Christianity

When Jesus was born, there was no tobacco in Palestine or anyplace else in the "Old World." Thus, neither the Hebrew Bible nor the Christian gospels have anything to say about tobacco. Nevertheless, from 1492 onward, the history of tobacco and Christianity intersect in many places. Tobacco was an argument for and hindrance to the evangelization of Native Americans, a cause for theological conundrums, and an inducement to immorality. Despite the generally negative view of tobacco held by religious authorities of diverse Christian denominations, clerics contributed to the spread of tobacco, and ecclesiastical institutions benefited from taxes on its sale. Today, basing their opposition on scientific research showing tobacco's harmful health effects, many church groups actively oppose the global tobacco industry, and some denominations forbid their members from consuming tobacco.

Tobacco and Diabolical Idolatry

Because Ferdinand and Isabella, known as the "Catholic Kings," sponsored Christopher Columbus's inadvertent voyage to the Americas, the first European power to colonize in that hemisphere was Spain. The rulers of Spain quickly sought a papal bull to legitimize their territorial claims: In May 1493 Pope Alexander VI ceded the papal bull known as the Inter caetera divinae, which gave the Spanish Crown full and perpetual dominion in America in return for bringing people into the Christian faith. Accordingly, from the beginning of the colonial project, it was important to establish that the indigenous peoples of America lay well outside the community of Christians and to identify them as heathen and, oftentimes, as idolatrous.

This partly explains why, for the first eighty or so years of the European presence in the Americas, tobacco was identified as a manifestation of Indian barbarism, idolatry, and even diabolical intervention. In 1535, the first published reference to tobacco appeared in Historia General de las Indias (General History of the Indies), authored by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, a conquistador-turned-chronicler. The first mention of tobacco appeared in a section entitled the "crimes and abominable customs and rites" of the indigenous people of Hispaniola (Taíno). Oviedo introduced the section on tobacco with the statement, "The Indians of this island have among other vices one that is very bad, which is taking smokable things which they call tabaco in order to leave their senses." Thus, he began by singling out tobacco use as a particularly vile example of Indian vices. Later, when describing the Caquetío Indians (northern Venezuela), he identified tobacco as a substance that allowed Indian shamans to summon and communicate with the Devil. Oviedo's works influenced subsequent European chroniclers' and historians' views of tobacco and initiated a long-lasting legacy of stigmatizing tobacco as an accessory to pagan rites and a diabolical influence.

Oviedo was motivated to demonize Indian religion—and so expose tobacco as a manifestation of barbarism—to justify the claims and depredations of the conquistadors. Others were committed to the evangelical project and sought to find the best way to convert Native Americans into Christians. At first tobacco was of little concern as missionaries focused on practices more obviously at odds with Christian beliefs, such as human sacrifice in the former Aztec domains of Mexico and what they took to be "idol worship" throughout the Americas. By the second half of the sixteenth century and the seventeenth century, however, some clerics, recognizing the integral place of tobacco in many indigenous religions, viewed native tobacco practices as a hindrance to genuine Christian conversion. Accordingly, in 1556, the synod of Santa Fé in Colombia prohibited Indians from growing or using tobacco. In the early seventeenth century, a cleric in Mexico discovered that "idolatry"—or traditional Mesoamerican beliefs and practices—was rife among his parishioners in central Mexico. His report, entitled "Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions and Customs That Today Live Among the Indians Native to New Spain," documented the pagan vestiges in the rites used by midwives to deliver babies, doctors to cure illness, farmers to rid growing fields of anthills, theft victims to recover stolen goods, fishermen and hunters to catch fish and birds, woodcutters to fell trees, travelers to protect themselves on long journeys, and householders to ward off misfortune from newly constructed houses. In all of these he detected the malign influence of tobacco lurking. He found that even the medicinal uses of tobacco were intertwined with beliefs about tobacco's divinity; healers would pray and summon deified tobacco as they applied it to wounds. By that time, however, tobacco was used as much, perhaps even more, by the colonial elite and residents in Spain, so there was no discussion of outlawing tobacco.

Catholic Orthodoxy

Even as tobacco became folded into a discourse of Indian idolatry, some observers, including Oviedo himself, recognized that increasing numbers of Christians, as well as pagans, ranked among tobacco devotees. Many such users cited tobacco's purportedly salubrious effects, but clerics such as Bartolomé de las Casas condemned it as a vice. He lamented that even when reprimanded, these smokers insisted that "it was not within their power to quit." By the second half of the sixteenth century, it was clear that the tobacco habit was well rooted in the New World among Europeans and Africans, along with the Indians. There soon appeared a flurry of Catholic Church edicts concerning tobacco use that targeted Creoles (European inhabitants in the Americas) and Europeans.

