All right, welcome to the nonprofits.
Our fourth and final segment this week takes us across the pond to mary Old, England. The Church of England has ruled that non alcoholic wine and gluten free bread cannot be used for Holy Communion, affirming that only wheat based bread and fermented grape juice are valid sacramental elements. While acknowledging the difficulties this creates for those with dietary restrictions, the church maintains that receiving only one element still constitutes
full participation. Critics, including synod member Reverend Canon Alice Kemp, argue that this policy excludes those unable to consume gluten er alcohol. However, Bishop Michael Ipgrave emphasized that changing this would require overturning long established church doctrine. We wouldn't want to have to do that. This story is from Newsbreak by George Lithgow on February ninth, twenty twenty five, and I would like to hand this to Stephen first.
Is this move by the Church of England.
Is this BIB based or if they preach that I'm sorry, if they preach that we are to do what Jesus would do is this what Jesus would do.
Tell you what Jesus would do. Can't let me, let me pars it down this way. This is you know, while I was in Bible college, this is the handles that we were given for for handling the overarching message of the Bible that obviously Jesus is the focus of that. In the beginning, God was like on earth and he, you know, interacted with man and woman more importantly man
face to face. And then they sinned, and so then God had to remove himself a step, so then he was speaking more indirectly, and then as man continue to sin even more, he had to get further and further until he's speaking through Moses. Now he's speaking through the prophets. Now he's giving them a king and speaking to the king,
and the king is speaking to the people. And then you know, just this creation of a system in order to because we can't communicate to God face to face, we need this the rules, right, Okay, So then when Jesus came along, he was like, hey, look up or sorry? Whence that the Israelite people were so concerned about breaking any of these rules and facing expulsion from the land. That put an extra layer of rules around the rules to prevent anyone from ever coming close to breaking the
rules and displeasing God. And that was displeasing God. And he came down and said, hey, listen up, your fuckers, you're really missing the point. You're really missing my heart here. I care about people, and you're putting all of these rules around to try to exclude people. And the Kingdom of God is all about including people, not about excluding people.
So when I hear a story about this where the Church of England says, hey, we've got these rules, no, no, no, the Bible doesn't say that our communion bread, our communion wafers need to have wheat. No, no, no, the Bible doesn't say that communion wine needs to be made from fermented grape. That's just our rules and we can't break those rules because that would be inconvenient. And to hear that it's excluding people based on their own fucking rules,
and what is the fucking point do? Why? What? How are you missing the point of this of this Like it's so clearly like Jesus is you know, you're calling out the Israelites for this idea that oh no, I don't I'm not going to give the I'm not going to support my parents because what I would have given to support my parents, I'm actually going to give to God and that's what God wants. And Jesus is clearly calling them out for placing these rules of man above
the rules of God. And I don't understand how the Church of England could be missing the point so massively clearly, uh that that it's the it's the hearts of people. And if you're excluding people from participating in the sacraments and saying well, it's okay, like no, fuck off, that's what I have to say. That's what Jesus would say.
Jesus would funk that shit.
Okay, all right, thank you, thanks Stephen EJ. We're going to jump over to you here. Steven thinks that obviously this doesn't have a biblical foundation, so.
What could be the motive here? Could it?
Is it really just boil down to long held tradition or what's going on with this?
So, as far as I can understand, the whole reason was because it's not accurate ceremony. However, it's an odd distinction to make since the wine is only a representation to the cee of Church of England sorry much or unlike how the Catholic Church believes in transcendentation, which they believe, it's actually turning into the body and blood of Jesus, which is very disturbing that I've thought about it after
being a Catholic. But to make it worse, likely due to the region he was in, it wasn't whine they would have been drinking anyway. It was rather more likely to be bail. So maybe the Churche of England should switch to a pinal egad instead of being swapped tight about. All it does is include people who want to join in. I mean, yeah, Church of England that standard for them. But come on, I know that church isn't exactly fond of inclusivity, but wait, if people want to be saved,
you should let them. And if you disagree with that, you're disagreeing with Jesus.
That's our job, right, We don't let them infringing on our territory.
Right exactly.
So wait, so I just want to do a little sidetrack here.
So you said the Church of England is kind of exclusionary by nature?
Is that is it?
Can you go into that a little bit more? I mean, what other ways is the Church of England exclusionary.
