Something I just wondered…during the era of US prohibition, were churches and other religious places allowed to use alcohol in their rituals? In that vein, if they were, then were there a lot of people trying to claimto be a church to get away with illegal boozing?
A quick Google Search finds that sacramental wines were not forbidden. Not surprising since most Native American sects are allowed peyote as a sacrament.
Per this site:
Actually, the peyote exemption is JUST for the Native American Church. This exemption on its face seems blatantly unconstitutional. Why shouldn’t other religions be allowed to use peyote to worship their god?
Yes, some manufacturers had special licenses to produce wine for use in religious ceremonies. Christian Brothers and Mogen David are the two that spring immediately to mind. A documentary I saw once claimed that much less abuse of the dispensation took place than you would expect - a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of alcoholic beverages smuggled or manufactured illegally.
All the communion wine I’ve ever had has been quite bitter, and not the kind of thing I’d drink if I was looking to get hammered. I imagine that this might have something to do with the lack of abuse of the church exception.
To answer such questions, we examine the text of the immortal Volstead Act, which was the implementing legislation for Prohibition. Wherein we find,
(Sections 6 and 10 required persons manufacturing sacramental wine to get a permit and keep records.)
I’m not aware of any widespread abuse of this exemption. Bootlegging was easier.
There are some fundalmentalist sects that do NOT use wine with alcoholic content.
The Bible also describes ‘wine’ as the ‘fruit of the vine’ and is considered by these folks as to be simply the pressed juice concentated by evaporation to preserve it.
Possibly the explanation of the converting of water to ‘wine’ at the wedding in Galilee.
There exists considerable controversey on the subject of wine and fruit of the vine in the N.T.
The church I went to as a kid used grape juice.
No, at least not bootlegging in the way most people use that word.
http://www.epicurious.com/drinking/wine_dictionary/entry?id=7618
“In January 1920, the U.S. Federal Prohibition Law was enacted through the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution. This law prohibited the manufacture, transportation, or sale of alcoholic beverages. It wasn’t until almost 14 years later, in December 1933, that Prohibition was repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment. During Prohibition, certain activities were sanctioned, including home winemaking and wineries being allowed to make sacramental wines. During this period, wine consumption actually increased.”
I can’t find a specific cite, but during Prohibition there was an exemption for home winemaking so long as the amounts were low, as in for personal consumption. Note that the religious exemption was just for wines. People didn’t need to abuse that exemption, as the law otherwise allowed home winemaking. Besides, even if home winemaking had been made totally illegal, this basically would have been an unenforceable law. All it takes to make wine at home is fruit juice and some yeast. Toss yeast in fruit juice, let it sit around for a while, and voila you have got wine. Almost all commercial bootlegging was with alcoholic beverages other than wine. The reason being that it was easier for people to buy liquor from a bootlegger than have to assemble and run a still at home.
It’s not merely “some fundamentalist sects” – Methodists, for example, use grape juice. Oinos in Koiné Greek means the juice of the grape, whether fresh or fermented into wine. Prior to Mr. Welsh inventing a way to pasteurize grape juice, however, the only way to preserve it was to turn it into wine – otherwise it spoils rapidly, so it’s a reasonable guess that any time oinos is referenced, it means no-kidding wine, with the rare exception (outside Scripture in classical Greek) of someone taking a drink of oinos fresh from the grape press.
As spingears says, however, there are those who argue, for one reason or another, that the Bible couldn’t have meant wine, and who come up with ingenious reasons why the term really means something else.
And as refrigerators were all kinds of scarce in the Middle East 2 millennia ago, it wouldn’t take long at all for freshly pressed grape juice to ferment.
To add to Polycarp’s fine answer, let’s look at the biblical data:
First, the supposition that the water made wine in Cana was simply grape juice concentrate:
How does one have ‘too much to drink’ of grape juice so as not to be able to tell a good batch of grape juice from a lesser batch of grape juice? This story only makes sense if the story is referring to alcoholic wine.
Here, Jesus defends his actions against his critics:
How can one drink only grape juice and wind up with a reputation (from his critics) as being a drunkard? Obviously, at the parties Jesus attended, he drank alcoholic wine, and in no small quantities.
The earliest written account of the Lord’s Supper (at least, how the first generation of Christians celebrated it) comes from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 11:
Obviously, these first Christians had no problem with alchoholic wine present at the Lord’s Supper, which would be a big and uncommented-upon break with a supposed tradition of tea-totalling Jesus.
In the first quote above, we see John the Baptist had the reputation of not drinking alchoholic wine. This is further commented upon in the infancy narrative in Luke, Chaper 1:
Notice the part about wine or other fermented drink. So, here is a use of that word for ‘pressed grape fruit’ used with the assumption that it means ‘fermented pressed grape fruit.’ Also note that this lack of imbibing any spirits is a sign of holiness. But throughout the Gospels, Jesus is always presented as being greater and holier than John the Baptist. If Jesus, too, didn’t drink any alcohol, don’t you think that that would have been specifically mentioned, like it was for John the Baptist?
The idea that Jesus didn’t drink any alchohol and that the wine at the Last Supper was non-alchoholic is a recent invention (in the last hundred years) of a Protestan holiness and temperance movement. Their biblical ‘scholarship’ is resoundly rejected and easily refuted by the vastly overwhelming majority of biblical scholars and Christian denominations.
It is not really controversial at all, except for a small group who have a prejudicial belief about alchohol and blind themselves to irrefutable facts so as to bolster their personal beliefs.
Peace.
during my American History course, the Prohibition project I worked on with a team of other students turned up references to the use of sacremental wines, & misuse was actually quite common. Total production of “sacramental” wines increased to 7-10X pre-Prohibition levels, & there were numerous accounts of religious leaders persuaded, bribed or threatened into cooperation. In addition, many laypersons working in the church bureaucracies abused ther trusts. Much of this wine was distilled into brandy for resale.
And to offer a data-point at the opposite end of the spectrum: Altar wine for the Roman Catholic eucharist is required by the RCC to be fermented, with one accommodation for the sake of communicants with health issues: they can use raw unprocessed must, that is, the grape juice stock for winemaking, which will likely contain a trace of fermentation already.
:eek: I shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose. If people will pay $8 for a beer at the ballpark, it stands to reason they’d be swilling sacramental hootch.
Our church uses a very good port, which is what you might expect from a bunch of Whiskeypalians.
That’s balloon juice. 
http://colfa.utsa.edu:16080/users/jreynolds/Textbooks/Prohibition/Prohibition%20Garraty%201991.htm
Whether home winemaking was legal or not, it certainly existed to some degree. My grandfather made large quantities of wine both during and after Prohibition, most of which he sold or gave to his neighbors.