Recently I was at a worldwide Quaker event and an older Quaker asked me a question that shook me: Do you drink despite the traditional Quaker testimony against it because you truly don’t think it is damaging, or do you do so because drinking is convenient?
He brought up the sacrificially of many of the Quaker testimonies: refusing to swear oaths or pay tithes resulted in frequent and extended imprisonment, opposing slavery resulted in financial and social loss, and rejecting war resulted in derision by societies hungry for power.
Quakers continued to take these stand because of their ethical integrity. This older Friend questioned, or perhaps his question led me to question of myself, whether I was simply choosing the easier path than the social inconvenience of taking a stand against alcohol.
I had never heard an argument like that before. I was raised by the child of an alcoholic. My father was desperately afraid of alcohol because he had seen what it could do to people. So, to keep my siblings and I away from it he used the most powerful tactic he could think of: fear.
I can’t tell you how many times as a child I heard it repeated: my Native American heritage made me genetically an alcoholic. One sip of alcohol and my life would be gone.
The racially problematic parts of that statement aside, by the time I was a teenager my siblings had begun to drink so I could clearly see that my father was just wrong. My brother and sister both drank responsibly and maintained happy and productive lives.
So I decided that upon reaching legal age, I would partake responsibly. And I did. From the time I was 21 until I went to the conference a year later, I would drink about once a week or every other week. I never got wasted, I never made any big mistakes, and I never regretted my decision to drink. After all, the only reason I had been given to avoid alcohol- that it would make me into a terrible person- was clearly not true.
This Friend’s question changed everything. Now, it wasn’t just an issue of whether it was possible to drink responsibly, but whether drinking responsibly was ethically okay.
Honestly, he kind of hijacked the rest of the conference for me. I still participated in all the activities and conversations, but most of my solitary time went into considering his question.
While most yearly meetings (an organizing body of Quakerism) discourage drinking, they generally do not go so far as to frame abstinence as essential. Britain Yearly Meeting’s approach is fair model of this:
In view of the harm done by the use of alcohol, tobacco and other habit-forming drugs, consider whether you should limit your use of them or refrain from using them altogether. Remember that any use of alcohol or drugs may impair judgment and put both the user and others in danger [Advice and Query 40.]
Statements like that sometimes make me long for a prescriptive religion. It would be so much easier to have someone tell me “do this!” and “don’t do this!” than having to consider it for myself. But my Quakerism makes it essential for me to consider three aspects of my spirituality to reach an answer. Biblical tradition, communal wisdom, and personal experience/revelation all come together to form the spiritual framework that thereafter informs my life.
Quaker communal wisdom, such as the Advice quoted above, almost invariably advocates for refraining from alcohol consumption. The Bible is more ambiguous- alcohol was important in that it was a safe way to intake liquids, but that alcohol was much lower proof than that which we consume now. And the New Testament of the Bible again and again warns against drunkenness. These verses, however, did little to convict me against alcohol because they speak to moderation rather than just abstinence.
One verse did cause me to struggle. In Romans 14: 21 Paul wrote “It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble.”
Here, I stopped to ponder. Is drinking responsibly ethically wrong because it could cause others to drink excessively?
This question is what consumed my free time at the conference. I spent hours trying to figure it out in the theoretical context, but in the end looking at my personal experience settled the question for me.
I have several friends who don’t drink for a variety of reasons. One, specifically, does not drink because she has struggled with other addictions in the past. I whole heartedly support her. While considering whether I felt free to drink or not, I emailed her about how she felt about her friends drinking. This is an excerpt of her response
… I do not need others to abstain. I just need their support when I do. People who drink moderately not only don’t contribute to the culture of excess, but they actually provide a third path somewhere between the completely safe/boring road of abstinence and the hazardous/glamorous and fun road of hardcore partying.
I love that idea of a third path. And when I considered where that third path had led me in the past, I felt completely free to follow it.
As a bartender I’ve been able to use my power to help ensure the safety of others by cutting people off earlier than some bartenders might (often at the expense of my tips) and insisting on and ordering taxis to take customers home.
Additionally, my time in bars as a bartender and patron have led to many discussions that I truly believe opened individuals up to the Light.
I am grateful to those who choose to live out a testimony of abstinence from alcohol because I believe it is important for people to see that as an option. Spaces where abstinence is a comfortable and easy option are essential. There are certainly those who I think should abstain, such as those individuals who have struggled with alcoholism or for some reason believe they could not partake responsibly. My personal experience leads me to believe that, for me, moderately consuming alcohol is a net positive.
