A. We should note, first of all, that almost no one does the Lord’s Supper “like Jesus did” it, with a full Passover meal, around a table, with a passed common cup of wine, and unleavened loaves of matzoh, torn into pieces. Most Protestant churches partake from individual cups, passed in trays, with pre-cut cubes of leavened bread made from bleached white flour. Catholic churches do have wine, and a common cup: served at a rail, with a vaguely bread-like wafer. If communion only counts as communion if we do it just like Jesus, then we all fail.

The pressure of the temperance movement of the 1800s eventually moved more and more congregations to adopt the policy of using unfermented grape juice.

The history of American Presbyterians is interesting, showing how as a denomination people struggled to sort out a ruling on this matter. In 1877 the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. declared “that the matter be left to the Sessions.” Again in 1881: “The essential elements of the Lord’s Supper are bread and wine. The General Assembly has always recognized the right of each Session to determine what is bread, and what is wine. . . . No new legislation is needed on this subject.”

The 1892 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) said: “The Scriptural element to be used in the Lord’s Supper is the fermented grape-juice. This Assembly would not, however, be understood as declaring that the use of unfermented grape-juice, as conscientiously practiced by some of our churches, would . . . vitiate the validity of the ordinance.”

Further temperance overtures moved the 1895 Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Assembly to resolve, “Whereas, it is [our] duty . . . to avoid even the appearance of evil, and whereas there is a well-grounded belief that danger lies in the use of fermented wine .. . it is [our] sense that unfermented fruit of the vine fulfils every condition in the celebration of the sacrament.”

Thus by the 1890s our predecessor General Assemblies had clearly acknowledged the validity of using unfermented grape juice, but they never ruled against the use of wine. We should also note that it became easier to insist on unfermented grape juice when that became easily available: after Thomas Welch had developed a method of pasteurizing grape juice so that it would not ferment, in 1869.