WINE, WOMEN AND THE LIMITS OF CONSCIENCE

WINE, WOMEN AND THE LIMITS OF CONSCIENCE

Part of Chapter Four of “’The Bond of Union’: The Old School Presbyterian Church and the American Nation, 1837-1861” by Peter J. Wallace

Given the Old School commitment to the catholicity of the visible church, and given how deeply they were embedded in antebellum culture, it is hardly surprising that they shared the same basic mores as their fellow evangelicals. But at the same time, their confessional commitments led Old School Presbyterians to articulate these moral concerns in ways that often differed from their neighbors. While slavery was beyond question the most potent moral issue of the day, it is worth looking at other issues in order to understand the inner dynamics of Old School casuistry.

Two of the most significant debates on moral discipline arose in the same year. The General Assembly of 1843 wrestled with the question of whether a church member could retail alcoholic beverages, and also the question of whether a man could marry his deceased wife’s sister. The juxtaposition of these two issues is quite useful, since the Old School’s involvement with the temperance movement reveals how intimately they were connected to other evangelicals involved in antebellum reform, while the marriage question demonstrates how resolutely confessional the Old School remained in spite of their broader connections. But both debates reveal the willingness of Old School Presbyterians to place limits on liberty of individual conscience in order to preserve the integrity of their corporate conscience.

Temperance

The temperance movement began in the 1810s in response to a partial collapse of the social order.[1] Alcohol consumption had skyrocketed, and many feared that left unchecked it could undermine the integrity of the nation.[2] Most historians have seen the rise of the temperance movement as rooted in Federalist attempts to maintain social power. But it quickly moved beyond the intentions of its founders to become a radical reform movement, becoming allied with abolition and anti-Catholicism in the 1840s.[3] Pegram traces multiple origins of the temperance movement, especially the market revolution, which encouraged “sobriety, order, and rationality.” He points out that temperance reform was weakest in places like the southern backcountry where the market revolution had not had as strong an effect.[4] In 1826 the American Temperance Society was established, relying on moral suasion in order to convince people to reform their ways, but by the end of the 1820s there were growing calls for total abstinence from all alcohol. Other historians have connected this teetotal movement with the development of Finneyite perfectionism,[5] or at least New School Calvinism.[6]

The problem with these accounts of the Temperance movement is that they cannot account for Old School Presbyterian involvement. If temperance was a pursuit of “individual perfectionism,” allied with the “revivalist waves of Methodism, Baptism, and the ‘new Presbyterianism,’”[7] then theoretically Old School Presbyterians should have had a large population of anti-temperance writers. But in fact, virtually all supported temperance, and a growing majority at least personally supported total abstinence. John J. Rumbarger suggests the solution: while the rhetoric of the temperance movement was indeed influenced by the New School/perfectionist wing of the evangelical movement, the goal of the temperance reform was the establishment of a “rational social order,” and Old School Presbyterians were equally invested in the market economy of the antebellum era, and equally desired a “cooperative workforce.”[8] While they might deplore the rhetoric of their New School colleagues, they joined the moderate wing of the movement–only to discover that the rhetoric was not an optional feature.[9]

In 1811 the Presbyterian General Assembly established a ten man committee (including Samuel Miller and Gardiner Spring) to suggest ways that the church could help prevent “some of the numerous and threatening mischiefs which are experienced throughout our country by the excessive and intemperate use of spirituous liquors.”[10] The committee’s report condemned “intemperate drinking” urging Presbyterian ministers to preach against such sins, and calling on sessions to privately admonish, and if necessary, publicly discipline members who persisted in such intemperance. Further, they called on the officers and members of the church to take effectual political measures to reduce the number of taverns wherever intemperance was a problem.[11] At this stage, the focus was on temperance. But by 1818 the pastoral letter from the Assembly to the churches included a recommendation that officers and members “abstain even from the common use of ardent spirits” as the best way to prevent the ruin that came with habitual drunkenness,[12] and in 1829 the Assembly passed a formal resolution approving the formation of temperance societies “on the principle of entire abstinence from the use of ardent spirits” within Presbyterian congregations, and unanimously declared that they themselves (the members of the 1829 General Assembly) practiced such abstinence themselves.[13]

Initially, the Assembly was unwilling to condemn the manufacture and sale of ardent spirits (the question of beer and wine was not before them yet). As late as 1830 they expressed themselves cautiously, refusing to “encroach upon the rights of private judgment,” and merely regretting that any member of “the Church of Christ, should at the present day, and under existing circumstances, feel themselves at liberty to manufacture, vend, or use ardent spirits.”[14] But only four years later, the 1834 Assembly declared “that the traffic in ardent spirits, to be used as a drink by any people, is, in our judgment, morally wrong, and ought to be viewed as such, by the Churches of Jesus Christ, universally.”[15]

The Old School continued this approach to the temperance question. The 1837 Assembly declared its dismay that members, and even some ruling elders “still manufacture and sell ardent spirits....No Church can shine as a light in the world, while she openly sanctions and sustains any practices which are so evidently destructive of the best interests of society.”[16] One region that did not follow the General Assembly was in western Virginia. One pastor wrote to the Southern Religious Telegraph in 1835 that the Richmond newspaper was not taken by Presbyterians in his area because “they are a whisky making people,” and the Telegraph advocated temperance too loudly.[17]

