c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) In the sixth century, St. Bridget of Ireland wrote a poem describing heaven as a lake of beer. The Holy Family resided on its shore, able to lap the frothy drink through all eternity.

In the seventh century, Muhammad understood Allah to reveal that strong drink was “Satan’s handiwork.” He set down in the Quran the prohibition against booze for the billion Islamic believers today.

The world’s religions steer a dizzy course when it comes to alcohol.

Americans _ like religions _ have long been divided on the subject, with more than six out of 10 taking a drink at least occasionally. Gallup Polls find another third of the citizenry eschews the buzz from booze altogether.

Either way, alcohol comes imbued with meaning. The toasts “To your health,” “Salud” and “Sante” are not made with tea.

Jews and Catholics give wine a place at the heart of their observances, while Mormons and Southern Baptists pride themselves on sobriety.

Buddhism disapproves of intoxicants. One of its five precepts holds that practitioners should desist from drinking alcohol. Observant Hindus are expected to abstain, although they are less categorical about it than Buddhists. Sikhism frowns on alcohol and tobacco use.

Jews have Purim, a night on which men might drink to intoxication.

Noah himself might have been a drunkard, and Paul instructed Timothy to “drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake” (1 Timothy 6:23). Nevertheless, the sense that Demon Rum stalks the land still lingers in the American religious sensibility.

Key Protestant institutions throughout the nation remain dry, from Wheaton College in Illinois to the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York. Incoming students at Wheaton and some other evangelical schools sign a pledge to abstain.

Historians say this is largely the legacy of a movement fueled by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, founded in 1873. In an era before a welfare safety net, these stalwart women strove to save mothers and children from the wreckage of drunken husbands and fathers.

Their Christian impulse, however, was experienced as anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic meddling among millions of working-class Irish, Italians and Slavs for whom the local saloon was their only version of a men’s club, said Terrence Tilley, professor of religion at the University of Dayton.

The Catholic approach to alcohol is steeped in moderation, he said. Monks have brewed beer and distilled brandy in their monasteries since the Middle Ages.

“Alcoholic beverages are seen as a natural joy of creation, a normal, natural and enjoyable gift of God,” Tilley said. “But any abuse of any of God’s gifts _ from one’s body to the environment _ is sinful. It’s spitting in God’s face.”

Social scientists see the Christian consecration of bread and wine in anthropological terms. Many religions strive to transform the less good and less powerful into the better and more potent.

“Christianity is here constructing a ritual around the use of a mind-acting drug, and that is familiar territory for the anthropologist,” said University of London professor Griffith Edwards. “The Aztecs called their hallucinogenic mushrooms `teonanactl’ or `flesh of the gods.”’

Tobacco filled a similar role in some American Indian societies, and Rastafarians put cannabis to like-minded ritual use, Edwards writes in his book “Alcohol, the World’s Favorite Drug.”

The ritual use of booze bothered Jimmy Carter when the Southern Baptist became president in 1976. Along with lowering the thermostat and thinning the fleet of limousines, Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter eliminated hard liquor from the White House.

“There was a big flap, but the Carters stuck to serving just wine in the White House,” said Mary Ann McSweeney, an archivist at the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum in Atlanta.

Four years later, the Reagans swiftly restored the pomp and the hard stuff.

One of the most abstemious religions remains the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, better known as the Mormons. Sociologists are struck that it is the most successful religion originating in America, and among the fastest-growing in the world.

The Mormon faithful eschew alcohol, tobacco, tea and coffee, and their upright lifestyle has made them favorite recruits at the FBI. The beginnings, according to Richard Ostling’s book “Mormon America,” were messier.

Founder Joseph Smith “liked a nip every now and then, especially at weddings,” Ostling writes. “Smith’s own Mansion House, which operated a hotel, maintained a fully stocked barroom.”

MO/PH/RB END LONG

(Karen R. Long is a reporter for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland.)