Given tobacco's diabolical and pagan associations, it is striking that there was no serious effort to ban tobacco. Rather, Church edicts and theological guidelines sought to define orthodox usage and prevent tobacco from contaminating sacred spaces and activities. The earliest directives targeting European tobacco consumers related to worries that tobacco consumption might interfere with transubstantiation during mass (the Roman Catholic belief that the bread and wine in the Eucharist become the body and blood of Christ). A provincial synod that met in Lima, Peru, in 1583 ruled that priests could not consume tobacco before administering communion:

It is forbidden under the penalty of eternal damnation for priests to take tobacco before administering mass whether taking tobacco or sayre (the Peruvian term) in smoke orsnuff, by way of the mouth, or the nostrils, even under the guise of medicine.

Likewise, in 1585, a provincial meeting in Mexico ruled that "because of the reverence which should be shown in the taking of communion," no priest should take tobacco before administering mass, nor should its use taint anyone receiving communion. The overt concern was that by ingesting tobacco, priests would break the condition of a total fast required for the wafer to become the body of Christ.

By the early seventeenth century, tobacco had become well entrenched in the daily habits of increasing numbers of people living in Europe. Theological regulation followed close behind. Treatises in Catholic Europe echoed the Latin American synods, insisting that priests should abstain from tobacco before administering communion on the grounds that it interfered with transubstantiation. However, other authorities disagreed. In the mid-seventeenth century, the Italian theologian Antonio Diana stated, in his treatise on canon law, "I respond negatively to the question posed, namely whether the consumption of tobacco in leaf, powder or smoke impedes communion, for tobacco in leaf and powder is consumed through the nose and therefore does not break the natural fast because it is not consumed by an eating action which is done only with the mouth." But there was no clear consensus, and local synods appeared to decide the matter themselves; in 1685, the Council of Tarragona threatened excommunication to those who smoked or chewed tobacco before (or an hour after) saying mass or receiving communion.

More generally, some Church authorities viewed tobacco as filthy (and thus unsuitable for Church or other sacred spaces), generative of other vices (such as drunkenness), and generally suspect because of its pagan origins. In 1642 Pope Urban VIII issued a bull that forbade the smoking or taking of tobacco in churches or in their environs in the archbishopric of Seville, under penalty of excommunication. The bull called attention to the fact that tobacco abuse had reached the point that tobacco stained the floor and its odor pervaded church. Similarly, in 1650, Pope Innocent X threatened excommunication for those who committed sacrilege by using tobacco in St. Peter's. In 1642, the vicar general of Seville also forbade ecclesiastics, "be they regulars or seculars, and men or women, and of whatever estate, trade, condition, or dignity," in the archbishopric from using tobacco "in public." The edict called attention to the scandal caused by the uncontrolled use of tobacco by the clergy "at all hours, in all places, with publicity." In addition, discomfort about tobacco's pagan origins lingered. A pamphlet published by one of the proponents of the 1642 papal bull argued that the "idolatrous priests of the Indies invented and introduced it . . . so that the Devil, by the properties of tobacco, could affect their imagination."

The repetition of such edicts makes it clear that clergy were a conspicuous subset of tobacco devotees. In the case of the Italian priest Joseph of Cupertino (d. 1663)—revered for his mystical visions, asceticism, and levitations—his snuff habit jeopardized efforts to make him a saint. Opponents of his canonization charged that Joseph's frequent recourse to snuff made him unfit for sainthood. However, his advocates argued that he took snuff for its health benefits, and, more importantly, because of his humility. They insisted that with the smell of tobacco, he disguised the great odor of sanctity that he emitted and that suffused his cell, thereby proving that he did not seek to exalt himself over his brothers and that he was free of the sin of pride. In fact, Joseph's canonization did not succeed until after Pope Benedict XIII rescinded the prohibitions against the use of tobacco by the clergy in sacred places.

The church with the least tolerant policies toward tobacco was the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1634 the patriarch of Russia categorized tobacco use (smoke and snuff) as a deadly sin, leading the czar to prohibit its use. First-time offenders received whippings and nose slitting, whereas repeat offenders faced the death penalty. The prohibitions remained in effect until the end of the seventeenth century, when Peter the Great gave concessions to an English joint stock company to import tobacco in return for an ample sum.

