Welch's Innovation
Theme of the Week: Booze Busting
Marian Van Til
Sunday, April 27, 2003
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Key Bible Verse: The priests must never drink wine before entering the inner courtyard (Ezekiel 44:21). Bonus Reading:1 Corinthians 11:20-22, 27-34
Back in 1869, dentist Thomas Welch was elected Communion steward at the First United Methodist Church, Vineland, N.J. He objected to the use of wine for the sacrament and refused to touch it. Meanwhile he heard of Louis Pasteur's new method of killing bacteria in milk ("pasteurization"). He decided to try applying the same principle to preserving the juice of grapes unfermented.
Dr. Welch, his wife, and son Charles gathered grapes from their trellis, washed and cooked them, and squeezed the juice through cloth bags. He poured it into bottles, stoppered them with cork and wax, then boiled them in water to kill any yeast in the juice that would start the fermentation process. It worked!
Welch asked his church to substitute his new "unfermented wine" for the traditional Communion wine. At first the elders viewed his suggestion as "an unacceptable innovation," but he convinced them. Word spread. Temperance-minded churches begin asking for Dr. Welch's Unfermented Wine. Thousands sampled it at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. That year, young Charles left his dental practice to market the family juice full time.
—Marian Van Til in Faith Today
Adapted fromFaith Today (3-4/01) by permission.
Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today/Men of Integrity magazine.
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