By the middle of the 1830s the logic of the temperance movement had convinced some that alcoholic wine should be removed from the Lord’s Supper. While some writers in the New School New York Evangelist advocated this position, the Southern Religious Telegraph (a moderate paper) defended the traditional practice with an article by Benjamin M. Smith.[18] Over the next month, the Telegraph provided the debate on “the Wine Question” between Moses Stuart of Andover Seminary and William B. Sprague (pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church of Albany, New York). Stuart argued that any drink would be adequate for the Lord’s Supper, but suggested that watered down wine was the best compromise between traditionalists and advocates of abstinence. Sprague, in a sermon entitled “the Danger of Being Overwise,” replied that “the very same spirit which would banish wine from the Lord’s table, would...annihilate the ordinance itself” in order to further the temperance cause. Indeed, Sprague noted that already in 1835, many church members were refusing to partake of the cup at the Lord’s Supper, because they refused to drink any wine.[19] Sprague argued that all of the wines known in the scriptures were fermented and that fermented wine was the only proper substance for the cup. Sprague’s deepest concern, however, was that the radical temperance movement was starting from “a principle on which Infidelity cannot fail to thrive.” By arraying “certain moral facts or supposed facts against the Bible,” namely “that he least particle of alcohol--no matter in what form it exists--in injurious to the constitution of man” the radical temperance writers were implying that “God is either ignorant of the constitution of his own creature, the work of his own hands, or else that he has commanded the use of that which he foresaw must injure him.”[20]

In reply to the debate, the executive committee of the New York Temperance Society denied that they were working to remove wine from communion, arguing that “the fruit of the vine” is essential to the Supper. They explicitly refused to define what form the “fruit of the vine” should take, leaving open the possibility that unfermented or diluted wine could replace wine at the Lord’s Supper.[21]

Samuel Miller, one of the members of that first temperance committee in 1811, remained convinced of the older model of temperance. He had given up wine around 1830, and claimed that his physical condition had improved, but he refused to affirm the abstinence pledge for three reasons: 1) drinking could not be said to be sinful in all cases; 2) while the original temperance pledge was acceptable, the total elimination of wine, beer and cider went too far; 3) the ultra pledge would logically remove wine from the Lord’s Supper. He illustrated his argument with the example of tobacco: “In my opinion, tobacco is a detestable weed which has long been doing and is at this hour doing incalculable injury to the health and comfort of millions.” But while the use of tobacco might be a “hateful as well as mischievous practice,” Miller argued that persuasion would be a more effective tool than pledge campaigns.[22] The editor, Amasa Converse, wished to let his readers hear the other side as well. In the same issue “Abstinence” argued that Miller’s distinction between ardent spirits and wine was groundless. Both contained alcohol. Both could lead to drunkenness and all its attendant miseries. Total abstinence from all alcohol was the only true preventative measure.[23]

While most of the radical temperance authors sided with the New School in 1837-38, the Old School remained equally committed to the temperance cause for reasons of expediency. While I have found references to a number of New School congregation which switched from wine to raisin water in the 1830s and 1840s, I have been unable to find any definite mention of an Old School congregation which succeeded at eliminating the use of wine.[24] In 1841 the Old School church Ballston Spa, New York, attempted to eliminate fermented wine in 1841 by a majority vote of the congregation,[25] but the Presbytery of Albany overturned the decision, stating that “there is nothing in the use of fermented wine at the communion, that is inconsistent with an acceptable celebration of the ordinance, or that ought to embarrass a properly enlightened conscience.” Those opposing the use of wine claimed that their consciences’ would not allow them to drink wine. The presbytery replied that their consciences had been misled. Fearing that such the switch would “put in jeopardy” the peace and harmony of the church, the presbytery “deprecate[d] the forementioned innovation” as tending toward schism.[26] In the ensuing discussion, one author wrote that the session had tried “to banish one of divinely appointed elements of the Lord’s Supper....Why not take the ground of the papists at once, and deny the people the CUP altogether? It would not be a greater departure from divine instruction.” He claimed suggested that the ultra-temperance advocates were appealing to pagan authority to “prove that the Bible does not mean what it says.”[27] H. pointed to the spiritual significance of the elements themselves. “Bread is the staff of life--the support of the animal life of our bodies, to teach us that we receive our spiritual life from Him.” Likewise, wine was “the symbol of Christ's blood [which] teaches us that in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.” H. was convinced that the attempt to banish wine was an impeachment of Christ himself. If the wine of the Supper encouraged drunkenness, as radical temperance authors claimed, then the church must “relinquish all our high veneration for him as the Son of God, as God manifest in the flesh, and with the Jew, the Socinian, and the infidel, consider him as only a fallible man like ourselves.”[28]

The years between 1838 and 1843 were full of temperance debates, as Old School Presbyterians sought to find a way of affirming the temperance movement, while avoiding the extremes. Most of the religious newspapers included semi-regular articles and tracts on temperance, often anecdotal or fictional, which chronicled the road to ruin that invariably resulted from drinking.[29]

