Can coffee be a sacrament?

Ok, so this has been brewing for a while. It all started with a question in my last online class at Queens, when we were asked if "A cup of coffee could be a sacrament?" The group was fairly evenly split although with a definite weighting towards absolutely not. People who know me well will be unsurprised to discover that I came down on the "of course it can"side of the debate. However, I have some qualifying conditions. This is very much a case of going down the rabbit hole, but one which I have found surprisingly thought-provoking.

Now, people who know me well will know that I am pretty religious about my coffee, when I was teaching seminar sessions at university I often joked with students that if I ever walked into the room without a mug of coffee they should probably run. I was only half joking.

I love coffee but claim I drink it for other people's benefit. It is also safe to say that for me caffeine is a form of self-medication for ADHD. However, if I want a truly relaxing and comfort-inducing drink I turn to tea. ( I know, how terribly English of me).

To answer the question of whether coffee can be a sacrament, we first need to answer a couple of other questions. First, what do we mean by sacrament? John Wesley emphasized sacraments as vital "means of grace," where God’s love is actively mediated through prayer and participation. Sacraments are celebrated within the community, symbolising and underscoring faith and unity. Within the Methodist church, there are two sacraments, Baptism and Communion, so strictly speaking we probably shouldn't consider coffee a sacrament. However, this leads us to our second question, what is the purpose of the cup of coffee?

Is coffee a sacrament if the only purpose is self-medication and to help me be marginally less grumpy in the morning? Probably not. But what about if we consider sharing coffee as being symbolic of hospitality and welcome? Many churches already do this, with open coffee mornings at least once during the week, and a shared cup of tea or coffee after the service is an important touching point for many people on a Sunday morning. In a way these gatherings over a cup of tea or coffee form part of a communal ritualistic behaviour, one that everyone is invited to join in, even if they are not a normal part of the local church family. At communion, we talk of sharing an open table to which all are welcome.

A lot of the conversations that take place over a cup of coffee serve to offer support to people in their lives, even if that support is simply listening to someone share about their week. When I ran the East Leeds Repair Cafe the offer of tea, coffee, and biscuits was central to making people feel welcome. It also provided a way for people who were not able to help with repairs to participate through the provision of hospitality. So in terms of the ritual and purpose behind the preparation and sharing of a cup of tea or coffee, we can argue that there is the potential for a shared cup of tea or coffee to be considered a form of sacrament.

Of course, there is also the key point, that for many people prevents us from describing coffee as a sacrament. Within most Christian understandings of a sacrament is the idea that it is something that was instituted by Christ. Now in the case of coffee, this is a little tricky as the first historical evidence we have dates back to 9th/10th Century Ethiopia, so a few centuries too late.

The earliest reference to coffee involves an oral account of Kaldi, an Ethiopian goatherd (circa 850 CE), who noticed his goats became energetic after eating red berries (coffee cherries). Monks supposedly used these berries to create a drink to stay awake during prayers.

Later in 9th–10th Century Arabia the Persian physician Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (Rhazes, d. 925 CE) is sometimes credited with the first written mention of bunn (coffee beans) as a medicinal substance, and by the 10th century, the term qahwa (قهوة) emerged in Arabic texts, this originally described a type of wine but was later associated with coffee.

The earliest definitive evidence of coffee brewing comes from Sufi monasteries in Yemen (mid-1400s). Sufi mystics drank it to stay alert during nighttime devotions. The Yemeni port city of Mocha became a key hub for the coffee trade, spreading it to the Islamic world and beyond.

The earliest evidence of coffee in Europe dates to the 16th and early 17th centuries, as the beverage spread from the Islamic world through trade, travel, and cultural exchange.

In the Early 17th Coffee ReacheddVenice which was a major trading hub with the Ottoman Empire. By 1615 Venetian merchants began regularly trading coffee, initially selling it in pharmacies as an exotic remedy. Finally, in about 1645 the first European coffeehouse opened in Venice, sparking a trend that spread across the continent. The first coffee house in England opened in about 1650. However, due to its links with Islam coffee was treated with a great deal of suspicion until Pope Clement VIII (1592–1605) was reported to have tasted coffee and declared it permissible for Christians, quipping, "This devil’s drink is so delicious... we should cheat the devil by baptizing it!" This endorsement helped normalize coffee consumption. So according to the historical account of coffee, it is probably not possible to argue that it was instituted by Jesus, even if it was endorsed by the Pope. However, as a community and the sharing of hospitality was so important in the ancient world I like to think that Jesus would have shared a brew with the disciples and with all of the marginalised people he encountered during his ministry.