Jesus didn't drink grape juice at the Last Supper. A Wisconsin minister says jail inmates who want to take Holy Communion shouldn't either.
Wisconsin law forbids delivering "intoxicating liquors" into a prison, but the Rev. Joseph Fisher is trying to convince state officials to allow him to bring full Communion to members of his church who are incarcerated.
"We're talking about less than an ounce of wine," said Fisher, who leads Pilgrim Lutheran Church, a member of the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church.
The situation is a clash between religious freedom for inmates who believe their sins can't be forgiven with grape juice and corrections officials who say serving wine would be illegal and potentially counterproductive to its efforts to treat inmates suffering from alcoholism.
Fisher notes the state Department of Corrections already makes exceptions for religious observances, including permitting American Indian inmates to smoke tobacco during ceremonies in prisons that are designated as smoke-free.
"They won't make an exception for a Lutheran to receive the Lord's supper properly," he said.
Fisher, along with Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, and Sen. Joe Leibham, R-Sheboygan, has spent three years trying to convince corrections officials to interpret the law more liberally to allow him to deliver Communion behind bars. Grothman and Leibham are members of Missouri Synod churches.
But Tom Borgen, warden of Fox Lake prison and head of an agency committee that reviews religious practices, said while tobacco use is governed by prison rules, state law prohibits alcohol.
"We're not in a position to just simply disregard the law," he said.
Still, the committee plans to discuss the issue at its meeting Wednesday, though Borgen said it could take several months to reach any recommendations for corrections officials.
"The department needs to balance its security needs with the needs of all faiths, with the needs of all religions," he said.
While some Christian denominations deem grape juice an acceptable substitution, the Missouri Synod dictates that its members drink only wine or not take Communion at all. Members believe they receive forgiveness for their sins and strengthen their faith through eating bread and drinking wine, which they believe is the body and blood of Christ.
Borgen said it's unknown how many Wisconsin inmates are Missouri Synod, but the denomination has about 236,000 baptized members in the state of Wisconsin and upper Michigan.
Their beliefs about Communion have put the church at odds with corrections officials, who have even rejected offers to cut the wine with water.
Borgen said three-fourths of inmates have issues with drug or alcohol abuse.
"There's a school of thought that calls for abstinence, period," he said.
But Dr. Michael Bohn, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at University of Wisconsin-Madison and medical director of Gateway Recovery, said he didn't know of any scientific reason why taking wine with Communion would cause an alcoholic to relapse.
Bohn said studies of alcoholics in treatment who were given small amounts of alcohol found they were no more likely to start drinking again than those who did not have any.
Fisher also said he's seen no evidence that alcoholics relapse by taking Communion wine.
"The person who is coming to receive the Lord's body and blood is not thinking he's bellying up to a bar," he said.
Grothman, chairman of the Legislature's Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules, has asked corrections officials to put in writing their rules governing Communion wine. That would allow the committee to suspend the rules and introduce legislation to exempt Communion wine from the law.
"All laws have to be interpreted with common sense," Grothman said, adding that doctors are already allowed to administer inmates cold medicines containing alcohol.
Grothman also points to a 2002 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., reinstating a lawsuit by two Roman Catholic inmates who said their constitutional rights were violated by a federal-prison rule that barred them from having wine with Communion.
Since August 2002, federal inmates have been permitted to receive wine as part of a religious ritual, when administered under supervision of clergy, federal Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Traci Billingsley said.