Many argued for total abstinence from alcohol as a beverage (allowing for the medicinal and sacramental uses).[30] This naturally led to the condemnation of those who manufactured or sold beverage alcohol. Robert J. Breckinridge published (and probably wrote) “A Plea for Total Abstinence from Intoxicating Liquors” in 1840, opposing even temperate drinking on the grounds that total abstinence is the safest way to avoid drunkenness, and suggesting that every penny gained through the sale of alcohol is “the price of blood.”[31] William Swan Plumer, editor of the Watchman of the South, and pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Richmond, Virginia, argued that while Christians technically have permission to drink, the course of prudence and safety is to abstain. Indeed, Plumer argued, given the present context of runaway drunkenness, it was imperative for Christians to abstain from alcohol. And “if it be wrong to use ardent spirit except for medicinal purpose, it is certainly wrong to make, or sell, or give it away for other than medicinal purposes. He that aids or abets in the commission of any crime is himself...a partaker in the crime,” and to furnish an intemperate man with liquor is to kill him by inches.[32]

On August 29, 1840 an extra edition of the New York Observer reprinted the Rev. B. Parsons essay “Ancient Wines,” under the pseudonym “Anti-Bacchus,” which argued that the ancient wines of the Hebrews were frequently unfermented.[33] A few weeks later editor Sidney Morse commented that a Reformed Presbyterian congregation in Greenock, Scotland, under the Rev. Andrew Gilmour had unanimously removed alcoholic wine from the Supper and switched to “the liquid fruit of the vine.”[34] Following such arguments, one author, using the telling pen name of “Conscience” pled with the church to use both wine and the “pure fruit of the vine.” This would enable both sides to live together in peace.[35]

Throughout the early 1840s Old School newspapers engaged periodically with Edward C. Delavan’s Enquirer, the leading organ of the temperance reformation. While some thought that Delavan merely opposed the mixed liquors that often passed themselves as wine, one author pointed out that Delavan had written: “I am opposed to fermented wine of the purest quality; because it contains alcohol, and because I look upon it as poison entirely unfit to be received into the system.”[36] J. W. Alexander argued that “such exclusion, where the fermented juice of the grape can be obtained, is unscriptural, profane, and by implication injurious to the holy name of our Redeemer; and that it vitiates the ordinance.” Alexander feared that the question had become a “fire-brand cast into our churches; and I am unable to see how it can fail to rend into two bodies every religious community which does not promptly extinguish it.”[37]

But while Old School Presbyterians were nearly unanimous in keeping wine in the Lord’s Supper, their newspapers were equally committed to the total abstinence of beverage alcohol. “Jonadab” went so far as to argue that just as polygamy was once allowed, but was now forbidden, so also alcohol was moving from the realm of the morally neutral to that of the morally evil.[38] Those few who attempted to defend the old temperance position found even fewer who were willing to listen.[39]

“Eliab,” writing in the Charleston Observer, was one of the only authors in the Old School literature to take the remarkable step of openly declaring the moderate use of wine as a positive good. Declaring that wine was one of those “pleasures adapted to each of the senses with which God in his wisdom has endued us,” he insisted that any such pleasure could be properly used “within the bounds of moderation which God has prescribed.”[40] Benjamin Gildersleeve disagreed, insisting that the Bible did not encourage the use of wine as a regular beverage, but enjoined it for medicinal and sacramental purposes only. It permitted beverage use, but did not enjoin it.[41] In reply “Eliab” pointed out that the tithing of wine in the Old Testament indicated that it was a common beverage, and noted that the priests were given wine regularly and only forbidden to drink it when they were serving in the tabernacle.[42] But few came to his defense.

But while most Old School Presbyterians zealously defended temperance (and even total abstinence) on pragmatic grounds, most were troubled by the attempt to declare alcoholic beverages evil in themselves–mainly due to their conviction that since Jesus used alcoholic wine in the Lord’s Supper, it could not be evil in itself. In 1841 Rev. John Maclean (professor of ancient languages at the College of New Jersey) wrote a scathing review of two prize essays on temperance, declaring “that they are utterly untenable, being contrary to the word of God and the testimony of antiquity.” While professing to embrace the goals of the temperance societies, Maclean regretted “that in the prosecution of an object so important, and so benevolent, the authors have not confined themselves to arguments which will stand the most rigid scrutiny.”[43] Maclean agreed that total abstinence from alcoholic beverages was a wise decision on the grounds of expedience,

Maclean then launched into an extensive review of antiquity, both biblical and secular, in order to demonstrate that the “two-wine” theory was a modern fabrication. Maclean objected that the radical temperance movement had determined in their own minds that alcohol was evil, and then tried to foist that opinion and practice upon Jesus and the apostles. In reply, he argued that such a position denied not only the authority of scripture, but the authority of Jesus: “We are not at liberty first to decide whether a thing is right or wrong, and then, in accordance with that decision, determine what Christ either did or did not do. And yet this mode of reasoning and judging, a mode to which all heretics invariably have recourse, is the very one employed by the writers of these Essays, and other distinguished advocates of the total abstinence scheme.”[45] Maclean cited a letter from Edward Delavan to the New York Observer, which illustrated his point. Delavan had written: “I found it impossible to bring my mind to think that he [Jesus] would make and use a beverage which, since its introduction, has spread such an amount of crime, poverty, and death, through this fair world. He came to save, not to destroy, and could I believe, with my views of alcoholic wine, that he would make or use it?”[46] Maclean pointed out that the radical temperance advocates were trying to force the scriptures to fit their own opinions. The two-wine theory was not merely wrong-headed, but was in danger of departing from Christian orthodoxy. Maclean cited the examples of the Universalists and Socinians, who utilized the same logic to eliminate eternal punishment and the atoning death of Christ, respectively. Human reason and conscience, Maclean argued, was not a sufficient guide in matters of casuistry.

