Definition of Total abstinence

Throughout the first 1,800 years of church history, Christians consumed alcoholic beverages as a common part of everyday life and nearly always used wine (that is, fermented grape juice) in their central rite — the Eucharist or Lord's Supper. They held that both the Bible and Christian tradition taught that alcohol is a gift from God that makes life more joyous and that overindulgence, which leads to drunkenness, is a sin. In the mid 1800s, some Protestant Christians moved from this historic position of allowing moderate use of alcohol (sometimes called moderationism) to either deciding that not imbibing was wisest in the present circumstances (abstentionism) or prohibiting all ordinary consumption of alcohol because it was believed to be a sin (prohibitionism). Today, all three of these positions exist within Christendom, but the historic position remains the most common worldwide.