Christians and Alcohol: Prolegomena

Christians talk about alcohol a lot. Unfortunately, most of the conversation is stupid and, at times, sinful. Hence, I am going to take the next few days and address the primary issues swirling around Christians and alcohol.

In the recent weeks I have done a significant amount of reading on what others think about this topic and have engaged in introspection and self-evaluation concerning the matter of alcohol in my own Christian life. Therefore, I desire to prompt introspection and self-evaluation, not evaluation of others.

With that in mind, there will be times where I will quote some individuals who I think are wrong about certain areas of the issue and will argue against them. There are a lot of people spouting off on the internet right now about this topic. But from what I see they mostly fall into one of two camps:

1. The young alcohol consumer who is on the fringes of the emerging church looking to justify their imbibing of alcohol. They are skeptical of truth claims, but instead of throwing in as a true postmodern they seek to reason this topic to death with their modern counterparts (who are having none of it).
2. The individual directly affected by alcoholism in some capacity. They usually are honest with the data but when it comes to drawing a conclusion they walk off the mountain of evidence they compiled and stand somewhere else on the continuum.

Again, these are just the groups of people making noise. There are other views and I will address them briefly as well.

I hope this will be beneficial. I had qualms about taking on alcohol in Christian culture, but there is so much at stake here, throwing in on the conversation seems nearly imperative.