Maclean’s two essays[47] quickly became the standard for the Old School defense of using alcoholic wine in communion. But those Old Schoolers who were most zealous for the temperance cause complained that Maclean was too hard on Delavan and other temperance writers, and questioned Princeton’s commitment to the temperance cause. In reply the college temperance society started a college pledge where students and faculty pledged term by term to abstain from intoxicating liquors.[48] Rev. James W. Alexander, professor of Rhetoric and Latin at the college, and son of Archibald Alexander, wrote to the Watchman of the South, that he had signed the pledge with the explicit caveat that he did not agree with the new principles of the temperance movement. Echoing Samuel Miller’s arguments, Alexander objected to 1) the assumption that “all drinking of intoxicating beverages is sinful”; 2) the argument that “the wines of the Scripture were not intoxicating.” and 3) “the absurd attempt to withhold 'the cup of the eucharist' and to substitute for it a wretched treacle, or any the like ridiculous and profane imposture.” Convinced that these principles opened the door “for rationalistic infidelity,” Alexander warned that some had “even staked the Omniscience of our Lord and Master on the decision of this question about wines.” Removing wine from the Supper would “empty 'the cup of blessing' to fill it with slops....The stroke aimed at the Lord's sacrament, and at the Lord's followers, is implicitly aimed at the Lord himself. That stroke originates with the Lord's enemies.” Any abstinence that included sacramental wine was a practical rejection of the gospel of Christ.[49]

But anyone who sounded anything less than wholly committed to temperance could be assured of further inquiry. When Nathan L. Rice, editor of the Kentucky Protestant and Herald, called on the church to “only let us avoid the two extremes of indifference and teetotalism, and the work [of temperance] will be done,”[50] readers called on him to explain himself. Rice argued that teetotalism was different from total abstinence. Teetotalism, in Rice’s view was

Likewise when Rice’s colleague and successor, the Rev. S. S. McRoberts (PTS 1831 and stated supply at Bardstown), rejected Delavan’s arguments against using wine at communion, the Rev. R. C. Grundy (pastor at Maysville, and later editor of the Rechabite, a monthly temperance magazine) defended the temperance leader’s claim that many drunkards slipped back into their old habits through partaking of communion wine. Grundy argued that the only way to prevent such relapses is to use the pure “fruit of the vine,” and not the ordinary wines then in circulation. Grundy (and numerous other temperance advocates) claimed that most wines are so adulterated that many do “not contain one drop of the juice of the grape,” but rather contain “cider and logwood, and other drugged and poisonous slops.”[52] Grundy pleaded that “the hundreds and thousands of drunkards, now being reformed by the blessing of God, and multitudes of whom are being converted by his grace, demand this investigation. Their scruples and feelings on this subject, must be regarded, and nothing but the plain and simple truth will ever relieve their scruples and quiet their fears.” Echoing the very language that Maclean, Rice, and others feared so greatly, Grundy wondered “who can, for a moment, believe that whilst the benevolence of the gospel is accomplishing such a blessed work of moral reform, the great author of our Holy Religion could have only instituted an ordinance which, when celebrated according to the original institution of it, would tend to counteract and destroy his own work.”[53] McRoberts agreed that pure wine should be used, but still objected to Delavan’s argument that wine “in ordinary use on communion seasons, has a direct tendency to create a thirst for strong drink.”

At least initially, the religious press was almost entirely against Delavan. To alter the elements of the Lord’s Table is to impair “the sanctity of a divine ordinance.”[54]5.32 (March 31, 1842) 125. See also PW 1.11 (January 19, 1842). “V.” argued that a false principle had crept into the temperance movement–namely, that “alcohol...is a poison, and therefore all use of it is deleterious to the human system, and is a sin against God: ‘malum in se.’” While Maclean may have cut the philological ground out from under the two-wine theory, that did not end the discussion.[55]

A few Old School Presbyterians followed Delavan in rejecting the use of all fermented drink. One author in the Protestant and Herald tried to show that the Bible tolerates wine, “but not the use of intoxicating drinks,” which must mean that the wines of the Bible were not fermented.[56] But the vast majority of Old Schoolers rejected the claim that alcohol was evil in itself, and argued for total abstinence (except for medicinal and sacramental purposes) on the grounds of expedience.[57]

