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Do Orthodox Christians drink? Alcohol, bars and nightlife when you are dating

What Scripture, the fasting rules and Orthodox culture say about wine and drinking, and how to handle bars, first dates and a partner who drinks too much.

By Orthodate Editorial18 minute read

The short answer is yes, most Orthodox Christians drink, and the Church has never taught that they must not. Wine is the matter of the Eucharist, it fills the cup at the wedding service, and the Gospel that is read at a wedding is the one in which Christ turns water into wine. The same tradition is uncompromising about drunkenness, careful about how and when wine is taken, and has a calendar on which alcohol disappears from the table on a large share of the days of the year. All of that is useful to know on a date, because the question turns up in practice in the most ordinary ways: where to meet, what to order, what to say to someone who is not drinking, and what to do about a partner whose drinking worries you. This guide sets out what the sources say and then deals with the situations in order.

At a glance

Key takeaways

  • Scripture and the Church’s worship treat wine as a gift and drunkenness as a sin, so the standard is sobriety and moderation rather than abstinence, and neither a drinker nor a non-drinker is a better Orthodox Christian for it.
  • On strict fast days, which include every Wednesday and Friday of the year and most of Great Lent, the fasting rules exclude all alcoholic drinks, so the calendar shapes a date more than any rule about drinking as such.
  • Alcohol matters on dates for three practical reasons: it lowers the guard that your boundaries rely on, it is a safety question with someone you do not yet know, and a partner’s relationship with it is a compatibility issue that surfaces sooner or later.

1. What Scripture says, and what it does not

The Bible is not ambiguous, and it does not say what either side of the argument in popular religion usually wants it to say. It affirms wine and it condemns drunkenness, in the same books and sometimes in the same chapter. A few passages carry most of the weight.

  • Psalm 103:15 in the Septuagint numbering (104:15 in most English Bibles) praises “wine that makes glad the heart of man,” listing it among God’s gifts to humanity beside bread and oil.
  • John 2:1 to 11. The first of Christ’s signs is the wedding at Cana, where he turns water into wine when the feast has run short. It is the Gospel appointed for the Orthodox wedding service, so the Church puts it before every couple.
  • Luke 7:34. Christ notes that the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and that his critics called him a glutton and a drunkard for it. The accusation was false, but the premise behind it, that he shared wine at other people’s tables, was not.
  • 1 Timothy 5:23. Paul tells Timothy to use a little wine for the sake of his stomach and his frequent ailments. It is advice about health, and it comes from a man who is otherwise strict.
  • Ephesians 5:18. “Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit.” The apostle’s contrast is between two ways of being filled, and the verse is addressed to the same congregation as the passage on marriage that follows it.
  • 1 Corinthians 6:10. Drunkards are listed among those who will not inherit the Kingdom of God. Proverbs 23:29 to 35 describes the whole cycle of drunkenness with an observer’s accuracy, from the woe and the strife to the waking and the wish to start again.
  • Romans 14:21. Paul will not eat meat or drink wine if it makes his brother stumble. It is a principle of love, and it is what makes a Christian considerate of a friend who cannot drink.

2. What the Church does with wine

The Church’s own practice settles the question of whether wine is clean. The Divine Liturgy is celebrated with bread and with wine, and the Council in Trullo, in its thirty-second canon, takes the trouble to insist that the chalice contain wine mixed with water, against those who offered one without the other. It is hard to square the claim that wine is unclean with a council that legislates how it is to be offered at the altar.

At the wedding, the couple share a common cup of wine, and the Gospel read at the service is the wedding at Cana. The Church does not regard these as concessions to cultural custom. They are part of what it says marriage is, and part of why the rest of the Church year is so careful about wine: it is not a casual substance, and the same drink that is blessed at the altar can be abused in the street.

Two further points keep the tradition honest. The first concerns the clergy. The ninth canon of Trullo forbids a cleric to keep a public house, and goes on to say that if it is not permitted to enter a tavern, much more is it forbidden to serve others in one. The target is not wine but dissipation and public scandal. The second concerns the word the tradition uses for its central spiritual discipline. The Greek for watchfulness, nepsis, is the same word as the one for being sober, and the verb is the one used in the First Letter of Peter, “be sober, be watchful.” In the Orthodox ascetic tradition, sobriety is a spiritual condition before it is a rule about drink, and drunkenness is the obvious enemy of it.