So Britain and England specifically has a lot a lot of the Scottish English rivalry comes from Catholicism versus Protestantism. Basically, whenever one was Protestant, the other was Catholic, and whenever the Church of England was Protestant and Scotland was Catholic for a while, what would happen is there'd be a large population of Catholics up at the northern border, partially in England, and they'd get very very upset with this
and to the extremes they'd start going around killing people. Uh. In fact, especially around the Tudor era, after Henry the eighth side with the whole Queen Mary of Scots and the Elizabeth first situation.
To present like Henry Harry just wanting to get his rocksoff man, the.
Man knew what he wanted, right, that's maybe that's his life goals, right, does you drink wine?
Well?
No, sorry, sorry, we're interrupting you. Inside joke there, Sorry, go ahead, Ejectricy, please continue.
It's okay, it's the The Church of England has a history of completely decimating groups of people and excluding them for not agreeing with them.
Is it is that there is that they have political differences and they're using the religion as their knife to separate, to separate these groups.
Okay, sometimes it is.
Especially the founding, there was a there was a genuine belief that they were really working for gold and the head of the chart should be the king, right, which I'm sure you can see what Henry loved it?
Right?
Yeah? Interesting? Interesting?
All right, Well I want to jump back to Helen, uh real quick here. We haven't heard from you much on this one. What do you think you know, what's what's your take with this? I know I know that you have a Catholic history, What's what what's the Catholic do you on this?
So as a pharma Catholic, I've done a lot of campibalism with the body and body and bloody Christ also e J I'm sorry, Like, I just find it very funny that, you know, the Henry in the eighth really wanted to get laid and he was like, Hey, I'm going to separate from the Catholic Church and create my own church. Yeah, okay, get divorce so I can get my rocks off. Like it's it's a very weird. It's
very like toxic masculine vibes. But regardless, like I'm going to create a whole new religion and separations, so I get my rock sop, very toxic masculine, a very religious.
I see you, Henry the Eighth, I see you.
For I am so.
That being said, I remember when I was a kid, since I could not drink wine because I was not twenty one day, would give us grape juice. So like the Catholic Church has already been kind of bending the rules anyway, So.
I don't want to see you.
I know you're a whole better than a Catholic church who would just give the kids wine.
Right, yeah, like this like this is the thing.
When I was right, he didn't turn water into grape juice after all, So like, well just wasn't a.
Thing like two found years ago. I'm so sorry, Like but that's that's the thing, Like they're the Catholic Church has always been making exceumptions like look at the Pope being like kind of okay with gay people now, like like it is they are constantly adjusting to the changing wings of the people. I don't know why the Church of England is kind of and the like, it's kind of like, no, it has to be wine. It has to be like you know, something has gluten in it.
And I'm like, listen, I'm like, if you're all powerful god is very specific that about bread and wine, that that his flesh cannot be transmuted into a like you know, a rice cracker and grape juice.
I don't.
I'm like, does your god actually have any fucking power? Like, let's like think about.
This just for two seconds.
Just think about it for two seconds, Like this is supposed to be the creator of the universe, like all powerful.
Yeah, if he's.
Able to transmute his body and blood into bread and wine, what does it matter if he has glutenant or not. And by the way, grieps don't have gluten. So I don't even know why this is a fucking argument.
I'm assuming that the way the biscuits is a thing.
So I'm sorry. So rice is like his like you know, his scryptonized Like I can't do rice.
Maybe it doesn't transubstantiate as well, Right, this isn't.
Powerful deity, Like why were you having this argument? So maybe your God isn't as powerful as he thought he was.
Just gonna say, and maybe.
Because I'm just as as the conservatives like to say, I'm just asking questions.
Sorry, Stephen, what were you saying?
Just that maybe you're not putting your faith in God. Maybe you're not trusting him that he's going to protect you from those harmorfuls of gluten. If you really believed in God, if you are a really real Christian, you would eat that wheat and you'd know that you'd be Okay.
Maybe that's it.
Maybe they want to exclude the faithless, right, they want to exclude the faithless or the weak of faith. That's interesting, Okay, Well I want I want to propose another scenario here. So sometimes people get kind of nitpicky about the details because they want to make something seem more important than it is. So the idea being that if this weren't so important, then why would we care about the details
so much? Right, So I want to I'm gonna start with Steven, since we're talking to you right now, do you think the Church of England could be intentionally fluffing up the importance of communion or or what here?
Like like I think like maybe it's I could see it being a flex like hate you know what we're making the rules and this is what we say the rules are. And if you don't like it, well you can go to hell. Literally I could totally see that. Uh yeah, that and and like that idea of like not backsliding, not there's no are what's what's a quote from the Crucible? When that all theology is a fortress
and no fault can be viewed as minor. Like everything has to be important, So we are not going to give on this small detail because there are no small details than God.