But if drinking alcoholic beverages was wrong on the grounds of expedience, could one be disciplined for manufacturing, selling, or drinking such beverages? Kentucky was a major battleground in the Old School debate on temperance. In 1841 the Synod of Kentucky voted to approve the formation of a Total Abstinence Society in Kentucky, and called for a “radical change in the existing License Laws” to eliminate tippling.[58]

In the fall of 1842, William L. Breckinridge, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Louisville, set forth what he considered the “Bible Doctrine of Temperance,” in response to those who were arguing for total abstinence as a test of Christian character. Breckinridge denied that the church of Jesus Christ could forbid the use of beverage alcohol on the grounds that Christ never forbade it. He took it as proven by Maclean that there was no evidence that the middle east ever produced a non-alcoholic wine. Therefore in the language of the temperance advocates, the Savior was “either ignorant of, or rejected, the only safe and effectual way of arresting intemperance--from which I argue, either that we live in a very enlightened age, or that all this is profane and blasphemous irreverence towards the Son of God.” Breckinridge zeroed in on the central problem: “the irreverence of pleading conscience for avoiding, as a violation of moral obligation, an act in common life which he encouraged and approved.” If you rebuke those who will not sign the total abstinence pledge as encouraging drunkards, then “the Saviour stands among the drunkards.”[59] Breckinridge pointed out that a Roman Catholic priest had advocated total abstinence as a way of gaining eternal happiness (in an article published in the Kentucky Temperance Banner). This was not strange for a “popish priest,” but that “professedly sound and evangelical Christians should publish such doctrines without any comment...and should afterwards defend the expression of them...is to be accounted for by the fact, which I am trying to illustrate, that the influence and tendencies of total abstinence societies are adverse to the doctrines of the gospel.” How else, Breckinridge asked, could evangelical Christians defend the idea that taking and keeping the total abstinence pledge would “secure the favor of God and eternal happiness!”?[60] Breckinridge concluded his series by pointing to the odd tendency to view drunks as “excellent men” other than this one “tragic failing.” The reformed drunkard has become a hero–“fastening then in the public mind that distinction between drunkenness and other vices, favorable to the former, which renders it less odious and revolting.” What had happened, Breckinridge wondered, to the traditional Calvinist understanding of sin?[61]

The editor, S. S. McRoberts, had been willing to attack the extremism of Delavan, but he was by no means willing to let Breckinridge’s attack on total abstinence societies pass unchallenged. McRoberts expressed his disappointment that Breckinridge had sided with the drunkards (and was even more upset that he had tried to put the Savior there too!). “We are pleased to learn that the communications of brother B. have met with such general disapprobation, and in some instances, strong indignation.” Convinced that he was speaking for the vast majority of Kentucky Presbyterians, McRoberts claimed that the total abstinence pledge was not a test of Christian character. Rather, he argued that since 1) drunkenness is a great sin; 2) it is a habit formed by moderate, social drinking; 3) after it is acquired, it cannot be extirpated by reversing the process, that is, by moderate drinking; 4) the utmost that can be said in favor of intoxicating drinks is that they are luxuries; 5) the Bible does not enjoin their use nor forbid their disuse; 6) total abstinence is the only sure cure and the only infallible preventive of intemperance; thus 7) it is the duty of every Christian and philanthropist to unite in this certain mode of rolling back a great tide of misery; and so therefore 8) no Christian or minister who habitually drinks alcoholic beverages is setting a good example.[62] McRoberts argued that because the total abstinence movement had such tremendous success in reforming the nation, it could not possibly be considered evil. While admitting the lawfulness of wine, McRoberts nonetheless argued that “total abstinence does become a duty under certain circumstances.”[63] The Christian, he argued, is bound to adopt the best plan to eliminate drunkenness. Nothing could be more revolting, he claimed, than Breckinridge’s portrayal of Jesus as a wine-bibber.[64] No one is bound by conscience to drink alcohol. Since it is expedient to abstain, all Christians should take this path.[65]

Before publishing Breckinridge’s reply, the new editor, the Rev. William W. Hill (PTS 1838 and former pastor at Shelbyville), defended his decision to print the response, saying “we ought at least to hear before we condemn,” and, revealing the strength of prejudice in the matter, affirmed that he himself was still a member of a temperance society.[66]

Breckinridge likewise began by claiming that he himself practiced total abstinence. His objection to the total abstinence societies was that they claimed abstinence as a Christian duty. Pointing out that McRoberts had written in the Protestant and Herald on June 9, 1842, censuring those who would not take the total abstinence pledge, Breckinridge insisted that the moderate use of wine had the sanction of Christ, and so could be used without censure. He objected to McRobert’s insinuation that “my position as to the pledge and these societies subjects me to suspicions.”[67] Citing two published attacks on his ministerial and Christian character (one from a secretary of the Northern Kentucky Temperance Union, and the other from a temperance lecturer), Breckinridge argued that if McRoberts was willing to say that total abstinence was a Christian duty, then it was in fact a test of Christian character in evangelicalism.[68]

