Sunday Wining

You likely already know quite a bit about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints if you're reading this blog--particularly if you're a regular reader, as I talk about Mormonism and Mormon life pretty regularly--and since it's Sunday, I wanted to talk about a random observation I had the other week, and it's about wine.

See, in the LDS Church, we don't drink sacramental wine; we use tap water (which, incidentally, tastes like pool water at the chapel where I attend) and scraps of donated bread to represent the blood and body of Jesus Christ. I realize that's one more split from mainstream Christianity (but I already wrote about why that doesn't bother me), but I think there's a lot to be said about a thimble of water and a crust of (almost always) white bread to help remind me of the sacrifice of the Christ.

The plastic cups are Church made and provided. The bread is donated. (Source)

Why don't we use wine? In a revelation given to Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church, and canonized in the Doctrine and Covenants (D&C 27:2-3), it says

2 For, behold, I say unto you, that it mattereth not what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink when ye partake of the sacrament, if it so be that ye do it with an eye single to my glory—remembering unto the Father my body which was laid down for you, and my blood which was shed for the remission of your sins.
3 Wherefore, a commandment I give unto you, that you shall not purchase wine neither strong drink of your enemies...

The historical context of the section explains "In preparation for a religious service at which the sacrament of bread and wine was to be administered, Joseph set out to procure wine. He was met by a heavenly messenger and received this revelation...", and since then the Church has used whatever items were most readily available. Later, this got tied into the Word of Wisdom (the "law of health", outlines of which disallow alcoholic usage). It certainly saves the Church from having to buy a lot of wine, particularly here in Utah: We have a lot of meetinghouses. This article by the Salt Lake Tribune (published in 2014) gives some statistics:

The [Church's] website lists at least 1,210 meetinghouses in the three counties. That is one for every 2.5 square miles, which includes a lot of mountains, wetlands and desert where no one lives.
Salt Lake County has one LDS chapel for every 1.3 square miles, while Davis is only slightly behind with one for every 1.4 square miles. Utah County — which is larger geographically — has one for every 4.6 square miles.
When it comes to population, the three counties have one Mormon meetinghouse for every 1,614 residents of any belief, not just Mormons.

And we've only grown. I can't see the three closest chapels from my home because too many houses are in between me and them, but they're all within an easy walking distance, and all within a mile. Each building houses between two and four congregations (called wards), which host between 200 and 400 people per week. Even if you went with average numbers (three wards per building, 275 or so participants in the sacramental service), you're looking at each building giving out 825 sips of water per week. That times the 1,210 meetinghouses in the three listed counties above, and you're looking at over 998,000 worshipers.

That would be a lot of wine.

Of course, the Church provides the cups, which cost both for manufacturing and distributing them, and the Church runs a lot of its finances off of tithing from the members, so it's not hard to imagine that, were we still a wine-imbibing church, we'd have our own vineyards and wineries. These would, following the aforementioned section of the Doctrine and Covenants, provide the wine--likely at a subsidized* cost for each ward.

One of the things about Mormon doctrine--and, by extension, its culture--is that there is an "age of accountability", a time at which a person's worthiness before God and her or his salvation shifts from "guaranteed" to "conditional". This age is eight years, the child being too innocent to receive anything other than salvation at any earlier time. After a child is eight, she or he can be baptized into the Church (with parental permission) and is considered a member for the rest of her or his life.

Now, Mormons believe that the sacrament helps us to remember Jesus Christ, His sacrifice, and the covenants that we've forged with God on the day we were baptized. For someone like me, that's going back to 27 April 1991, when I was baptized as an eight year old. A weekly ritual, using cheap bread and tap water, helps to waft me toward salvation.

There are a lot of kids in a Mormon ward, and they see their parents getting, as one kid apocryphally said, "A pretty good snack" each week. Naturally, they want to share in it. Currently, Mormon parents will share the holy emblems of the sacrament with their children--a separate cup, a crust of bread--to get them accustomed to the ideas behind the sacrament. This prepares them for the day in which the child chooses to be baptized and renew her or his covenants weekly.

And that leads to my random question: Would we do this generational-conditioning if we still drank the wine? This isn't a, "Well, they're too young to drink, so of course not," because .05 ounces of wine once a week isn't about to make anyone an alcoholic, and, as I just pointed out, a person can become a member of the Church at age eight. Would eight year olds be barred from drinking sacramental wine? I doubt it.

Anyway, this was a really long way to ask a question that's not terribly relevant, but there you go. If you didn't know some of this stuff about Mormonism, hey, now you do.

Final thought: If we drank wine instead of water, every pair of pants, tie I own, and white shirt in my closet would have sacramental stains on them. I struggle to get that little cup to my mouth correctly every time.

Okay, I'm done.



----
* Despite the Church's--or, perhaps, more accurately, its members'--reputation for strong conservatism, Mormons practice a voluntary form of socialized welfare, and the missionary work (which missionaries pay into) is likewise socialized. I'm certain some people would quibble about the usage here, but "socialized" is probably more accurate than "communist", which would be the other term that could describe it. The point is, I find the incongruity interesting.