Fridays with Benedict: Chapter 40, Let Us at Least Agree to Drink Moderately

Having dealt with the proper amount of food in Chapter 39, in Chapter 40 of The Rule of St. Benedict Benedict turns to the issue of "The Proper Amount of Drink."

Benedict wants the monks to refrain from wine. This was, apparently, the ideal of the earliest monastic communities. But Benedict recognizes he's fighting a losing battle. The monks want their wine. And so he accommodates them in a charming passage:
6We read that monks should not drink wine at all, but since the monks of our day cannot be convinced of this, let us at least agree to drink moderately, and not to the point of excess.
Given the contentious nature of alcohol consumption in Protestant Christianity in America Benedict's advice seems very wise. We aren't all going to agree on this issue, so "let us at least agree to drink moderately, and not to the point of excess."

Incidentally, this is one of the great failures of Protestant Christianity, a failure to teach young people how to drink moderately. Young Christian people, growing up in conservative homes, are exposed to only two models of alcohol consumption: teetotaling (the church model) versus binge drinking (the cultural model). Christian teens just aren't exposed to models of responsible drinking, where you get a pint or share a bottle of wine and have a nice long conversation with friends. Where do Christian teens see that model in church or on TV/movies? It's a model Europeans know very well, but is all but unknown to conservative Christian youth in the USA.

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