw alcohol as harmful to workers. For the most part, the Catholic Church maintained a positive view of wine, but the Church in France suffered a setback when the French Revolutionary government nationalised and sold all vineyards and other church land in 1790. This ended the centuries-long connection between the Church and wine production in France. The temperance movements of the nineteenth century in the US, Scandinavia and elsewhere were often led by Protestant women who called into question the health and other benefits often claimed for wine. New Christian denominations, such as the Mormons and the Salvation Army, adopted policies of abstinence, and there was a campaign to have mainstream churches use grape juice, rather than wine, in communion services. But it was largely unsuccessful, and during Prohibition in the US, an exemption was made for wine to be produced and sold to Christians and Jews for religious purposes. In the twentieth century, religion played a minor role in alcohol policies. In the 1960s, the Catholic Church began to allow the laity wine at Eucharist, Muslim immigration to Europe had a small impact on wine consumption in Europe and the Arab Spring tightened alcohol policies in some majority-Muslim states.