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The Rev. Joe Godfrey speaks out against marijuana as executive director of the Alabama Citizens Action Program, a lobbying group supported by Baptists and based in Montgomery.

(AL.com File )

The Rev. Joe Godfrey is Alabama's point man when it comes to lobbying against sin.

If marijuana supporters ever launch a significant legalization effort in the state, Godfrey will likely be the face of the opposition. Godfrey hopes it doesn't come to that.

"They always want to tout the jobs and revenue," he said of marijuana supporters. "They never want to tout the social costs."

Godfrey serves as executive director of the Alabama Citizens Action Program, an interfaith ministry and lobbying group funded by the state's Southern Baptists to promote their stance on issues such as alcohol and gambling. ALCAP has stood against alcohol sales and the legalization of gambling for decades. It also opposes the legalization of marijuana.

Some proponents of marijuana legalization argue that since marijuana is a plant, and God created it, it's not a sin to use.

"As far as the claim that marijuana is okay to use because it's a plant, so is poison ivy and poison oak, but we don't roll in it," Godfrey said. "Our bodies are the temples of God, of the holy spirit. We are to keep mind-altering things out of our bodies."

Godfrey points to a key verse for Christians, 1 Corinthians 6:19: "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own."

That verse is held up as a standard against drug use.

"The Bible makes it very clear we are to be sober-minded," Godfrey said. "That's part of its meaning. It means thinking clearly, thinking straight. When you use any kind of mind-altering and addictive drug, you are at risk for making bad decisions, doing things that are not right. It lowers people's inhibitions, like alcohol does. That makes us more susceptible to making poor decisions. We are not to put things into our bodies that make our minds foggy or unclear."

ALCAP traces its roots back to 1937, when a group of Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians gathered to form an interdenominational temperance program. They met at First United Methodist Church in Birmingham and organized the Alabama Temperance Alliance. The Rev. Earl Hotalen, a Methodist minister, was the first director and served from 1937 to 1946.

The Alabama Temperance Alliance changed its name to the Alabama Council on Alcohol Problems in 1968.

Its modern agenda broadened under a Southern Baptist minister, the Rev. Dan Ireland, who served as director for three decades, from 1978 to 2008. Ireland pushed for the current name to reflect a broader effort to fight on moral issues of concern to conservative Christians. "He was expanding their purview to beyond alcohol issues to drugs and other issues," Godfrey said.

Godfrey took over in 2008. In 2010, ALCAP became a 501c4 organization, established to lobby the Alabama Legislature on behalf of the faith community. Its 501c3 organization spun off separately as American Character Builders, which provides educational programs to public and private schools and supports Bible studies in churches about character issues.

"ALCAP is the catalyst around which all church denominations can unite in a consolidated effort to address moral concerns," its web site said. It lists those concerns as "alcohol, tobacco and other drug issues; gambling; pornography and other promiscuous behavior; and addressing the sanctity of human life."

Godfrey said he expects marijuana supporters to follow the same paradigm as supporters of alcohol, who have broadened access to alcohol a step at a time, chipping away at blue laws. There is now proposed legislation to move back the ban on alcohol sales on Sunday in Alabama, from before noon to before 10 a.m.

"It's a constant push to expand it more and more," Godfrey said. "The same will happen with marijuana."

Godfrey has also opposed the medical use of marijuana, which put him at odds with Alabama's two cannabinoid oil laws known as Leni's Law and Carly's Law.

In 2016, Alabama passed Leni's Law, allowing patients who suffer seizure disorders or other debilitating medical conditions to use a product that comes from the marijuana plant. The law decriminalized cannabidiol, derived from cannabis, for those with certain medical conditions in Alabama.

That law expanded on Carly's Law, passed in 2014, that authorized a UAB study on using cannabidiol to treat seizure disorders.

When Godfrey spoke out against those laws, he found out how emotional the issue can be. "There was an attempt to bully me on social media," he said.

ALCAP has a budget of about $475,000 a year and gets more than 90 percent of its financial support from Alabama Baptist churches, Godfrey said. It also receives support from Free Will Baptists, Nazarene churches, some Presbyterian churches, some Methodist churches and some Wesleyan churches.

The Alabama Baptist Convention designates about $65,000 a year in its budget to ALCAP through the Cooperative Program. Many Baptist churches send their financial support directly to ALCAP.

Southern Baptists are the largest denomination in Alabama, with more than a million members.

Godfrey graduated from Samford University with a bachelor's degree, then earned a master of divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a doctor of ministry degree from Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary. Godfrey was the founding pastor of the 1,000-member Taylor Road Baptist Church in Montgomery and was a pastor of several churches in Alabama, including First Baptist Church of Pleasant Grove, for more than 26 years. He was elected president of the Alabama Baptist Convention in 2002 and served two one-year terms.

Godfrey describes marijuana use as a domino in the sequence of delinquency for youth.

"Marijuana is without question a gateway drug," Godfrey said. "People who use marijuana are more likely to move to harder drugs. The same with alcohol. It's an incremental step. Kids who start smoking cigarettes move to alcohol and pretty soon to marijuana and then to harder drugs. When you get used to one, you have to have much more to get high."

Marijuana defenders argue that it's not addictive.

"I know the argument that marijuana is not addictive," Godfrey said. "But it is. It alters the mind; it alters behavior. Yeah, there are people who can use marijuana in moderation and not get addicted. When you legalize it, kids will say, 'it's legal so it's okay.' By keeping it illegal, it makes it harder for kids to try it."

Godfrey doesn't foresee a movement towards marijuana legalization in Alabama anytime soon. "I think it's a cold issue," he said.

If it does emerge with significant support, ALCAP will step up to fight it.

"We'll do the best we can," Godfrey said.

But he's worried about the changing attitudes toward marijuana that are currently sweeping the nation.

"People change their opinions with the wind," Godfrey said. "Right now there's enough opposition. By the time it gets here, who knows? As we become less and less churched as a nation, we get more and more caught up in addictions."

At its heart, the use of marijuana and other drugs is indicative of a spiritual problem, Godfrey said.

"People are looking for something in life that will be an escape," he said. "Instead of looking to the God who created us and his son, Jesus Christ, people are looking for other solutions. People have lost confidence in the Bible as the word of God. If you dismiss the word of God as not relevant, you have no moral foundation to build your life on. It's every man doing for himself what feels right, as it says in the Book of Judges. There's no moral foundation. When you have no moral foundation, chaos results."