Chapter Three - Holy Spirits

CHAPTER THREE

Holy Spirits

ALCOHOL DIDN’T JUST survive the rise of religion. It got absorbed, sanctified, banned, and perfected.

This is the age where monks brewed the strongest beer on Earth, where churches passed out wine like salvation, and where some of the most intoxicating poetry in history came from cultures that technically outlawed booze.

It’s where alcohol became sacred or sinful, depending on who was pouring.

Let’s start with Christianity, where wine isn’t just approved, it’s literally divine.

In the New Testament, Jesus doesn’t just drink wine, he turns water into it as his first miracle.
Later, during the Last Supper, he lifts the cup and says:
“This is my blood. Drink it.”

And Christians said, “Bet.”

From that moment on, wine became a core ritual, communion.
It’s not symbolic for many believers. It’s real.
In Catholicism, they believe in transubstantiation: the wine becomes Christ’s literal blood during the Eucharist.
Yes. Literal blood. That’s commitment.

So while early Christians debated theology, sin, and salvation, one thing was clear:
The wine stays.

Medieval monasteries weren’t just places of prayer.
They were research labs.
And the monks?
They were brewing some of the finest alcohol in Europe centuries before craft beer became a hipster obsession.

Why?

Because they had time, discipline, access to ingredients, and a love for process.
Also, they were technically fasting during Lent, but beer didn’t count as food.
So they brewed liquid bread: thick, hearty, high-calorie ales that filled the belly and numbed the suffering.

This gave rise to legendary brewing orders.

Benedictines. Cistercians. Trappists, whose beers today still hit like a theological thunderclap.

They perfected fermentation, built breweries, documented recipes, and preserved alcohol-making knowledge through the Dark Ages.

So yes:
God’s chosen nerds were also the first master brewers.

Islam, unlike Christianity, forbade alcohol.
The Quran explicitly condemns intoxication. Associating it with Satan’s handiwork, moral decay, and societal chaos.

But here’s the twist:

Some of the most legendary wine poetry in world history comes from Islamic civilization.

Take Omar Khayyam, 11th-century Persian poet, who famously wrote:

“A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou beside me singing in the wilderness…”

That’s not exactly Sharia-friendly.
But it reflects a deeper, metaphorical relationship with wine in Persian Sufi tradition, where intoxication becomes a symbol of divine love.

Wine was sometimes real.
Sometimes metaphor.
Sometimes both.

Meanwhile, in practice, alcohol flowed in many parts of the Islamic world, often underground, but never fully gone.

You can ban a drink.
But you can’t erase 10,000 years of craving.

In medieval Europe, there was a class divide in booze.

The rich drank wine.
The poor drank beer.
The clergy drank both, but called it holy.

Wine was expensive, imported, and symbolic of power.
Beer was hearty, homemade, and symbolic of the people.

But both were seen as gifts from God, as long as you didn’t overdo it.

Of course, “overdo it” was subjective.
One monk’s moderation was another peasant’s funeral.

History is full of saintly figures who drank. A lot.

St. Brigid of Ireland prayed to turn bathwater into beer.
St. Arnold of Soissons encouraged people to drink beer instead of water during plagues, because it was safer. (He was right.)
Martin Luther, who kickstarted the Reformation, was married to a former nun who brewed killer beer and he was obsessed with it.

These weren’t rebellious rogues.
These were men and women of God, using alcohol as healing, comfort, and community.

So next time someone says Jesus wouldn’t drink that, remind them:
He made it.

Religion didn’t kill alcohol.
It made it more interesting.

Some turned it into sacrament.
Others turned it into sin.
But almost everyone, at some point, used it to reach for something bigger. Whether God, truth, peace, or just a really good night.

The sacred and the sloshed have always walked side by side.

Because at the end of the day, alcohol isn’t just chemistry.
It’s ritual.