Greensboro, N.C. — Southern Baptists held the line against alcoholic spirits on Wednesday, passing a resolution expressing "our total opposition to the manufacturing, advertising, distributing, and consuming of alcoholic beverages."
The resolution blames alcohol for the breakup of families and" countless injuries and deaths on the nation's highways."
It urges that members of the denomination's trustee boards and committees be committed abstainers.
The vote followed a volley of debate by messengers to the annual meeting of the 16-million-member denomination.
"Southern Baptists have always stood against consumption of alcohol," said Dwayne Mercer, pastor of First Baptist Church in Oviedo, Fla., a member of the convention's resolutions committee. "Southern Baptists have always believed in total abstinence... My parents always taught me if you don't take the first drink, you don't have to worry about taking the last."
But Benjamin Cole of Parkview Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, compared alcoholism to gluttony, saying he was concerned that the convention chose to address the sins of others rather than their own.
Opponents of the resolution pointed out that the Old Testament said God blessed wine, that Jesus turned water into wine and that the apostle Paul urged his disciple Timothy to have "a little wine" for his stomach.
