Eucharistic Bread and Wine

Bread and wine, consecrated and shared in the rite most commonly called the Eucharist, Holy Communion or the Lord's Supper depending on tradition, form the central sacramental act of Christian worship across nearly every denomination, instituted according to the Gospel accounts at the Last Supper Jesus shared with his disciples before his crucifixion, where he identified the bread and wine with his body and blood and instructed his followers to continue the meal in remembrance of him.

Dix's classic study of the liturgy's historical development traces how this shared meal, originally embedded within an ordinary communal supper in the earliest Christian communities, gradually separated out into its own distinct rite with an increasingly formalised structure across the first several centuries of Christian practice, a process of liturgical development Dix documents in close textual detail across the surviving early sources. Christian traditions differ substantially in how they understand what happens to the bread and wine during consecration, ranging from the Catholic and Orthodox doctrine that the elements become, in substance, the actual body and blood of Christ, to Protestant positions holding the elements remain bread and wine while conveying Christ's presence spiritually, or serving primarily as a remembrance.

Beyond theological disagreement over what the elements become, denominations differ in the concrete physical practice surrounding them: Western Catholic tradition uses unleavened wheat bread, reflecting the Last Supper's setting during Passover, while Eastern Orthodox practice generally uses leavened bread, reflecting a different reading of the same historical question, and various Protestant traditions have adopted their own local customs for both bread and cup.

A significant nineteenth century development split practice around the cup specifically: the temperance movement in the United States led directly to the invention of pasteurised, non alcoholic grape juice by Thomas Bramwell Welch, a dentist and committed temperance advocate, specifically so his own Methodist congregation could celebrate communion without using fermented wine, and unfermented grape juice remains standard in many Protestant, especially evangelical, congregations today even though it has no basis in the rite's ancient practice and represents a comparatively recent innovation rather than an ancient variant. Frequency of celebration also varies enormously, from a weekly or even daily rite in Catholic and Orthodox practice to a monthly or quarterly observance common in a number of Protestant traditions, reflecting genuinely different theological weight placed on the sacrament's regular repetition.