With this week’s theme being religion, I thought it might be a good idea to discuss some of the interactions between theology and beer. In some ways this revisits the article 2 weeks ago (in the alcohol themed issue), which addressed how different religions treat alcohol. I’ll admit up front that as a Christian, there is only one faith I feel qualified to discuss this week. If you have different ideas, then please feel free to send in a letter or two or four, I’d be interested to read them.

So, Christianity and beer then. Well, as Craig discussed two weeks ago, the Bible doesn’t forbid drinking, but it does discourage excessive drinking due to the embarrassing events that ensue afterwards. But is there perhaps a way that Theology could be seen to be more inclusive of beer? A Theology PhD student informed me that “Beer is proof that God Loves us and wants us to be happy”, so let’s see if we can qualify that a bit more.

Now, one of the most controversial and well known passages in the Bible is the first part of Genesis, describing the creation of the world. The general pattern goes like this: “On the [n]th day, God said “Let there be [some aspect of creation].” And God saw [what he had made] and it was good.” I’m not going to debate whether we should try to apply modern scientific writing methods to a passage of prose in order to determine the exact way the world was created, because I don’t think that’s the important message here. The important message here is that God created and “it was good.”

A lot of people (including a large number of Christians) are misled into thinking that Christianity believes that things of the flesh are all bad, and things of the spirit are good. This isn’t supported by the Bible, instead it comes from Greek philosophy. But my point here is this: the things God have created are good, so we should enjoy them. God created (among many other things) malt, hops, yeast and water and the processes that turn them into that drink we all know and love. In other words, when I sit down to enjoy a good pint of bitter, one could say that I am enjoying Gods creation as an act of worship. I’m sure that’s a method of worshiping God that we could all enjoy, regardless of your own beliefs.