Henceforth, non-alcoholic wine and gluten-free bread are banned from being used as the Holy Communion in the Church of England (Anglican Communion) and as a member of the Anglican Communion worldwide. The rule may extend to the Church of Nigeria.
The ban was announced on Monday, February 10, 2025, at a meeting of the Church’s ruling body, the General Synod, during which a priest pleaded for the rules to be changed to end the ‘injustice’ for people who can’t drink alcohol or eat gluten.
According to foreign reports, the original Church laws (the Canon Laws) state that bread must be made using wheat flour and the wine must be the fermented juice of a grape in order to be consecrated by a priest.
However, for the benefit of those who don’t drink alcohol and also eat wheat, the variations were allowed. But the announcement on Monday now compels all Anglican Church members to embrace alcohol while taking the holy communion.
Holy communion is one of the central sacraments of the Christian faith, with the bread and wine symbolising the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
Reports from the Synod meeting on Monday quoted Canon B 17 of the Church of England, which states that communion wine should be ‘the fermented juice of the grape, good and wholesome’ and the bread ‘whether leavened or unleavened, shall be of the best and purest wheat flour’.
But the Church has previously allowed certain types of communion wafer made using specially processed wheat that significantly reduces the amount of gluten, however other gluten-free alternatives made from non-wheat flour are not permitted.
According to reports, a member of the Synod, Revd Canon Alice Kemp, asked if the canon laws can be amended ‘to enable the legal use of gluten free and alcohol free elements at the Eucharist to remove the injustice of this exclusion’.
The female priest also pleaded that priests and congregants ‘may be excepted from receiving both elements [bread and wine] if they are unable to consume both gluten and alcohol’.
However, Rt. Rev. Michael Ipgrave, the Bishop of Lichfield and Chairman of the Church’s Liturgical Commission, said doing so would overturn two settled positions of the Church of England.
“First, that bread made with wheat and the fermented juice of the grape are the elements to be consecrated in holy communion; and second, that receiving holy communion in one kind in a case of necessity is not an “exclusion” but full participation in the sacrament, as often practised in the communion of the sick, or with children”, Bishop Ipgrave said.
He added that even Christians who cannot physically receive the sacrament of Holy Communion are ‘to be assured that they are partakers by faith of the body and blood of Christ’.
The Catholic Church does not allow gluten-free bread to be used during Mass, with the Vatican position, in a 2017 letter to bishops of the Church throughout the world which stated that “hosts that are completely gluten-free are invalid matter for the celebration of the Eucharist”.
Also under the Vatican rules, wine that is ‘of doubtful authenticity or provenance’ is forbidden, but the Church has approved the use of mustum, a non-alcoholic grape juice, for congregants and ‘priests suffering from alcoholism’.