100 years ago, on January 17th, 1920, the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution went into effect prohibiting the sale and consumption of all “intoxicating beverages”
Prohibition was a fascinating experiment pointing to very different attitudes which are now a minority in our country today.
Alcohol abuse became chronic in this country towards in the 19th Century because of the increasing availability of high gravity liquor.
Prohibition began first as a religious than as a women’s rights movement. Many women lived in fear and in want because of the reckless behavior of their drinking husbands.
Interestingly, the women’s vote wouldn’t come until after prohibition.
One thing I find fascinating is that the process of federally implantation prohibition culminated in an actual constitutional amendment. The social change came through the protests, meetings, and arguments of prohibitionists convincing the voters and elected representatives to pass a new law.
Today, most social change seems to be pushed through the judicial branch, with special attention being placed on finagling the right judges to make decisions. 
The 13 years of prohibition would see the blossoming of organized crime, an abundance of government corruption, and, by the end, essentially the same amount of alcohol consumption.
The church in America, for the most part, stood on the “dry” side of the debate, signaling to the country that alcohol consumption of any kind was utterly immoral. Many Prohibitionists did indeed feel they were specifically called by God to destroy the institutions of alcohol in order to save people’s souls.
It seems strange today, when so much of the Biblical narrative, and the history of Christian worship, is oriented around alcohol. Jesus’ first miracle in The Book of John is not just to turn water into wine, but to provide good quality wine to people who were already wasted.
To be sure, there are also lessons and warnings in the Bible against the overindulgence in festive beverages, specifically as it manifests as habitual drunkenness. Also, there are still Christian groups who are staunchly anti-drinking. I myself went to a Baptist university which was a ”dry campus.”
However, I believe there is a lesson to be learned in the experiment of prohibition for the church today.
I believe the church should be cautious of drawing a hard line in the sand on moral issues. When we as believers take a hard stance we tend to excommunicate anyone who does not toe the line. There are hard lines we should observe, but they still must be approached with a healthy dose of humility, with an eye towards the actions and teachings of Jesus.
Jesus was constantly confronted by religious authorities who chastised him for not taking a hard line. Healing on the sabbath, eating with sinners, even consorting with foreigners were all hard lines that Jesus crossed for the good of the Kingdom.
The church has indeed changed. I serve a congregation with a highly active AA program which also hosts several Bible studies at a growler shop. I’ve also been to more that one church service that meets in a bar.
Overall, I would advise any Christian to be wary of feeling morally superior when so much of our world is not black and white, but shades of gray.
On the subject of amendments, as recently as January 15th, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment guaranteeing  women and men equal protection and treatment under the law. The vote gave the amendmentenough state support to have become law had the deadline not expired in 1982.
Kena Hawkins Newkirk 