3. The fasting calendar, which affects dates more than any rule about drinking

Here the rules are concrete, and they decide more actual dates than any moral teaching. According to the Orthodox Church in America’s outline of the fasting rules, a strict fast day is one on which no meat, eggs, dairy products, fish, wine or oil are eaten. Elsewhere the same outline, drawing on the standard English-language account of the Lenten rules, makes clear that “wine” here means all alcoholic drinks. The days to which it applies are broad.

  • Every Wednesday and Friday of the year, except in the fast-free weeks, which are Christmas to Theophany eve, the week after the Sunday of the Publican and Pharisee, Bright Week after Pascha and Trinity Week after Pentecost.
  • Four fasting seasons: Great Lent, the Apostles’ Fast, the Dormition Fast from 1 to 14 August, and the Nativity Fast from 15 November to 24 December. The detail varies, but the general pattern is that wine and oil are not taken on the strictest days.
  • Great Lent. On Saturdays and Sundays, wine and oil are permitted, with two meals in the usual way. On weekdays they are not, strictly, though a good many Orthodox now allow wine and oil on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the middle weeks, and a few feast days carry a dispensation. Holy Thursday allows wine and oil, and Holy Saturday allows wine but not oil.
  • The Dormition Fast. Wine and oil are allowed only on Saturdays and Sundays, and sometimes on a few feast days.
  • The Apostles’ Fast and the Nativity Fast. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, oil and wine are allowed. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, they are not. Saturday and Sunday allow fish as well.

4. What that means in practice

The same outline says clearly that the rules are not a law to be applied pedantically. It quotes the passage of the Letter to the Romans on the Kingdom of God, that it is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, and it says that the rules have always been relaxed for the elderly and the unwell, that wide local variations exist, and that in cases of uncertainty a person should ask their spiritual father. That last instruction is the one to follow.

The consequence for dating is a simple habit. Most Orthodox couples who take the fasts seriously will not plan a dinner with wine on a Wednesday or a Friday, and will have a conversation in Lent. If you are the one who fasts, say so in plain words early, without making it a test. If you are the one who does not, ask about the calendar before you suggest a wine bar for Friday. The guides on fasting and on date ideas during fasting seasons give the practical alternatives, and none of them is a hardship: a walk, a concert, a coffee, a meal that happens to be vegan.

There is also a connection with communion that rarely gets mentioned. Most Orthodox parishes expect those who receive to fast from food and drink from midnight before the Liturgy, and to prepare for communion with prayer and, regularly, confession. A late night with alcohol on a Saturday is a poor preparation for a Sunday morning, and it is a better question to put to your priest than to a guide. If you are dating someone who goes to communion, it is also a reason not to build every Saturday around a bar.

5. The cultural layer

Orthodoxy is not one culture, and the relationship to alcohol varies widely with the people who carry it. In Greek, Serbian, Romanian, Georgian, Russian, Ukrainian, Arab and Ethiopian households, hospitality is built around drink or food or both, and a host who offers you something has usually decided that you are welcome. Georgia, where the Church is ancient and the supra, the long table with its toasts, is central to hospitality, is among the oldest wine-making countries in the world. A convert from a culture that drinks little can find the offer of a glass at a name day, a feast or a family table surprising. A cradle Orthodox person from a family that drinks heavily may find the Church’s teaching on sobriety more demanding than the family’s habits.

The practical rule on both sides is courtesy. If you do not drink, you can decline gracefully, by saying thank you and asking for water or juice, without explaining. Most hosts take it well, and the ones who do not are not a reason for you to drink. If you are the host and your guest declines, take it at face value and do not insist. The apostle’s teaching in Romans is that the stronger person gives way to the weaker for the sake of love, and a table at which no one is pressed is a better one.

6. Bars, restaurants and first dates

There is no Orthodox rule against meeting someone in a place that serves alcohol, and a restaurant that has a bar is not a problem. A bar as a default venue for a first date is a worse idea for reasons that have nothing to do with theology. Noise makes conversation harder, alcohol speeds up the pace of intimacy before trust has grown, and a venue organised around drinking makes it difficult for either of you to say that you would rather not.

A better order is coffee or a walk first, a meal second, and an evening out after you have met a couple of times. Many Orthodox couples find the most natural first dates are those that grow out of church life: lunch after the Liturgy, a parish picnic, a pilgrimage, a service project. They have a built-in end, they take place in daylight, and nobody has to explain why they are not drinking.