This is not to say that I will always feel this way. I will continue to consider the effect of my alcohol consumption on my life and on the lives of those around me to ensure that I don’t put myself or others in danger.
But for now, the Spirit is not leading me away from spirits.
What canst thou say?
Drink To My Health 
Pingback: A Young Adult Quaker and Alcohol
Because of whatever combination of genetics, personality, and history, I’ve rarely had to think about alcohol consumption. I don’t drink that often or that much when I do. If left to my own devices I can go a stretch of weeks without thinking about alcohol. That said, I know that drinking in social circumstances is social, by which I mean my actions affect others.
Like you, I’ve had a few close friends who were recovered (always recovering) alcoholics and I don’t drink around them partly to lesson the peer pressure of drinking. And that led me to wonder if I really know the drinking issues of any social group. I’ve had co-workers and friends who I I suspect have a secret problem. I’ve gotten to the point where I sometimes won’t drink if I don’t really know the history of the people I’m with.
The stat that made me pause recently was a study that determined that half of alcohol use come from a small subset of very heavy drinkers—the 10 percent that consume 10 or more drinks a day (I wrote about it here http://www.quakerranter.org/2016/03/drinking-profits/). It’s easy to argue that the industries around recreational alcohol consumption and distribution are dependent on maintaining a class of heavy-drinking alcoholics. I’ve wondered about my culpability in this. I’m still going to enjoy some wine tonight, but it’s something I think about.
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Thanks for your comment!You bring up some really great points.
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Your Native American heritage doesn’t make you more of an alcoholic than anyone else. A study examining alcohol use and abuse found “In summary, regardless of whether the variable examined was alcohol abstainers, light/moderate drinkers, binge drinkers, heavy drinkers, excessive drinkers or counts of excessive drinking occasions, the findings indicated that NA alcohol consumption was similar to or lower than that of whites—an empirical challenge to the elevated NA alcohol consumption belief.
Jesus drank wine. God made the grape and the yeast. Take it easy!
source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160209110402.htm
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Hi Ryan, first of all I’d like to thank you for taking part in this conversation.
Secondly, I believed that by saying my dad’s comment was racially problematic I made it clear that I disagree with that statement. But in case I was not direct enough: I disagree with what he said.
Lastly, as you can see in my post I came to the conclusion that in my individual circumstance, alcohol is not negative. You cannot, however, deny it’s potential to be harmful. Dismissively saying “Take it easy!” is not only rude, but also disempowering. I have a right, and in my opinion responsibility, to carefully consider the impact that my actions have on the world around me.
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There are families (like my own) in which everyone has come to refuse alcohol or drunk themselves sick (or both), and much of that is a genetic matter of how various people’s bodies metabolise alcohol. Initial tolerance for the metabolic byproducts may even make a person more likely to continue until they do experience chemical addictions & toxic effects.
The fact that one ethnic group does or doesn’t drink more than another is simply irrelevant to whether alcohol is genetically more dangerous to any members who do drink (a vulnerability which I’d expect to reduce drinking among a group rather than increase it.)
As Gabor Mate points out here ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpHiFqXCYKc ) the incidence of addiction (to anything) and the psychological resources to escape from addictions are very much related to whether a group is suffering from systemic injustice and systemic violence… and particularly to how much stress (& involuntary separation) is disrupting their parent/child interactions at an early age.
And of course, there’s the question of whether a person is finding significance in their lives overall: “Everybody here is either on a spiritual path, or addicted to something” is a description that might well apply universally.
This hasn’t much helped answer your own question… but if you had to give up drinking, how would you feel about that?
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Due to a variety of chronic illnesses, each of which requires medication, I simply cannot drink alcohol at all. Consuming alcohol on top of my meds would cancel out their positive effects and cause a painful reaction. Earlier in my life, especially when I was in high school and my college years, I did drink heavily for a time. But it was a social matter, partially rebellion and partially peer pressure.
If Friends were in the tradition of the Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, or the Mormons, then not imbibing alcohol would be part of the deal. This doesn’t mean that people in those faith traditions always strictly adhere to the rules, but the societal pressure to conform is much higher.
For a time, I was able to skirt the line between heavy drinker and problem drinker, but don’t miss those days. My best friend growing up was a hardcore alcoholic, and from that experience I learned the games that alcoholics play with themselves and everyone else.
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A fascinating post and a very important one. Thank you very much for sharing it. I’d also say that while Friends have had a testimony against alcohol, amongst early Friends, and early Christians, your third way was the default position.
