DANCE BEFORE THE LORD

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Below is Claude Debussy's piece that translates

in English to: "Sacred and Profane Dances" -

performed in a church (naturally!).

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Edited from The Feast of Fools

by Harvey Cox

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A people who dance before their gods

are generally freer and less repressed than

a people who cannot.

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Christians danced a lot in the early years

of the church. They danced in places of

worship and in churchyards. They danced

on saints' days and in cemeteries at the graves

of martyrs. Men, women, and children danced,

before the Lord and with each other.

Nevertheless, discomfort about dancing in

church was developing quickly.

The controversy appears openly in the

fourth century. St. Basil the Great,

Bishop of Caesarea (A.D. 344-407)

is a key figure.

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St. Basil was against the dance for

one reason - it was too sensuous.

Displaying that suspicion of flesh which

has plagued Christianity off and on for

most of its history, he here clearly objects

not to the dance as such, but to its

explicitly sexual dimensions.

For the next thousand years, the

authorities of the church fought a

hopeless battle, first to guarantee

chasteness in the dance and, then,

losing that struggle, to abolish it altogether.

Century after century, bishops and councils

issued decrees warning against various

forms of dance in churches and churchyards.

But they persisted.
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Finally the Council of Wurzburg in 1298

declared them a grievous sin.

Even this final interdiction, however,

did not abolish religious dance.

Proscribed from the sanctuary, the

dancers moved to the square, the

churchyard, and back to the cemetery.

They tagged along at the edges of the

processions, or sometimes took them over

entirely. They showed up at pilgrimages.

They supplied the gusto at saints' days

and festivals. Also in Christian movements

outside the power of conciliar dicta dance

worship continued, and persists to the present.

In black congregations and Pentecostal

churches, rhythmic movement has never

disappeared.  "Go forth, young men, old men,
and maidens," runs the exhortation of

a Shaker elder a hundred years ago,

"and worship God with all your might

in the dance."

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