If you do go somewhere with alcohol, a few simple habits help. Decide before you arrive how much you will drink, if anything, and stay with it. Order your own drink and keep it in sight. Eat. Keep your phone charged and your transport arranged. If your date is drinking faster than you are comfortable with, say so lightly and suggest moving on. And if you are not drinking, you do not owe anyone an explanation. Saying, “I am not drinking tonight,” is a complete sentence.

7. Alcohol, judgment and chastity

The Church’s teaching on chastity is demanding, and it is worth being honest about how most people actually fail at it. Very few people set out in a clear mind to cross a line they have drawn. A great many cross it after two or three drinks, in an evening that began with good intentions and ended with a series of small decisions made by someone who was no longer quite the person who made the plan.

That is not an argument for abstinence, but it is an argument for deciding in advance. If you know that your boundaries are firm when you are sober and soft when you are not, then the practical response is to adjust the circumstances. Meet in public, drink less or nothing, avoid being alone at one another’s homes late at night after drinking, and tell the other person plainly what you are doing and why. A couple who can talk about this openly is a couple with a good chance of keeping their boundaries, and one who cannot should ask why.

8. Drinking as a compatibility question

Differences in how much people drink are normal and are rarely what ends a relationship. Differences in how they feel about drinking are more significant. If one of you grew up in a family that drank freely and the other in one that regarded any drinking as shameful, the first conversation about a wedding reception will show it, and the conversation is easier to have in the second month than in the second year.

It is useful to know a few simple things about the other person. How often do they drink, and in what setting? Do they drink to relax, to socialise or to cope? Have they ever been concerned about their own drinking, or been told by someone else that they should be? What do they expect the household to look like: wine with dinner, a bottle in the house, a dry home? Does either of them keep the fasts in the same way? None of these is a test, and most of the answers will be unremarkable. What you are looking for is honesty, and whether the answers are compatible with the life you want.

There are also questions of conscience. Some Orthodox Christians do not drink at all, because of a family history of alcoholism, their own recovery, a medical reason or a personal rule. If you are dating one of them, the respectful thing is to take their reason at face value and to arrange your shared life around it without making them defend it.

9. When someone else’s drinking is a problem

Dating someone whose drinking worries you is among the most difficult situations in this subject, because there is rarely a clear moment at which the worry becomes a fact. A few patterns are worth taking seriously, and none of them is a diagnosis. Drinking that is regularly more than they intended. Drinking alone or in secret. Needing a drink to begin or to end the day. Memory gaps after an evening out. Drinking before driving, or driving afterwards. Anger, cruelty or recklessness that appears only when they have been drinking. Minimising, or blaming other people for the amount. An unwillingness to talk about it that is out of proportion to the question.

If you recognise two or three of these in the person you are dating, the right response is to say what you have seen, once, in specific terms and without a verdict, and to see what they do with it. “I noticed that you finished a bottle on your own on Saturday, and it worried me,” is a more useful sentence than any accusation. A person who takes that seriously is a different case from one who becomes defensive, hostile or evasive. And you should not carry what you see alone. Speak to a priest, a trusted friend or a counsellor, and if your safety is in question at any point, leave the situation.

The Church’s response to alcoholism is compassionate. It treats it as an affliction of the soul and the body, and it does not regard confession as a substitute for treatment. A priest can be a help, and the best of them will send a person to a doctor or a recovery programme without hesitation. Many Orthodox who are in recovery say that the Church and its sacraments are what carry them, and that the rule of prayer and the fasts are part of the discipline.

If you are the person who is struggling, the honest advice is to deal with it before you begin a serious relationship. Many recovery programmes counsel against starting a new romantic relationship early in recovery, and for good reason: a relationship is a form of stress, and it can become a replacement for the thing you have given up. A partner can help you. A partner cannot do the work for you.

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10. Engagement parties, weddings and the reception

The Church’s service does not require a reception, and it does not require alcohol at one. A great many Orthodox weddings include wine, toasts and dancing, which is entirely in keeping with Cana, and a good many couples choose a more restrained celebration for reasons of conscience, cost or the date, which may fall in a fast. The service itself, the crowning, comes first, and it is a communal prayer of the Church that should not be rushed through to reach the party.