Protestant Responses

In Protestant Europe, the approach to tobacco resembled that of Catholic regions. Although many clerical authorities reviled tobacco, few serious efforts were made to ban it outright. The most famous early critic of tobacco on religious and health grounds was James I. As the king of England, James I was also head of the Anglican Church. In A Counterblaste to Tobacco (1604), he fulminated, "[T]here cannot be a more base, and yet hurtful, corruption in a Country, then is the vile use (or other abuse) of taking Tobacco in this Kingdom." He vilified tobacco and its users by calling attention to its Indian origins:

What honor or policy can move us to imitate the barbarous and beastly manners of the wild, godless, and slavish Indians, especially in so vile and stinking a custom? . . . Shall we, I say, without blushing, abase our selves so far, as to imitate these beastly Indians, slaves to the Spaniards, refuse to the world, and as yet aliens from the holy Covenant of God? Why doe we not as well imitate them in walking naked as they do? in preferring glasses, feathers, and such toys, to gold and precious stones, as they do? yea why do we not deny God and adore the Devil, as they do?

More particularly, he charged that those who abused tobacco "sinned against God," for they were guilty of lust and drunkenness. "Are you not guilty of sinful and shameful lust . . . that although you be troubled with no disease, but in perfect health, yet can you [not] be merry . . . if you lack Tobacco to provoke your appetite to any of those sorts of recreation, lusting after it as the children of Israel did in the wildernesse after Quailes?"

King James I also compared tobacco addicts to alcoholics. He described the trajectory of an alcoholic—"no man likes strong headie drinke the first day but by custome is piece and piece allured, while in the ende, a drunkard will have as great a thirst to bee drunke, as a sober man to quench his thirst with a draught when hee hath need of it"—to that of the tobacco user who needs more and more of it to achieve the same ends. Yet despite his diatribe, there is no evidence that James actually succeeded in banning tobacco. Instead, he, like so many other heads of state facing depleted treasuries, used tobacco's suspect status as justification to levy successive taxes on the weed, beginning in 1604, the year of the publication of the Counterblaste. The poet-theologian Joseph Beaumont (1616–1699) wrote in his sermonic verse, Tobacco, that "Wee/Mistook thy power, whose cheife & mightiest part/Doth on y^eSoule not on y^e Body prey/And can heal this, whilst it doth destroy," and charged that smokers "rather than part with thee," were willing to "look like Hell." Moralists in Catholic and Protestant countries alike often linked tobacco smoke to the infernal fumes of hell.

As in Catholic Europe, moralists thought it particularly unseemly for clergymen to indulge in tobacco. This was part of the reason that authorities prohibited students—many of whom were clerical candidates—from smoking at Oxford and Cambridge Universities in the early seventeenth century. However, in practice many men of cloth also belonged to the community of tobacco users.

Some Protestant sects did go so far as to forbid laity and clergy from using tobacco. In New England, the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629 prohibited the sale or use of tobacco within the colony unless "upon urgent occasion for the benefit of health and taken privately." The ordinances were repealed but before long promulgated again, their authors having found that "since the repealing of the former Laws against Tobacco, the same is more abused then before." In 1638 and again in 1647 the assembly ruled as follows:

Nor shall any take tobacco in any Inne or common Victualing-house, except in a private room there, so as neither the Master of the said house nor any other Guests there shall take offence therat, which if any doe, then such person shall forthwith forbear, upon pain of two shillings sixpence for everie such offence. And for all Fines incurred by this Law, one half part shall be to the Informer the other to the poor of the town where the offence is done.

Similar measures were decreed in other North American religious settlements. In Connecticut, Puritan regulations dating from 1647 ruled that youths under the age of twenty-one could not smoke, and that those over twenty-one wishing to consume tobacco required a physician's certificate stating that it was medically necessary, accompanied by court license.

In the eighteenth century, some Methodist congregations strongly discouraged tobacco use on the grounds that it was "needless self-indulgence . . . unless prescribed by a physician." Preachers were ordered to enforce "vigorously, but calmly the rules concerning needless ornaments, drams, snuff, and tobacco," and for preachers to receive approval by the governing body, they had to respond affirmatively to the question, "Do you take no snuff, tobacco, drams?" By 1792, leaders of the congregations repealed the tobacco rules.

Benjamin Rush, a famous physician, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and devout Presbyterian, opposed tobacco on moral as well as medical grounds. He charged that "the use of Tobacco, more especially in smoking, disposes to idleness, and idleness has been considered as the root of all evil." He also posed the rhetorical question and its answer:

What reception may we suppose would the apostles have met with, had they carried into the cities and houses to which they were sent, snuff-boxes, pipes, segars, and bundles of cut, or rolls of hog, or pigtail Tobacco? Such a costly and offensive apparatus for gratifying their appetites, would have furnished solid objections to their persons and doctrines, and would have been a just cause for the clamours and contempt which were excited against them.

