“Does an adult who drinks encourage an 11-13-year-old to drink or not?” asks George. “I suspect that most 11-13-year-olds want to be adults. And if they only see role models who drink alcohol then we are going to get more 11–13-year-olds drinking.
“If they’ve got more role models showing that alcohol-free is ok and you don’t always have to drink to have a good time then that is an alternative model of something positive. Although there is no biblical injunction that says don’t drink, I think in today’s society there is a lot that challenges us to be role models for others. It is because the problem in the UK is spiralling.”
Christians need to reflect on whether their alcohol consumption is healthy, he continues.
“I think that the church has slipped into the alcohol culture that exists and it does not seem to me to be different. What I particularly dispute is this idea that drinking enables non-Christians to see Christians as human beings. I know so many people who don’t drink and it doesn’t affect their relationship with anybody. It actually helps people if they’ve got an alcohol problem.
“The need to have a glass of beer in your right hand is a falsehood. You don’t need that to relate to people. Such culture within the church has not cropped up overnight. It has been a decades-long process.”
Hope UK is calling on the church to start leading the way in overturning Britain’s over-dependence on alcohol.
“I would love it if the church was driving that change back but I think that right now it is society that is starting to drive the change,” believes George. “Before Christmas, a minister said that the Government was going to invest in a social marketing campaign to encourage the acceptance of alcohol-free choices. That’s what I want the church to do. It’s what the church did in the 19th century and it led the way. These days we seem to be following more than leading.”
The one exception to that appears, to George, to be the black majority churches. Most of the voluntary drug educators that join Hope from the black majority churches don’t have to think about stopping drinking because they are already abstainers.
“The black majority churches appear to put much more of an emphasis on not drinking as part of Christian witness,” says George.
On a political level, there are already signs of a change of heart within Government.
“The tide is turning. One year ago the Government was not saying, ‘Let’s talk alcohol-free.’ It was saying, ‘Oh, it’s only the people who are drinking who have got a problem.’ The pressure for change has been growing and growing and growing outside the church and in the big wide world more people are saying we have got to do something about this. I would love to see the church embrace that challenge and opportunity.”