The General Assembly of 1843

In the middle of this debate, the Protestant and Herald published the decision of the Synod of Pittsburgh declaring that retailers of alcoholic drinks were guilty of tempting others to drunkenness, and therefore should be excluded from the church. The synod refused to say that retailing alcohol was in itself a sin, but claimed that it was nonetheless an “offense.” “X” declared that this decision was entirely wrong-headed. Disclaiming any desire to get caught up in the Breckinridge/McRoberts debate, “X” declared that the question was simply whether the church could exclude someone from the church for something that is not itself sinful. Pleading Christian liberty of conscience, “X” rejected the synod’s decision and hoped that the General Assembly would overturn it.[69]

The question before the Assembly was whether retailing alcoholic beverages was an offense (namely, “anything in the principles or practice of a church-member, which is contrary to the word of God; or which if it be not, in its own nature, sinful, may tempt others to sin, or mar their spiritual edification”),[70] and if so, whether the offense was grave enough to warrant exclusion from the church. The Synod of Pittsburgh had declared that retailing alcoholic beverages was in fact sufficient ground from excommunication, since it destroyed the evidence of Christian character, arguing that “the man who, at the present time, is ignorant of the effect of the practice referred to, in tempting others to sin, and marring their spiritual edification, must be criminally regardless of what is going on around him,” which demonstrates that he cannot have been a subject of regenerating grace.[71] When the committee of the Assembly that reviewed the Synod’s minutes found this statement, they recommended that the Assembly take exception to it because it virtually made “the retailing of intoxicating drinks a test of piety and a term of membership in the Presbyterian church.”[72]

This launched a lengthy debate on the floor of the Assembly, which was nearly evenly divided. A motion to affirm the Synod’s decision only failed by a 55-63 vote.[73] The Rev. George Hill, pastor at Blairsville, Pennsylvania, and a member of the Synod of Pittsburgh, argued that it was not “the intention of Synod to cast members out of the church, who were already in it,” but to “provide against the reception of those, now out of the Church, who were engaged in this business.” The temperance cause, he insisted, depended upon such measures, and he hoped that the Assembly would uphold the Synod’s decision.[74] The Rev. Isaac. W. Platt of Bath, New York, replied that “if then we proceed on the principle that every thing is a sin in us that another finds fault with, we shall find reason to exclude every body from communion, and make the Church a desolation.”[75]

But Dr. John C. Lord, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church at Buffalo, thought that the committee was too hard on the Synod, and offered a substitute which would condemn the use and sale of ardent spirits, but leave each particular case to the discretion of the church courts. Rev. William L. Breckinridge objected to the implication that retailing alcoholic beverages could be used as a new term of communion. He argued that the Assembly could rejoice in the success of the temperance reforms, but it “cannot sanction any new terms of communion.”[76] But in the end the Assembly adopted Lord’s substitute, which took exception to the Synod of Pittsburgh’s decision only “so far as they seem to establish a general rule in regard to the use and sale of ardent spirits, which use and sale are generally to be decidedly disapproved, but each case must be decided in view of all the attendant circumstances that go to modify and give character to the same.”[77] Lord argued that since “public opinion would not sustain the conduct of church members in retailing intoxicating liquor,” the church had to be clear in its condemnation of retailing alcohol.[78]

Charles Hodge commented on this by suggesting that the differences in both church and society on temperance (as also on slavery) boiled down to “certain questions in morals, which are indeed of great practical importance.” Is a thing wrong in itself, “or for reasons extraneous to its own nature”?[79] Citing the resolutions of the National Temperance Convention in 1841, Hodge showed that the “temperance men” viewed the use and sale of alcoholic beverages as “in itself an immorality.” This was no circumstantial argument–no appeal to expedience–but a declaration that alcohol was evil in itself. And since the scripture speaks of alcoholic beverages in a positive fashion, Hodge insisted that such doctrines were “infidel in its spirit and tendency.” As further proof, he reminded his readers that Dr. Maclean had been “constantly more or less defamed, because he refuses to submit his judgment and conscience to this new and self‑created tribunal of moral principle and conduct.”[80] While no one in the whole Assembly had taken the “ultra” position openly, Hodge argued that the “ultra” position was the only one that could make retailing alcoholic beverages an offense worthy of discipline. If one took the ground of expedience (which all Old Schoolers claimed to do), then the question of the use or sale of alcohol was an indifferent matter–and no indifferent matter could be considered a case for discipline. “It follows, therefore, that any rule of duty founded on expediency must be variable....If the obligation arises from circumstances, it must vary with circumstances.”[81] Indeed, Hodge argued, in some contexts abstinence from alcohol could “countenance false doctrines, or false principles of morals, or sanction infidel sentiments, or add weight to infidel measures,” in which case drinking alcohol could be most expedient. If the matter is to be decided by expedience, then the question must be left to the individual conscience.[82]

Hodge therefore argued that the action of the Assembly had in effect created a new term of communion. “If you establish a new test of piety, you certainly thereby establish a new term of communion. If the fact that a man holds slaves, or that he sings Watts's psalms, or that he uses wine, is made to prove he is not a pious man, do you not, in the common and correct sense of the terms, make those things conditions of union with the church?” If Jesus created no such terms, then we may not either. Hodge feared that in her haste to avoid the sin of intemperance, the church was falling into the opposite extreme.[83]