How about you, EJ, What what do you think about about that?
Do you think that that this they could be focusing on these details because they want to make it seem important or could it be because as Steven suggested, maybe all things are important. There's nothing but that's that's not worthy of one hundred percent attention and that kind of thing, or do you think it's something else.
I have a feeling this is a bit of an internal church passing match, and that this is the result of two people who are quite high up in the church really beckering about it. However, I would be very very curious to see if King Charles, the current King of England, King of Bretton unfortune and head of the chart would intervene to say no, no, let's let's allow gluten since he has the power to do that. He also, weirdly has a car that runs on left over wine, so I'm sure he'd be all for it.
Does it run on leftover wine or does it run left over grape juice? I mean, come on, there has to be you know, we got to take that into consideration here.
If gape juice as combustible, possibly as grape, I'd have to test that one sugar.
I don't know, maybe who knows, who knows what? All right, I want to let's jump back to Helen here. I want to in the article they said, and I quote the guidance states that the bread must be made with wheat flour and the wine must be fermented grape juice to be constant consecrated. But they do make wine that has non alcoholic wine, that is that has been fermented.
You can make wine, and then you can take actual wine that's produced through the normal process, and then there are various ways that you can get the alcohol out.
I mean, there's like.
Reverse osmosis, and there's other other types of process you can boil the alcohol off. I've tried actually making non alcoholic homebrew beer by by you make the beer regular and then you boil the alcohol off slowly and at fairly low temperatures because because the alcohol boils at a lower temperature than the rest of the liquid. So there are ways that you.
Can make non alcoholic wine that has been fermental.
To Scott, you're talking science. Can't talk science where you talk about religion.
That's true, that's true. That's true.
However, science being a gift from the Almighty, of course, But we can make non alcoholic wine. And I even found a company and this was over a year ago that I saw this. I found a company that in Spain that can make They they've they've perfected a process of making gluten free wheat wheat flour. They can take the glue out of the wheat flower and so theoretically you can still have gluten free uh you know, gluten free biscuits without having and it's still made out of
wheat flower. You can have non alcoholic wine and then still have it be fermented. If these options are not acceptable, then what's the deal? What what I mean? What's going on?
It's almost like it's almost like people in that have power want to control certain things in certain groups of who gets access to those positions of power.
Weird interesting, you're the kind of throughout all of the kind of thing.
It's kind of like, okay, like Nietzsche is a not burger, but one of the things he did point out, like I'm not like a huge fan niche, but one of the things he did point out is that the priests and the people, uh that is keeping you from like becoming an individual and having your own enlightenment and your own mind is the fact that you will get access to this divine power if you start gatekeeping over like little things over gluten, you're not as far as you're
not part of the super special club, and which also kind of goes against their whole idea of like, let's say you have an alcohol addiction. You can't consume wine, alcoholic wine if you have an alcoholic addiction. So are you going to tell those people, I'm sorry you don't get to.
Maybe they're not worthy then maybe they're not in that particular way.
Maybe that renders them unworthy.
And doesn't that kind of speak to the insidiousness of religion that only super special people in super special groups, and you're following certain lines get to participate in certain rituals, and maybe we should be looking at this particular story not so much about like gluten versus non gluten versus like power structures and how power striachers kind of hold the masses in certain you know, levels, rather than all being part of humanity.
And if you are allowed to, if you want to participate in particular faith, maybe the faith should accommodate the person rather than the person accommodating the faith.
Well, that that would not God does not about that kind of stuff at all. That's all about obedience.
Strict adherence. I mean, that would be totally against the whole thing. I mean, then mass hysteria.
I'm going to point out, though, I'm just I'm just as I'm just gonna ask questions. God concerned about gluten two thousand years ago, to say, what's a concerned when Peter established the Catholic Church, was there concerned about gluten?
I'm just asking questions, right.
Right, All right, Well, speaking of questions, I do have a surprise question for all of you, and so I'm going to read something to you, and then I want to get your feedback on this. This is on the Church of England dot org website. So this is the official Church of England website. And this is a press release that came out the day after our the article. We just have been discussing and I'm going to apologize in advance. I'm kind of throwing all of you under
the bus here. Thanks, but I'm also throwing myself under the bus as well.
Here's the here's the press release.