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Drinking has never created any sort of issue for me and if I never had another drink it wouldn’t bother me, but I understand the importance of being sensitive and never judgmental about this issue.
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We don’t drink Period!
My husband is one of those people who cannot drink responsibly. He nearly died March 2014 from binge drinking in a 2 hr period.
by the time I got to ER his BAC level was .50 & rising, tube down his throat and sedated. He was transported to a bigger hospital an hour away and by the time I got there his physician gave him 3-10 days to live and he had pneumonia from aspirated lungs.
He’s been sober 2 yrs last month.
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It’s great that he made it and has been able to stay sober! Being supportive of those who cannot drink is so important, so I’m glad your husband has you!
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I really appreciated hearing your perspective. I grew up in a similar situation, with parents who were strict non-drinkers because of my alcoholic grandfather. My dad was similarly afraid that addiction would skip a generation. When I became an adult it took me a long time to find your third way—for years I swung between one extreme and the other. Learning the third way was important to me, because it stood for wise behavior that grew out of love for self and others, and not fear-based behavior or rebellion. Finding that third way helped me find my moral compass in other ways, too, after leaving an evangelical religion—to use love and respect as gauges rather than strict rules, obedience, and fear. For some reason alcohol was the touchstone that helped me figure all that out.
I agree, too, that staying open to further leading is important.
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My advice to you is to drink up as long as you can (with apologies to George Fox and William Penn).
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Think of all the heaviest drinking cultures you can. Your list included all my ancestors.
I don’t drink alcohol. Sure, I experimented, mildly. I had one drink on my 21st birthday (friends wouldn’t let me up from dinner until I finished the only drink I didn’t return as too strong), and a couple weeks later at my mother’s urging I had perhaps half of a drink.
I think my mother took my distaste for alcohol as a personal affront. When we traveled to a country with a lower drinking age, she lied to me about the alcohol content of a drink–though she didn’t try that again after I spit the drink back into the glass.
Eventually, she accepted what my siblings figured out when I was still in high school: a designated driver is a handy thing to have around. And now that she’s been forced to give up drinking herself, I think she finally appreciates having someone else sober around. I’ve made a point to bring sparkling cider to family functions, so she doesn’t have to feel left out with her empty wine/champagne glass.
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“Do you drink despite the traditional Quaker testimony against it because you truly don’t think it is damaging, or do you do so because drinking is convenient?”
It would have been difficult for me to answer this politely. To me It is condescending and censorious and on the verge of a meta-message that if one drinks their Quaker credentials are suspect.
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I think it is powerful, strong, brave, important to ask the hard questions in such a manner.
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Best to stay way from alcohol. Worldwide, there is one alcohol-related death every ten seconds, according to one source. When I joined Friends in 1960, as far as I know, Friends’ books of discipline advocated abstinance, even among the liberal Friends.
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Robert and David Barclay, namesakes of Barclay College and Barclay’s Bank, were hugely successful brewers. Their reputation and wealth greatly aided the Friend’s cause in its time of persecution. Robert Barclay’s “Apology” is one of the seminal texts of the faith and still defines much of what Quakers believe.
I’ve always found it ironic, when I was a young Quaker, that the foundations of the faith were built on a brewer’s generosity, yet the prohibitions against alcohol were so firm.
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My main objection to drinking alcohol is that it supports the alcohol industry, and most of their profit comes from alcoholics. When 88,000 people in the United States die every year from alcohol related events, and who knows how many more people at the mercy of alcoholism suffer domestic violence, lost jobs, divorce, and other negatively life changing events, I feel that it’s a moral failing to support such an industry. It seems almost bizarre that we worry so much about not supporting companies who underpay their employees or have bad costumer service, yet most of us turn a blind eye to a company whose products create such a devastating loss of life and quality of life. Their aim is to get people to drink excessively, that’s why it seems impossible to turn on the tv and not see somebody with a drink in hand.
I know from experience that my life isn’t negatively effected by avoiding a couple of glasses of wine a month, so abstinence seems like the right choice for me for moral reasons– I respect people who feel differently about it, but I also have to respectfully disagree that alcohol adds anything of value to life. I was a bit taken aback by the author’s friends statement that abstinence is safe and boring, what about hiking, traveling, sky diving, base jumping? There’s so much in this world to see and experience without the use of intoxicating chemicals. If anything I find drinking to be the rather dull and dreary activity, who wants to sit around a bar all night and lay in bed all day when you can wake up early, fresh and ready to go out and find new adventures?
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