C
Contarini
Guest
My wife is the real expert on this (actually she wrote her dissertation on the switch from wine to grape juice in the Eucharist). The “General Rules” which are still officially in place speak of abstinence from “spiritous liquors,” which I think originally meant distilled drinks. I don’t think there are any other official rules these days. Many Methodists in good standing do drink alcohol, but at least in the more conservative regions there’s still a stigma against it (one of my friends at Duke was a Methodist minister who had to hide from her congregation the fact that she and her husband drank).
The wording requiring “the unfermented fruit of the vine” has been dropped I believe, and a few Methodist churches use fermented wine. But they are in a very small minority–grape juice is still very much the favored option. (At Duke Chapel, which was an ecumenical space anyway, they used both wine and grape juice. That’s the only context in which I’ve ever seen Methodists use wine for communion.)
Again, my wife knows the details much better than I do. If I’ve gotten something wrong I’ll correct myself later when I’ve had the chance to consult her!
Edwin
