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n 1979 a drunk driver veered off the road, tore across a well-manicured lawn, and struck a parked car. In that car, tucked safely into her baby seat, was my friend’s infant daughter. While the little girl’s mother was escorting her brother and sister into her grandma’s house, the drunk driver struck, and the baby’s short life ended. One person dies every twenty-two minutes in the United States because of an alcohol-related accident.1 Americans ages seventeen to twenty-four are more likely to die from drinking and driving than from any other single cause.2 “An estimated 310,000 [Americans are] injured in [alcoholrelated accidents] each year”—a rate of one injury “every 2 minutes.”3 Alcohol can also lead to violence. The United States Justice Department reports that “4 in 10 violent” crimes “involve . . . alcohol.”4 “The abuse of alcohol is present in 70% of all murders.”5 “Victim reports show [that] on average each year . . . 183,000 rapes and sexual assaults involve alcohol use by the offender, as do just over 197,000 robberies, about 661,000 aggravated assaults, and nearly 1.7 million simple assaults.”6 The Bible is right! Though God’s words have long been ignored and forgotten in our culture, accident and crime statistics attest that what He says is true: “Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder” (Prov. 23:31, 32). “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise” (Prov. 20:1). Where Is the Voice of the Christian Community? Not long ago the Christian community stood united in its opposition to the use of alcohol. On April 24, 1965, Christianity Today warned the Christian reader to abstain. “People must be informed that the use of alcohol is not unlike Russian roulette: every tenth person becomes automatically hooked. The only solution is total abstinence.”7 Yet on April 3, 2000, the same magazine published this statement by J. Lawrence Burkholder, president emeritus of Goshen Christian College in Indiana: Christians who do not commit to a principle of total abstinence should follow a guideline that would represent both discernment and Christian freedom by allowing limited use, now and then, and within the context of family, friendship, religious celebration, and diplomatic protocol. These limits need not imply the strictness of an absolute principle. Still, they should be taken seriously. Such a policy offers the practical advantages of sobriety, the personal advantages of responsible maturity, and the theological advantages of biblical wisdom.8
Chuck Phelps 18
As moderation and toleration replace abstinence and intolerance as the common view held by our Bible-teaching churches and schools, warnings like that printed by Christianity Today in 1965 are seldom heard. Could the present silence and ambivalence of the Christian community in America be partially responsible for our nation’s ever-increasing alcohol-related tragedies? It is especially disquieting that a Christian college president would suggest such a policy, given the state of secular camFrontLine • May/June 2010