I have given up alcohol for Lent, I've also given up chocolate but that does not seem to surprise anyone! At our Sailing Club Launch Supper I stuck to J2O's and had a really enjoyable evening, and I'm not surprised, alcohol does not equal fun, and I am quite able to enjoy myself without it! And as I say I did!
I'm often asked if I drink, I guess that is because I am a Methodist Minister, and the responses I receive when I say yes vary from a sigh of relief to a tutting and shaking of the head! Some folk are more intrigued they want to know what and how often, and one group of neighbours really made me smile by surreptitiously inspecting the contents of my recycling bin! People are intrigued about the relationship Methodists have with the bottle!
A belief-net article on Methodism and alcohol highlights a Lenten abstinence campaign by a Methodist Church in North Carolina, U.S.A., it began as a response to a group pf teens who turned up drunk to a church church dance drunk and had to be taken from the church by ambulance for treatment for alcohol poisoning. The article goes on to unpack the rather strained if not sometimes secretive relationship that Methodists have with alcohol, and although this is an article about the UMC in America I think it has parallels here in Britain. It continues:
“We are very uncomfortable acknowledging that Methodists drink,” said the Rev. Cynthia Abrams, who works on alcohol, addictions and health care issues for the Washington-based social policy agency.
“This is a campaign that opens the doors to conversation, a way to talk about alcohol, about drinking, its impact on young people, on our own perspectives and to dialogue about what that means for us as a church today.”
We are uncomfortable, very uncomfortable... I think that is a pretty good description of Methodisms stance on alcohol, we don't quite know what to say, and aren't quite sure whether we are behaving badly when we have a glass of wine or two! As for me I like a glass of wine, mine's a red- a Merlot preferably....
Recently though I have stopped to think again, reports like this from the Guardian which say:
"Cheap supermarket booze is playing a major role in alcohol-related problems which costs every adult living in Leeds £730 a year to deal with."
and:
"Leeds doesn't have a vibrant nighttime economy, it has a drunken one. The fact is alcohol is so cheap these days."
"The problem isn't with the pubs, where I live in LS9 pubs are closing down because they're not making enough money. Local shops are selling alcohol so cheaply that 13-year-old youths can buy two litres of cider for £1.49. Unless we do something about those prices and the shops who supply it nothing's going to change.
"I'm not afraid to go into the city centre at night, but I am afraid to go near my local shop because of drunk youths. We have the highest incidences of takeways and underage drinking in the city."
The coverage of the same issue by BBC Look North showed some truly shocking footage!
I wish Leeds was unique, but it isn't yesterday in Durham my husband Tim came across two homeless guys and started a conversation with them, one had lost work and family and ended up in prison, the other just could not maintain a normal relationship with anyone, all because of alcohol. Now they are on the streets, one has hope, he wants to be "clean", the other has lost all hope, they were carrying a 2 litre bottle of cider and some wine, that was breakfast!
Tim spent some time talking to them and the encounter was still fresh in his mind when it came to the College Communion Service ( he is studying in Durham and preparing to become a Methodist Deacon), he says on his bog Images and Stuff:
"The College communion service had three pieces of scripture, the first two were:
2 Corinthians 5:16-21 which begins “So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view” and again I am thinking about this homeless guy.
The second scripture is from Luke 15:1&2, 11-24 and it is the story of the prodigal son but the verse 2 has these lines: “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
Then the idea began to form and I suddenly understood what Jesus would do for the homeless guy. He would quite simply be his friend, love and care for him, welcome him and eat with him. That is what the image is all about.
I cannot bring the homeless population of Durham home with me, but maybe I can take a bit of time to befriend some of them. Maybe something could be done to help them more but as yet I don’t know what or rather I don’t know how."
We live in a society where it is freely and cheaply available almost 24/7, a society where young people, young women prepare to go out for the night not by putting on make-up but by downing a bottle of wine or two so they can have fun! The Methodist Church in Great Britain recently criticised the government saying:
“We are totally unconvinced that the Government’s proposed ‘responsibility deal’ on alcohol regulation will be effective in reducing the problem of harmful drinking."
and:
“Medical bodies have consistently argued that the increased affordability and availability of cheap, strong alcohol in recent decades, is the main driver of the UK’s problem drinking culture, and subsequent health and crime problems. Alongside these bodies, we will continue to call for a minimum unit price for alcohol. Research by Sheffield University in 2008 found that a fixed price of 40p per unit would only cost moderate drinkers an extra £20 a year as opposed to £200 for harmful drinkers, but would reduce incidents of crime by 16,000 per year, saving at least £17 million in police, NHS and other costs.
“We have an opportunity to reverse the devastating effects of years of under-regulation of the drinks market. Pledges to put alcohol unit values on labels and promote responsible drinking are likely to be totally undermined if not accompanied by limits to advertising and a broader rethink of alcohol pricing. If the Government means to keep its promises around harm reduction, alcohol policy should be informed strongly by medical evidence and not sidelined by the pressures of the industry.”
All this has left me wondering, perhaps now is the time to give up alcohol, and to do something positive with the money we would have spent on in, not just during Lent but as an ongoing lifestyle choice. Alcohol is addictive, a friend of ours who works in a homeless shelter reckons it is worse than drugs. The gospel has always been counter-cultural, and while it does not condemn alcohol the problems that it is causing in our culture, the burden on the health system, the police and the way it wrecks lives and families calls me to wonder if abstinence as a life style might be prophetic providing of course that we are willing to talk about it and not be silly or coy!
The belief-net article finishes with this:
For some conservatives, the church-wide Alcohol Free Lent campaign is a welcome reminder of the Methodists’ temperance heritage — “a brief flicker of remembrance of those origins,” said Mark Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy and author of Taking Back the United Methodist Church.
“For several decades the board has mostly neglected its call, so it’s positive that at least during Lent they are upholding that,” said Tooley, whose Washington-based institute is a frequent critic of the General Board of Church and Society.
The issue is still a rallying cry for conservatives, who recently lost a legal fight to make the Church and Society agency adhere to its charter and focus exclusively on alcohol and temperance issues.
But more than a simple say-no-to-booze campaign, Alcohol Free Lent is about reflection, said Abrams. “Somehow there is this perspective that because the church mentions abstinence we are saying people cannot drink,” she explained.
That’s not the case. Instead, the campaign seeks to encourage an open dialogue on a touchy subject.
And that, Abrams said, “is a very Methodist approach.”
So let's begin an open dialogue, all comments welcome!
(Picture by Tim)