Religious authorities continued to inveigh against tobacco use in the nineteenth century, but increasingly on grounds of its deleterious effects on health and its association with liquor. The nineteenth century was a period of religious reawakening in the United States, and many religious groups sought stricter adherence to moral codes. Though not as despised as alcohol, tobacco became the target of moral reformers in the Temperance Movement. In fact, one of tobacco's primary faults, in the view of the crusaders, was its association with alcohol. As Rev. Orin Fowler stated in 1833, "Rum-drinking will not cease, till tobacco-chewing and tobacco smoking and snuff -taking shall cease." Lucy Gaston was one of the most formidable leaders in the antitobacco movement, which focused increasingly on cigarettes. Applying the tactics learned in the Women's Christian Temperance Union, she turned her attention to tobacco in the 1890s, urged children to wear antitobacco pins, and rallied groups of children to sing songs against smoking to shame their addicted elders. Such efforts led to temporary successes: between 1895 and 1921, fourteen states banned the sale of cigarettes, though all these laws were eventually repealed.

The Mormon denomination of the Latter-day Saints also emerged in the nineteenth century and came to forbid their members from taking tobacco. In 1833 the Church's founder, Joseph Smith, received a divine revelation known as the "Word of Wisdom," which declared that tobacco was "not for the body, neither for the belly, and is not good for man," except as a poultice for bruises and treating "all sick cattle." The origin of the revelation is often connected to an incident in which Smith's wife, Emma, complained to him about cleaning up the tobacco mess left behind by his disciples, prompting him to ask God for guidance about tobacco use. The basis for the prohibition rested in tobacco's hazardous effects on health. The strength of the Mormon Church in Utah contributed to efforts of the state to enact prohibitions against tobacco between 1896 and 1923.

Benefits

It might so far seem that Christian denominations worked to obstruct the use of tobacco throughout the world. But, in fact, different churches—or some of their members—benefited from tobacco, and, in turn, tobacco taxes and profits supported various ecclesiastical institutions. Because of the pan-European and, after 1492, global character of the Catholic Church, clerics were themselves often agents for the diffusion of tobacco. Spanish missionaries—not all of them so zealous as Ruiz de Alarcón—who lived and worked among Indians learned of tobacco's medicinal and recreational uses and brought back samples and know-how to their orders in Europe. A nuncio (papal representative) named Prospero di Santa Croce is credited with having introduced tobacco to Italy in 1585 after his sojourn in Lisbon, an early byway for American goods and knowledge. (His botanist protégé celebrated his achievement by comparing it to those of his Crusader ancestors: "Prospero di Santa Croce when he was sent as nuncio of the Holy See to Portugal brought this [plant] hither for the advantage of the Roman people. As his ancestors brought the wood of the holy cross, in which all Christianity rejoices, so the family of Santa Croce is called distinguished and zealous for our bodies and our souls.") Likewise, Spanish missionaries—some coming directly from the Americas—likely brought tobacco to Asia at the end of the sixteenth century.

Ecclesiastical institutions, like secular states, also came to rely upon tobacco taxes as an important source of revenue. The papal states—those territories in Rome where the papacy exerted temporal as well as spiritual power—implemented a tobacco monopoly in 1655. Following the loss of lands and revenue after the Protestant Reformation, the papacy came to rely increasingly on revenue from Italy itself; the increasing consumption of tobacco and the model of other monopolies made a tobacco monopoly an appealing expedient. Like so many other European states in the seventeenth century, the papal states established a state monopoly in which the exclusive right to manufacture and sell tobacco was granted to a private entity in return for annual payments. Catholic institutions also directly engaged in tobacco cultivation. Most notably, in colonial Paraguay members of the Jesuit Order organized tobacco plantations, relying on the labor of Guaraní Indians until the Jesuit expulsion in 1767.

Protestant churches in the tobacco regions of colonial North America relied on tobacco to support their clergy. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, ministers of the Anglican Church in colonial Virginia received their salaries in tobacco (which served as currency more generally). For instance, in 1696, Virginia ministers received 16,000 pounds of tobacco annually. Consequently, during years of high demand, they prospered, but when demand fell, so did their purchasing power. The considerable fluctuations in the price of tobacco also contributed to the instability in their earning power. In Maryland, the Anglican General Assembly levied a poll tax of forty pounds of tobacco. The Quaker minority, unhappy with the Anglicans' efforts to establish themselves as the state church, refused to submit to the tobacco tax and petitioned the king, as well as the assembly, for its repeal. The king agreed to repeal the law, but the assembly passed a revised version in 1696; two more rounds of repeal and revision ensued. Finally, the assembly succeeded in passing the tax, which ultimately became void with the American Revolution.

