Outside the Camp

Recently I have been exposed to dif­fer­ent tra­di­tions of the Lord’s Sup­per — of which there seem to be an end­less vari­ety. One thing that puz­zled me is the pre­dom­i­nance of the cup (or cups) of Welch’s grape juice in place of red wine. Since unfer­mented grape juice is a fairly modern-day con­ve­nience I won­dered where and why this tra­di­tion began.

In a nut­shell, the “grape juice” tra­di­tion orig­i­nated with the Welch’s Grape Juice com­pany against the socio-religious back­drop of the late 1800’s pro­hi­bi­tion move­ment. The father of the com­mu­nion grape juice is Thomas Bran­well Welch, a physi­cian and Methodist lay-communion stew­ard from New Jer­sey. Like many Methodists of the day, Mr. Welch was opposed to the sale and con­sump­tion of alco­holic bev­er­ages and an advoc­cate of the tem­per­ance movement.

Since grapes have nat­u­rally occur­ing yeast it is impos­si­ble to pre­vent stored grape juice from fer­ment­ing and turn­ing into wine. Thus wine was the sta­ple of the Lord’s sup­per table for nine­teen cen­turies until a way was dis­cov­ered to pre­serve the juice of grapes in an unfer­mented state. This came when Louis Pas­teur invented his name­sake preser­va­tion process in 1882. After the pas­teur­iza­tion process was suc­cess­fully applied to milk in 1886, Welch won­dered if the same process could be used on grape juice. In 1869 Welch suc­cess­fully pas­teur­ized grape juice and began mar­ket­ing it to the local Church’s as “Dr. Welch’s Unfer­mented Wine”. His son Charles would later join him in the juice ven­ture, leav­ing behind a den­tistry practice.

Their prod­uct was suc­cess­ful and caught on in both the sec­u­lar and reli­gious world. It was renamed, “Welch’s Grape Juice” and the “Welch’s Grape Juice” com­pany formed. The Methodist church ruled that grape juice would offi­cially replace wine in com­mu­nion ser­vices. Other denom­i­na­tions fol­lowed in this regard. For instance Pas­tor Charles Rus­sell, founder of the Watch­tower Soci­ety, was also opposed to alco­hol and argued for the appro­pri­ate­ness of hav­ing grape juice at the Lord’s Sup­per instead of the tra­di­tional wine; though, he ulti­mately left it to the deci­sion of the local groups.

So the tra­di­tion of the grape juice is fairly mod­ern and grew out of the polit­i­cal, pro­hi­bi­tion move­ment that was spear­headed by reli­gious denom­i­na­tions, par­tic­u­larly the Methodists. Schools out.

Next up the secret ori­gin of the waffle.