Book Review: #PoisonedChalice

Upfront and wholeheartedly: Jennifer Woodruff-Tait's book The Poisoned Chalice: Eucharistic Grape Juice and Common-Sense Realism in Victorian Methodism
 is a very clear, well-written, friendly book that has made excellent use of a range of sources.  Though this is an "academic" book, I can easily see non-academics reading it and finding it understandable.  I have already recommended it to several friends who study US religious history, who have promised to order it for their libraries.  But I think anyone who has wanted to think about "why grape juice" will find this a great read.

Indeed, I would have benefited from this book had it been around in my seminary days. As a junior MDiv student at Princeton Theological Seminary in the late 90s, an argument arose about alcohol use on campus because some found it unfitting that students studying for the ministry should be drinking alcohol in any context, including communion.(For the record, there were always two cups available - one for wine and one for grape juice...) "Gee," I remember saying rather snidely, "I'd hate for Jesus to work a miracle on YOUR water." 


Jenn Woodruff-Tait discusses how grape juice advocates read the Wedding at Cana (through something called the two-wine theory) and also shows how science, reason, immigration (and anti-Catholicism), and a desire for good hygiene all colluded in making grape juice necessarily the drink of choice at the altar table.

In reading this book, I am reminded very much of Amy Laura Hall's book Conceiving Parenthood: American Protestantism and the Spirit of Reproduction Religion & Spirituality Books)
, which similarly uncovers Protestant sensibilities (this time in the early twentieth century) to show how Protestant sensibilities colluded with particular middle class ideals. 

Woodruff-Tait is "technically" a historian; Hall is "technically" a Christian ethicist.  But perhaps this should suggest to us two things: 1) the separation of "fields" really makes very little sense in our days of being interdisciplinary; 2) Woodruff-Tait's book should rightly cause all Christians to reflect on the ways in which our cultural standpoints merge with our theological understandings in helpful and unhelpful ways.  Our moral imaginations are captivated by things that seem "common sense" even when these do not (necessarily) reflect the gospel.

As a one-time Methodist (indeed, as one who was on the General Board of Discipleship and present at some of the discussions of the Eucharist that Woodruff-Tait mentions in chapter 7) and one who has now come into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church, partly because of the Eucharist - this book causes me to reflect on the ways in which my understanding of the Eucharist (both then and now) might be colluding with non-gospel sensibilities.

Thank you to Jennifer Woodruff-Tait for a fine book!  I look forward to reading more from her!


Note: I was provided a copy of this book by the University of Alabama Press.. This review was not influenced by a free book - just in case you (or the FTC) were worried about this detail.

About The Book:
This work examines the introduction of grape juice into the celebration of Holy Communion in the late 19th century Methodist Episcopal Church and reveals how a 1,800-year-old practice of using fermented communion wine became theologically incomprehensible in a mere forty years.

About The Author:
Jennifer L. Woodruff Tait is Adjunct or Affiliate Professor of Church History at Huntington University, Asbury Theological Seminary, and United Theological Seminary.
You can find more about her at: http://on.fb.me/poisoned-chalice-page

In Which I discuss the Importance of Novels for Doing Theology

My PhD advisor has often suggested that fiction is good for theologians to read.  Until I met him, I had generally thought that my reading mystery novels when I was supposed to be reading Barth IV.2 or, heavens, the Summa Theologica, was a big vice. But who am I to argue with my Doktorvater?

Truthfully, some of the mystery novels I read were not worth the pulp they were written on, but most of the greats are worth any ethicist's time.  You can read one and call it an examination of motives, intentions, consequences, and all those other wonderful parts of action theory.  It is no mistake that many theologians were also mystery writers: G.K. Chesterton (Father Brown), Dorothy Sayers (Lord Peter Wimsey), Ralph McInerny (Father Dowling - and I used to love the tv show, shot in my very own beloved Denver), to name a few.  Can I count Ellis Peters (Brother Cadfael) in there too?  I guess she was more a medievalist than a "theologian" in the modern sense, but let's face it - most medieval historians also have to be theologians to one extent or another. Some day I want to write a book about them.

But it usually isn't a novel by a theologian that captivates me or that says something theological.  I continue to be mesmerized, years later, by Nick Hornby's About a Boy (which has also been made into a decent  movie version).  This is a book about two "boys" - one a thirty-something man who acts like a boy, and another a twelve-year-old boy who acts more like a man than boy. 

Hornby plays with names - Will Freeman, the adult, has no responsibilities.  He has no family left and is independently wealthy (because his dad wrote a popular Christmas song, no less).  The first time we meet Will, he talks about what it means to be cool:

How cool was Will Freeman? This cool: he had slept with a woman he didn't know very well in the last three months (five points). He hadn't spent more than three hundred pounds on a jacket (five points). He had spent more than twenty pounds on a haircut (five points) (How was it possible to spend less than twenty pounds on a haircut in 1993?). He owned more than five hip-hop albums (five points). He had taken Ecstasy (five points), but in a club and not merely at home as a sociological exercise (five bonus points). He intended to vote Labour at the next general election (five points). He earned more than forty thousand pounds a year (five points), and he didn't have to work very hard for it (five points, and he awarded himself an extra five points for not having to work at all for it). He had eaten in a restaurant that served polenta and shaved parmesan (five points).

Will is the quintessential "free man," to the point that he meditates on what it is to say "No man is an island," but finds himself as a wonderful island, thankyouverymuch.  Moreover, in what sense is he free?  He is free to buy as much as he can, and exactly those things that make him cool.  But he is not free in what I call the "riding the waves" kind of free.  (Meaning: I used to go river rafting fairly often; there's something really amazing about being on the river and going with the rapids.  I've never tried surfing so no idea if my view of it is similar to that....)  He does not find himself able to enjoy life except insofar as it wins him points. 

Hornby contrasts Freeman with Marcus, the son of divorced parents.  Early in the book, his mother attempts suicide, so Marcus finds himself in the role of parenting his mother and worrying about all the things about his life that most parents hope their children wouldn't worry about at such a young age.  So, he finds himself an outcast at school because he can't be a boy.  He is as isolated as Freeman and as un-free as Freeman.

 Hornby's novel aims toward making the man a man, and the boy a boy.  That requires that the two "islands" become related to others.  Communities - weirdly shaped communities that don't look necessarily ideal, by the way - get formed in the course of this novel.  What the characters find is that being related is scary - Freeman speaks of being a newly hatched chick, bewildered by and vulnerable to this world in ways that his consumer-island self had not been. 

The novel is therefore rich in theological themes and in themes theologians ought to be interested in, even if not inherently theological: freedom, what it means to be human, one's purpose in life, consumerism, gender, identity. 

A good book is thought-provoking in so many ways - this one's worth a read if you haven't yet done so.