So while making it clear that the Old School would proceed on the basis of expedience, the Assembly of 1843 did not provide any closure to the temperance issue. In 1848 the Synod of Cincinnati determined that “in the present state of society, to manufacture or sell ardent spirits (except for mechanical or medicinal purposes) is in the judgment of this Synod an offence of such a character, as justly to debar persons so engaged from the communion of the church.”[84] The year before, “Philos” had urged this action, claiming that “it is a great sin for a Christian to pursue a calling which results in no good, but in great evil to his neighbor....We therefore come to this conclusion, that no person can pursue a calling that necessarily results in great evil to society, without sinning grievously against God.”[85]

“L” replied to the synod’s action by wondering why they still used wine for the Lord’s Supper. “Why not go as far as others have gone before them, and substitute molasses and water, or some such miserable invention, instead of wine?” If Jesus was known as a wine-bibber, why was the church so afraid of alcohol? He complained that the synod had devised a new term of communion unknown to Christ.[86]

“Kappa” argued in return that the moral principle was clear. Claiming that he was not trying to establish a new term of communion, he argued that simply moral reasoning vindicated the synod:

Therefore the church should not allow a man who sells or manufactures liquor to the ruin of countless thousands to remain a member of the church of Jesus Christ.[88]

Subtly, the practice of the church was beginning to alter her theology. While the formal doctrine taught in the seminaries and from the pulpits of the church remained orthodox Calvinism, the theology reflected in the total abstinence writings suggests that a different theology was at work. In “The Tippling Elder,” W. S. bemoaned the thought that “such an appellation should ever be applied to one bearing rule in the house of God!” The elder who merely takes an occasional dram sets a bad example to the church. When he comes to prayer meeting with “that peculiar odor on his breath....no one cares to hear him pray, or feels much confidence that his prayers will avail with God.” Indeed, he remarked, this “grieves the church, especially the more spiritual members.” The suggestions that an occasional dram of whisky could affect one’s standing with God, or that the “spiritual members” of the church would be the ones most offended by this action, do not seem to mesh with the formal theology of the Presbyterian church.[89]

The Political Turn

But with a new practical understanding of the theology of sin came a new focus on how to solve the problem of drunkenness. While occasional legal and political action was urged in the earlier phase of the temperance movement, it was only in the 1840s that liquor license laws became a center-piece of the reform, as it connected with anti-Catholic fears to establish the Know-Nothing Party.[90]

From the early 1850s, Old School newspapers were filled with discussions and debates regarding the propriety and wisdom of the “Maine Laws.”[91] The temperance societies had accomplished a great deal, reducing the per capita consumption considerably. But the goal of the temperance reformation–the complete reformation of the country–was still unfulfilled, and the recent immigrants from Ireland and Germany seemed impervious to traditional moral reform.

Edward C. Delavan had argued that it is the duty of the state to protect its citizens, which should result in laws prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages. Indeed, Delavan argued that such laws were of God.[92] The Old School was divided in its response. While most Old School Presbyterians found Delavan to be too extreme for their tastes, some tended to agree that prohibitory laws would have a salutary benefit for society–as well as for the church.

Some feared that legal action against alcoholic beverages might have undesirable implications. The Rev. Samuel Beach Jones (PTS 1836 and pastor of Bridgeton, NJ) thought that civil action could be useful, but argued that “all natural rights, the exercise of which does not interfere with the obvious rights of others, or with the necessary power of the State, should be left to the individual.” Claiming that atheism, communism and Mormonism, if “extensively adopted and acted upon...would curse society worse than drunkenness,” Jones reminded his hearers that “unless the abettors of these sentiments so reduce their theories to practice as to threaten social order and civil interests, it is best, on the whole, to tolerate their doctrines.”[93] Since the state of New Jersey had determined that “the general use of intoxicating drinks is a habit dangerous to society,” it was appropriate to penalize those who became drunk, as well as those who helped them become drunk. Nonetheless, Jones argued that Christians should not put their hope in legislation. The only way to eradicate evil was through the gospel of Jesus Christ.[94]

In 1853, the Rev. Robert P. Dubois (PTS 1836 and pastor at New London, PA) revealed the way in which the revision of the doctrine of sin affected political theory. Arguing that moral suasion had failed, Dubois suggested that attempts at regulation through liquor licenses were “radically wrong,” because they merely tried to regulate sin. The only way to succeed against intemperance is through absolute prohibition. “After long dealing with persuasive words, and still longer with inefficient regulations, the time has come to act.” Vending intoxicating drinks should be considered a crime. The confiscation and destruction of all alcoholic beverages was the only way to end the curse once and for all. The time for moderation, Dubois argued, was past.[95]

The earliest references come from the mid-1840s, when Allegheny city voted against allowing liquor licenses, leading William Annan, editor of the Presbyterian Advocate to rejoice that alcohol distribution had been declared “an unmitigated nuisance and curse to all the best interests of society.”[96] While the historical literature has focused on the north, the Watchman and Observer noted that such laws were prevailing in a number of southern communities by 1852.[97]