A few practical points avoid the commonest regrets. If the wedding falls within a fasting period, the priest will advise on what the couple and the guests are expected to do, and the guide on the days on which weddings can take place covers the calendar. If your two families have different habits, decide early what the reception will serve and say it clearly to both sides. And plan for the person you most want to remember the day: if either of you is likely to be tired, anxious or inclined to drink too much at your own wedding, a simple arrangement, such as a limit on the toasts or a late afternoon start, can make the day better for everyone.

A five-minute conversation about drinking before things get serious

This is a conversation to have in the first few weeks, over coffee, and it takes less time than most people expect. The goal is not to agree about everything. It is to know where each of you stands.

  1. Step 1

    Say what you actually do

    Begin with yourself, in plain terms: whether you drink, how often, in what settings, and whether you keep the fasts in the way the calendar describes. Plain statements are better than defences, and they set the tone for the other person’s answer.

  2. Step 2

    Ask three open questions

    Ask how they feel about alcohol in a household, how they were raised to think about it, and whether there is anything about it that they would like you to know. Listen to what they say before the way they say it, and notice whether they are relaxed or defensive.

  3. Step 3

    Agree what you will do on fast days

    Decide whether you will plan around Wednesdays, Fridays and the fasts, how you will handle Lent, and what you will do when one of you keeps the rules more strictly than the other. Write nothing down. Simply be clear, and revisit it as the relationship grows.

  4. Step 4

    Settle your own limits for dates

    Decide for yourself, in advance, how much you will drink on a date, if anything, and what you will do if the other person is drinking more than you are comfortable with. Tell a friend your plan. Having a rule that you decided in a calm moment makes it much easier to follow in a less calm one.

  5. Step 5

    Know when to bring in someone else

    If you see signs that worry you, name them once, kindly and specifically, and see what happens. If the answer does not reassure you, speak to a priest or counsellor, and do not take responsibility for a problem that is not yours to solve. Your safety and your conscience are the final test.

Common questions

Do Orthodox Christians drink alcohol?

Most do, in moderation, and the Church has never taught that they must not. Wine is the matter of the Eucharist and is shared at the wedding. The tradition condemns drunkenness, asks for sobriety, and removes alcohol from the table on fast days. Some Orthodox Christians abstain entirely for reasons of conscience, health or recovery, and the Church respects that choice.

Is it a sin to drink wine?

No. Scripture treats wine as a gift of God and the Church’s worship uses it. What the Scriptures and the Fathers condemn is drunkenness, and the spiritual carelessness that comes with it. The measure is sobriety, thankfulness and moderation, and a person who cannot keep to it should seek help and avoid it entirely.

Can I drink wine during Great Lent?

Strictly, on weekdays, no. The rules exclude wine and oil on Monday to Friday, although many Orthodox take wine and oil on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the middle weeks, and certain feast days carry a dispensation. Wine and oil are permitted on Saturdays and Sundays, and on Holy Thursday. If you are unsure, ask your spiritual father, who can adjust the rule to you.

Is it all right to have a first date at a bar?

There is no rule against it, and a restaurant with a bar is not a problem. A bar is a poor default for a first date, since noise, alcohol and pace all work against getting to know someone. Coffee, a walk or a meal after the Liturgy are better, and they make it easy to decline a drink without any explanation.

Can I receive communion if I drank the night before?

Most parishes ask communicants to fast from food and drink from midnight and to prepare with prayer and, regularly, confession. A little wine with dinner the evening before is common in many places, but heavy drinking is a different matter and is a question to put to your priest. Do not come to communion intoxicated or hungover.

My partner does not drink and I do. Is that a problem?

Not in itself. A difference in habit is normal and workable. What matters is whether you can respect each other’s reasons, decide what the household will look like, and talk about it without defensiveness. If their abstinence comes from a history of alcoholism, take it seriously and arrange your shared life around it.

How do I know if someone’s drinking is a red flag?

Watch for drinking that regularly exceeds what they intended, drinking alone or in secret, memory gaps, driving after drinking, anger or recklessness that only appears with alcohol, and defensiveness when you raise it. One of these is not a diagnosis, but a pattern is a reason to speak to them once and plainly, to talk to someone you trust and, if your safety is at stake, to leave.

Sources and further reading

Pastoral practice can vary by diocese and jurisdiction. For questions about your circumstances, speak with the priest responsible for your pastoral care.