On Sun, 10 Mar 1996, David Fahey wrote:
 
> I always have been puzzled about the change in attitude toward alcoholic drink
> that took place in the nineteenth century, why the different response to ageol
d
> problems.  Generally historians explain the change by reference to industrial-
> ization or modernization and, confusingly, explain temperance in religious
> terms too.        A complication is that the nineteenth century was a time of
> growing secularization which meant that religiosity  itself had an altered
> meaning.  New denominations such as Universalism were strongly committed to
> temperance.  All this leads to a question: how much was the nineteenth-century
> temperance movement a condemnation of alcoholic drink because it undermined
> human reason?
 
I, too, have been pondering the meaning of this concept lately.  Human
reason had little place in a concept of religion where "Our thoughts are
not God's thoughts, and our ways are not his ways" (paraphrased from the
Bible).  It seems to me that until Christian religion(s) got to the point
where reasoning itself was considered a God-like attribute . . . where
humankind could at least have more to offer God than seemingly random
selection of those who are saved or damned that whatever we were to do,
good or bad, made no difference.
 
The concept of predestination (where we were chosen by God, not through
ANY act of our own) had, at some point, to be modified or changed by
industrialization and human capacity to change.  Here in America, these
religious concepts were met head-on by eloquent "changers" like those who
came from the "burned-over" district of New York and near-by areas.
 
Thayne Andersen