In 1854 Ohio passed a regulatory law prohibiting the sale of alcohol for consumption in the same location (along with forbidding the sale of alcohol to those who were intoxicated, or to minors without parental consent).[98] Writers in the Presbyterian Herald of Louisville and the Presbyterian of the West of Cincinnati urged the prohibition of liquor licenses for the sake of the temperance cause.[99] The Rev. Joseph G. Monfort, pastor at Greensburg, Indiana, published an influential sermon in both papers, entitled “The Maine Law God’s Law.” The sermon’s text was Exodus 21:28-30, which says that if an ox is known to be dangerous, and the owner does not keep it controlled, then if the ox kills someone, the owner is guilty of murder and should be put to death. Using a traditional Presbyterian argument from the equity of the Old Testament civil law, Monfort applied the same principle to alcohol. Property that is known to cause harm to others should be destroyed. Monfort argued that while the death penalty for such crimes was no longer applicable, the principle that a person should be held responsible for his property remained in force.[100]

But would legislation work? Initially, the reports from Maine sounded quite positive. Six months after the law went into effect, Neal Dow, the Mayor of Portland, Maine, claimed that the house of correction for drunkards was empty, and he expected that steady enforcement would eliminate “a large proportion of the poverty, pauperism, crime, and suffering with which we have been afflicted.”[101] Four months later, Maine claimed that the drunkenness rate had dropped fifty to seventy-five per cent.[102] After three years, however, Presbyterian editors had to acknowledge that the Maine laws hadn’t worked out very well in Maine.[103] In 1855 the Presbyterian Magazine published a list of states that had attempted to enact some sort of Maine Law. Eleven states had prohibited the sale of intoxicating drinks (in varying degrees), but in four of these states, the statutes had been struck down. While recognizing the legal challenges of such laws, the author suggested that it was encouraging to note that legislatures passed the laws fairly easily, and the people ratified constitutional amendments willingly. The main problem was in the courts.[104]

By the 1860s two camps had emerged: those who advocated immediate political action, and those who argued that the church must rely upon moral suasion, though allowing that the state could “prohibit by law the manufacture and sale of intoxicating drinks as an article of common beverage.”[105]

Alfred Nevin, editor of the Presbyterian Standard in Philadelphia, objected to those who argued that the simple preaching of the gospel would bring moral reform. “The men to whom the Gospel is preached, and who profess to have given it the throne of their hearts, must let its elevating, purifying and sanctifying influence exert itself through them upon the corrupt and putrid mass of society.” Every Christian must “realize his personal responsibility in the great business of the world's regeneration....He must not only wish that God's kingdom might come, and wait for it, but work for this grand issue with all his might.”[106]

The rhetoric of the temperance movement had overpowered the pragmatic reasons why Old School Presbyterians had entered the movement. While some historians have tried to make direct connections between abolitionism and teetotalism, as far as the Old School is concerned the similarity is theological and ideological rather than individual. The Kentucky debates reveal that the Breckinridge brothers themselves were divided over the temperance issue.[107] But subtly the church was beginning to allow matters of individual conscience to become matters for the corporate conscience.

[1]Most studies have focused on the “inevitable” result of prohibition. John A. Krout, The Origins of Prohibition (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1925); Joseph R. Gusfield, Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986/1963); John J. Rumbarger, Profits, Power, and Prohibition: Alcohol Reform and the Industrializing of America, 1800-1930 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989); Thomas R. Pegram, Battling Demon Rum: The Struggle for a Dry America, 1800-1933 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1998); Ann-Marie E. Szymanski, Pathways to Prohibition: Radicals, Moderates, and Social Movement Outcomes (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003). Gusfield complains about the incessant “moralistic condemnation of moralism” in the literature on temperance. (3)

[2]Pegram acknowledges the serious social and moral problems associated with the liquor industry in the antebellum era (Battling Demon Rum, xii). He points out that between 1800-1830, Americans drank “each year between 6.6 and 7.1 gallons of pure alcohol” compared to 2.8 today (7). The 1850 census reported that Americans had manufactured over 42 million gallons of whisky, six and half gallons of rum, and a little more than one million gallons of beer that year, which amounted to more than two gallons per man, woman and child in the United States. W&O 8.47 (July 1, 1853).

[4]Pegram, 17. This fits well with the evidence of the southern Presbyterian newspapers, which were all produced in southern towns by minsters closely associated with the market.

[5]Pegram, 20. Robert Abzug, Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). While the early temperance movement had focused on distilled spirits, on the assumption that beer, cider and wine was not as dangerous, by the 1820s chemists had determined that fermentation produced the exact same alcohol as distillation. This prompted the more perfectionist reformers to eliminate the consumption of alcohol altogether. The radical total abstinence reform (often still referred to as “temperance”) divided the temperance movement, but quickly became the dominant voice. Pegram, 24-39; Rumbarger, chapter 2.

[6]Leo P. Hirrel, Children of Wrath: New School Calvinism and Antebellum Reform (Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press, 1998).

[9]On middle class leadership, see Stuart M. Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760-1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

[10]Minutes (1811) 474 (in Baird, 794). The committee largely consisted of ministers and elders from New York City. The Massachusetts Society for the Suppression of Intemperance (1813) is widely considered the origin of the formal temperance movement, so Presbyterian interest was quite early.

[14]Minutes (1830) 24 (in Baird, 796). A brief repudiation of the attempt to make abstinen