No, we're not banning gluten free bread or non alcoholic Communion wine. Contrary to recent reports following question asked by a General Synod member, the Church of England is not banning gluten free wafers nor non alcoholic wine at communion. Church of England churches across the country routinely offered gluten
free bread or non alcoholic wine at Holy Communion. Many professional ecclesiastical suppliers have long for vided wine or bread which may contain tiny traces of alcohol or gluten, which can legitimately be considered non alcoholic or gluten free. We hope this helps clarify and avoid further confusion. So in a way, we were all kind of sucked into this article and none of us bothered to check if it
was true. Now, granted I did come across this, but I wasn't I'll admit I wasn't looking to double check the article.
I wasn't looking to double check the article.
I was just looking for another another perspective, and I happened to come across this. But the story is is wrong. They're they're not doing that kind of restructions.
Bias because I call this on our bias, like you, all of us, myself included, on our biases.
So and I think that's great. I think that's really great that you called this on this bias because those of us that are in the spice, spice spices, taste, the spice was flow. It's all about the spice that are in this space that we automatically see articles like this and we automatically go like, well, like religion is fucked. They're obviously trying to, you know, pull one over the eyes.
But you made a very legitimate point that you yourself were like, well, maybe I'll just do a little bit more digging, which the rest of us did not, and you pointed out it's like, oh I was wrong about this, So I think that, So kudos on you. For pointing out that we.
All have bias.
I appreciate that. It's it's you know, it's hard.
It's hard to call it's hard to call yourself out on that kind of thing.
Stephen, What do you what do you think about that?
I know, I want to look up what is it? Uh? What's that website daily Daily Grind? What I'm blanking on the website that you can check your sources through to find out what their bias is? And what what's the webs snap? No no, no, no, no ground new thank you. I knew it had something to do with grinding, but not grinder. Yeah, that's that's uh. I want to double check. Yeah, run through there and see where this information came from.
It's true. I saw it and I was just pissed off about it because it just it just feels right. It has that ring of truth about it, right, at least from from my limited perspective, that seems like something because yeah, there's historical precedence for it, e g.
What do you think I'll give you the last the last word on.
This, so I f weln on because I then not blank, like, oh, the Church of England is doing this incredibly stupid bias thing. I just kind of went, we tracks with our story. And also it's a good lesson on like checking sources before I'm going to be one hundred percent honest. I put like a fair bit of research into the other ones. When I saw that's one, I just kind of went, yeah, something.
It's super easy, isn't it. It was super easy?
Yeah, yep, No, I think it's a it's a perfect example that we need to check ourselves, right.
And you know all, I'll admit this to you.
Last night I was talking to one of our producers and you can probably guess who it is based of what they.
Said I asked them.
So I told them, look, I just found this in my research that this whole story is just bs uh. Do you think I should tell the others or do you think I should string them along and then tell them at the end. And they said, totally string them along and tell them at the end. So you can probably figure out which producer.
Right there, I tell you who it was.
So I also want to put I also want to ask all of our viewers if you phoned yourself going along with the flow of this, thinking, yeah, this is kind of this is a ridiculous thing. It's a good reminder that we all need to check ourselves. We all need to check in with ourselves. We need to double check our sources, especially in these days of misinformation.
EJ. Did you have a last thing you wanted? I saw that you saw a hand up there?
Yeah, if I may. This is a very good example of don't use us as like, use us as a jumping off point, because we get stuff wrong. And if you are a bit like me and you occasionally watch videos halfway through, guaranteed if I was watching this and not starring it, I would have like heard that tuned out and then got to like.
Forgot this part exactly.
It's very good to even when you see it from what you think is a trusted source, even if it says go and check it. We get stuff wrong. We're human and we are mostly self admitted idiots.
Yep, yep. People make mistakes. And when if people and to the people.
That wrote the article too, they should have updated that, they should have updated that.
I mean, it's on them too.
It's we're all you know, it's all part of this information transition, you know, this information highway thing here.
We all we.
Need to police it Helen, you gotta go ahead take the last word, and then we're wrapping up.
As someone then knew this was true, I pointed out in the beginning that like we were giving grape juice like you do not have to consume like actual wine. I'm also going to check myself that I was like, yeah, this seems like perfectly legitimate, even though I knew it wasn't true. So my own bias kind of kicks me in the ass. So I will admit that I am so sorry.
One who audience that's uh making mistakes as human what we got to learn from our mistakes and be better next time. So, speaking of next time, if any of you want to watch us be better than we were this time,