Common Sense Methodists?!?!

Convinced as I have been--and, it must be admitted, remain--that the Methodist church's adoption of sacramental grape juice in place of wine was a grievous error, thanks to Jennifer Woodruff Tait's fine new book, The Poisoned Chalice, I promise never again to consider it a nonsensical or untheological one.

This is a good history of the movement that resulted in the substitution of grape juice for wine in the churches that were to become The United Methodist Church, giving due credit to people whom it is easier to caricaturize, especially for those of us that disagree with them. Woodruff Tait debunks the myth (common among us sacramental oenophiles) that the movement was driven largely by relatively shallow social and cultural concerns rather than substantive moral, theological, or symbological ones.

That is not to say that the moral and mystagogical theology expressed by the grape juice devotees is persuasive or impressive in any way. But Woodruff Tait manages the historian's delicate job of portraying the occasionally ridiculous comprehensibly, at times sympathetically, and without overt mockery. (One sometimes catches a playful smile barely hidden behind the hand, but it is never a smirk.)

More importantly, Woodruff Tait isolates and draws out the many interwoven threads that manifested themselves in the movement towards sacramental grape juice--the interaction between theology and science, rationality and sobriety, hygiene and social utility. The confluence of concerns is rich and sometimes surprising, and Woodruff Tait's deft handling of the material makes it somewhat less incomprehensible than it might otherwise be.

She relates this cultural constructs accessibly and engagingly, and the book would be easily and profitably read by anyone interested in any one of the many concerns it engages.

If one had to name a complaint (and one has to, in order to have one's reviews taken seriously), it might be that there seem a relatively few primary texts being worked with here. Each chapter covers a different facet of the same few texts, intelligibly and persuasively, but one occasionally wonders whether a broader selection of writings from the period would tell the same story. (Surely if one broadened the sample a bit, one would find those nonsensical and untheological voices arguing from sheer stupidity--Fred Phelps is but the most modern incarnation of an old phenomenon.) Still, a scholar does have to work within limits in order to learn or to say anything meaningful, and this hardly seems a complaint worth making.

As I read, I could not help but think of companion readings (not to supply the book's deficits, but because good reading always invites company). Those who are primarily interested in the history of the period should read this alongside Christine Rosen's Preaching Eugenics (especially if the author's references to the eugenic concerns of theologians and pastors seem too fantastical). Intellectual historians might profitably follow this with Amy Laura Hall's Conceiving Parenthood, for the sequel to American Protestantism's love affair with scientific hygiene and purity.

Theologians and ethicists might read this with Thomas, with whom a comparison is never unprofitable (indeed--those familiar with the Summa might have recognized the concern for the effects of alcohol on reason as one of Thomas’s concerns and, perhaps, chuckled at the picture of rabidly Protestant ministers unknowingly propagating Thomistic moral theology) or, for contemporary issues with perhaps a similar constellation of concerns (scientific orthodoxy, social justice and the common good, purity, the effects of technological innovation), Rayna Rapp’s Testing Women, Testing the Fetus or Maura Ryan’s Ethics and Economics of Assisted Reproduction.

Disaster Relief

I do enough ragging on United Methodists in this space that I feel it worthwhile to brag on them when they get something right.

The United Methodist Committee on Relief is a good example of Methodists getting something decidedly right.

UMCOR is a surprisingly effective and efficient organization for mobilizing disaster relief, largely due to its commitment to using 100% of directed donations for the projects the donor designates.

Administrative and overhead costs are entirely funded through a one-day denomination-wide offering (One Great Hour of Sharing), expressly for the purpose of eliminating the need to fund these costs through directed donations. UMCOR also does little advertising outside of the denomination--a double-edged sword, allowing it to funnel more money to where it's needed, but preventing them from gaining the widespread recognition of the American Red Cross, UNICEF, or World Vision.

It also emphasizes indigenous Methodist-affiliated churches as centers of relief distribution and coordination. (As Gustavo Guttierez has famously said, if you want to know how best to help the poor, try asking the poor. If you want to know how best to help victims of disaster, try letting them coordinate and distribute things.)

If you attend a United Methodist church, please consider giving generously to the One Great Hour of Sharing offering this March. It will keep UMCOR nimble, active, and ready for the disasters and emergencies that will strike, that will always strike this side of the eschaton.

And if today's news--the photos, the reports, the desperate, urgent need--moves you to contribute to disaster relief in Haiti, please consider donating through UMCOR. There is already an UMCOR field office in Haiti, and The United Methodist Church has a long-standing relationship with churches and organizations there through which relief aid will be coordinated and distributed.

And, as always, pray. Pray while you're writing the check, to be sure! But do not neglect to pray.