DRINKS, DRUNKS, AND DIVERSIONS

     Public Broadcasting (WOSU in this area) recently rebroadcast the historical series on Prohibition.  Here is a brief review for those who may not have seen it.  The place of alcoholic beverages in American life is traced from earliest times showing the problems of drunkenness and the resulting domestic abuse and poverty.  Two main groups arose to combat this.  One was the Women's Christian Temperance Union (still active when I was young) and the Anti Saloon League, founded at Oberlin, Ohio.  The later was so politically powerful in its day that its efforts resulted in the election of many governors and legislators sympathetic to the "dry'" cause, as it was called.  This all came to a great climax with the ratification of the nineteenth amendment to the Constitution in 1919 which outlawed alcoholic beverages in the U.S.  This was known as Prohibition. 


     This was not a conservative movement; it was the liberal/progressive movement of its day.  But Christians were the heart and soul of that movement just as they are now of the pro-life/anti abortion movement.  The Methodist Church was heavily involved in the Temperance Movement.   Lutherans and Episcopalians were the only large Protestant groups not involved.  The German Lutherans liked their beer and the Episcopalians liked their Sacramental wine.  Most Christian groups of that day either believed or were sympathetic to the post-millennial view of the Second Coming of Christ.   This view of Scripture saw the Kingdom of God steadily advancing in this age until sin was put down and righteousness would triumph in the earth.   The millennium of Biblical prophecy would be brought in through the preaching of the Gospel and the efforts of believers to apply God's laws to society.  Then Christ would return after (post) the Millennium was brought in. 


    This was a huge motivating force in the "Temperance Movement" as it was called and the passage of the nineteenth amendment was seen as a major triumph for the Kingdom of God.  But the post-millennial view began to die out with the carnage of the Great War (1914-1918).  The increase of lawlessness and immorality during the 1920's dealt a further blow to the optimism of post millennial belief.  (It has had a mild resurgence in our day.)   Another factor in this loss of optimism was the sinking of the Titanic which dealt a death blow to over confidence in technology.  (It was "unsinkable".)  Prohibition was repealed by the twenty first amendment in 1933 and Americans went back to drinking -- legally.  Many of them never stopped.  The standard text book view of Prohibition is that it was either a "noble experiment" that failed badly or it was a benighted effort of Christians to "impose their morality on society and we should never allow them to do anything like that again because church and state are separate".


     Ironically, the same logic which sees Prohibition as a total failure could also be applied to drug laws and, if consistent, would abolish most laws on controlled substances.  The legalization of marijuana is already underway. 


     The purpose of this historical review is to arrive at the third word in the title of this blog -- diversions.  The believer in the Lordship of Jesus Christ is under the Great Commission of Matthew 28:19&20 and diversions from that can be very attractive.  Those diversions can easily be seen as the good works of Ephesians 2:10 that believers are saved to do.  But when they take the place of the Gospel and even stop the proclamation of the Gospel they cannot possibly be good works.  My impression of the Temperance Movement is that it hurt -- badly hurt -- the advance of the Gospel and the Cause of Christ.  Not all believers were diverted by it.  Dwight L. Moody, while sympathetic to the Temperance Movement I'm sure, was never diverted by it.  Until his death in 1899 he proclaimed the Gospel to many thousands here and in Europe.  There were others like him.  They understood that when someone is a new creation in Christ they do not tend to get drunk or help others get 'wasted' on alcohol or any other substance.  They understood, like some believers now understand, that social improvement is a fruit of the advance of the Gospel and not the goal of it.


     The Temperance Movement went way beyond Christians taking a responsible role in representative democracy and voting.  It became for thousands of them THE CAUSE.   And the current loss of a Christian Consensus in the U.S. may very well be one of the long term results.  I saw this first hand when I was quite young, in 1953. 


     Twenty years after the repeal of Prohibition many Christians still saw alcohol as the evil to be stamped out.  I grew up surrounded by this mentality.  The community where I grew up had two churches.  One of them began an initiative to have a local election to outlaw all alcoholic beverages in both the village and the township.  The church where my family attended joined that effort and became the main force in that effort.  For three or four years before that, our church had seen phenomenal growth and dozens of people coming to Christ. 


     The bitterness generated by that 'local option' election in the fall of 1953 brought that progress of the Gospel to nearly a complete halt.  Attendance levels and witness in the community were never again what they were in the summer of 1953.  Although I do not agree with a few of the things he says, Phil Yancey, in his book What Is So Amazing About Grace, clearly documents how some Evangelical political activism has made the Gospel so unattractive to so many people. 


     How can we so easily forget that sinners will always sin; that unbelievers will usually act immorally; that those who are cut off from the Life of God will remove all references to Him from culture; and that laws, even good ones, will not change human nature?  How much praying is going on in out churches for people who are outside of Christ?  How much cooperative effort is going on among Christians of various churches to bring people to Christ?  Why are we so surprised that our country is going the way it is?  In the last book of the Bible it is Christians who are told to repent, several times over in chapters 2&3, before the word is ever applied to unbelievers. 


     A final word of encouragement to you who are showing acts of help and kindness to unbelievers.  You are "making the teaching about God our Savior attractive".   (Titus 2:10)