Contemporary Christianity

Today, nearly all Christian denominations view tobacco as a scourge to physical and sometimes moral health. Within this general consensus, however, there is a wide range of approaches, encompassing pastoral counseling, mandates of abstinence, education campaigns, and political and corporate lobbying. In general, the contemporary theological basis for the negative attitude evinced toward tobacco by various Christian denominations comes from Paul's admonition in Corinthians 6:19: "What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?" In other words, the basis for tobacco opposition is firmly grounded in its deleterious health effects, long suspected but given recent confirmation by the scientific studies in the late twentieth century.

Despite this common theological ground, various denominations and even members of the same church approach antitobacco efforts in very different ways. For many, the issue begins by discouraging or even prohibiting individual use. Seventh-Day Adventists and Mormons are required to abstain from tobacco use. Other denominations urge church members to resist or to give up tobacco habits, often focusing their efforts on youth.

Some Christian religious groups and churches go further and use their moral authority to combat what they see as immoral corporate and governmental practices. In 1991, the American Baptist Churches passed an antitobacco resolution that, among other actions, condemned tobacco corporations' practices of targeting products to particular social groups and securing land in developing counties to raise tobacco ("thus taking land out of food production and increasing tobacco consumption within those nations"), and it called for Congress and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to end tobacco subsidies to growers. In 1994, a coalition of antismoking religious groups that included Catholic Charities USA, the Seventh-Day Adventist church, and the United States Methodist Church lobbied Congress for a two-dollar-a-pack tax increase in the federal tax on cigarettes (over the 24 cents-a-pack federal tax in place at the time), asserting that it was "not only wise policy, but a moral obligation." A denomination particularly engaged in efforts to stem worldwide tobacco use is the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Its humanitarian arm (Adventist Development and Relief Agency) has education and/or smoking cessation programs in Mongolia, Morocco, and Cambodia, among other places. A coalition of churches in England and Ireland called Christian Aid has focused on poor labor practices used in tobacco-growing regions in southern Brazil, blaming Souza Cruz, a subsidiary of BAT, for growers' health problems caused by pesticide use and for forcing growers to sell their crops for too little money.

Another tactic employed by religious groups is to mobilize their power as institutional investors to challenge corporate policies. The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, a coalition of 300 Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish institutional investors, began in 1980 to urge tobacco companies to limit tar and nicotine levels and add health warnings on cigarettes sold in developing countries. In more recent years, the coalition has aimed its efforts at discouraging nontobacco companies from benefiting the tobacco industry. It counts as successes McDonald's 1994 ban on smoking in corporate-owned restaurants and 3M's 1996 announcement of a global phase-out of tobacco advertisements for its billboards.

Finally, many use spiritual teachings of Christianity and other religious traditions to help them in their efforts to quit smoking. Some find prayer indispensable in their quest to give up tobacco. The notion of appealing to a higher power is also important in the more outwardly secular, twelve-step recovery programs. In the Nicotine Anonymous movement, smokers "ask God to help us accept the craving . . . and to give us the courage not to take care of this craving—as we have always done—by smoking one more cigarette."

? MARCY NORTON

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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heathen any person or group not worshiping the God of the Old Testament, that is, anyone not a Jew, Christian, or Muslim. May also be applied to any profane, crude, or irreligious person regardless of ethnicity.

Creole originally, a person of European descent born in the Spanish colonies. Later, the term was applied to persons of mixed European and African descent. As an adjective, it can describe admixtures of European and African cultural components such as language, cookery, and religion.

snuff a form of powdered tobacco, usually flavored, either sniffed into the nose or "dipped," packed between cheek and gum. Snuff was popular in the eighteenth century but had faded to obscurity by the twentieth century.

concession a grant of land, usually by a government, to produce and market certain commodities or perform certain services for profit. Agricultural concessions were sometimes offered by European governments to encourage immigration.

plantation historically, a large agricultural estate dedicated to producing a cash crop worked by laborers living on the property. Before 1865, plantations in the American South were usually worked by slaves.

subsidiary in commerce, a branch or affiliate of a larger unit that provides components or support services.

tar a residue of tobacco smoke, composed of many chemical substances that are collectively known by this term.