Posted on 05/13/2006 1:12:32 PM PDT by hiho hiho
CHILDREN’S definitions of church are always fascinating. One of my favourites is that of the child who said that a church was “a place where people sing a lot of hymns and walk about in patterns”.
For those contemporary expressions of church which owe more to the conversational idiom of the television chat show and where worship takes place in bland settings more analogous to lecture rooms than sacred space (with a corresponding loss of those essential elements of worship — awe, reverence and mystery), it is a description that may seem outdated.
Nonetheless, what processions and hymns represent is deeply rooted. Laps of honour as victorious sports teams are welcomed home or carnivals and even marathons, let alone the more traditional forms of regimental marches or the Lord Mayor’s Show, many accompanied by music, show that there is something archetypal about a human need to join in a symbolic movement from place to place.
Brides enter churches in procession in a symbolic movement into sacred space, in which in traditional marriage liturgy the father — the old family to which the bride belongs — hands the bride over to the priest, who hands the bride to her husband as a sign that he receives her as the most precious of gifts not only from her own family but from God. One of the oldest parts of funeral liturgies is the procession — obviously practical to take a body, the mortal remains, from the place of death to the place of burial, yet invested in countless funeral rites with prayers that speak of a greater and deeper journey. This is summed up in the ancient Proficiscere anima christiana! — “Go forth upon thy journey Christian soul!” — immortalised for many in Elgar’s powerful setting of Newman’s The Dream of Gerontius. Pilgrimage and movement, journeying to shrines and holy places, people in Ancient Israel “ going up to Jerusalem” singing the Psalms, which are “songs of ascent”, are found in every culture and in every place.
Patterned movement is sacred dance. In the ancient Orthodox church of Ethiopia the choir of debteras, holding their T-shaped monastic crutches, dance in a rhythmic pattern to haunting drums and the metallic beat of the sistrum reminding worshippers of the hammering of the nails into the hands and feet of Christ at the Crucifixion. In the cathedral of Auxerre in medieval France the bishop and clerks danced to the plainchant of the Easter sequence over the pattern of the labyrinth in the floor of the choir, tossing the Easter ball to each other in a sacred pattern of rejoicing.
Stern Christians, nervous of corybantic excesses, disapproved of dancing. But others saw in the drama and movement of the sacred dance of worship a real rejoicing in God. St Gregory of Nazienzen, one of the great early theologians, tells his people that they are to dance the dance of David before the ark of God. His contemporary St Gregory of Nyssa speaks of the round dance of love as the very life of God the Holy Trinity, a dance into which men and women are to be caught up and transformed. St Paul speaks of Christ leading the powers of evil captive in a triumphal procession, and St Patrick praises the risen and ascended Christ “riding up the heavenly way”. Christ is, as Sydney Carter wrote, “Lord of the dance”.
In Victorian England, when there were protests against the revival of ceremonial in the Church of England, a recovery of the dance, one of the celebrated “Ritualist” priests, Father Mackonochie of St Alban’s, Holborn, replied that it was only “the barest alphabet of reverence for so divine a mystery”.
That revival of drama and movement and symbol in worship went hand in hand with a recovery of hymnody in the Church of England. At the Reformation worship in English meant the loss of ancient Latin hymns, and hymns were even illegal for Anglicans because they were not in the Book of Common Prayer.
In Hymns Ancient and Modern (1861) hymns by new writers were brought together with translations of hymns from German chorales and older treasures from Latin and Greek so that Christian faith could be taught by singing.
This year we keep the centenary of another great collection, The English Hymnal, a resource and treasure for choirs and congregations alike. The Russian teachers of prayer tell us to “draw down our minds into our hearts”.
The great English hymns are a treasury of faith-enabling words of prayer and praise to be engraved on our hearts and so be there in time of need, and when we become so frail that we are no longer able to walk about in patterns, or indeed walk at all.
It is thin gruel for the soul if this treasure is discarded for the ephemeral emotion of passing fashion simply because it is old. Mantras of modernisation can too easily cut us off from deeply rooted spiritual wisdom.
The Right Rev Geoffrey Rowell is Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. 
Bishop Geoffrey Rowell is on top of the issue here concerning the liturgical dance of the Church. With contemporary worship on the rise in many places in the UK, it is something that I predict will not endure or provide the depth of spirtuality that Christians need. Of course, there are many ways of liturgical expression that meets our needs as worshipers of God. But, an absence of ritual will not fill that need no matter how 'cool' the service is in attracting young people. There will be a point where they simply will want and need more. I saw this happen when I lived in the US. The younger generation there is leaving behind the informal worship of their parents who are approaching their 60's and are looking for more traditionally liturgical bodies to raise their own families in. The liturgical renewal is happening in the US and I believe will begin again in the UK. There is a lot that is often missing in contemporary worship that removes ritual and it simply cannot feed that divine image that longs for ritual that is deeply within us. Ritual is an element created within us that feeds the internal desire for rhythm and beauty and dances with what we are as liturgical beings. I have come to believe that what was a lack in the ability to understand and accept the need for a theology of ritual as creatures in the image of God was one of the major causes that moved the Reformers to act so strongly against Eucharistic Sacrifice. I think this is especially true of Luther whose theology of Justification by Faith Alone clouded what we find in scripture that describes the necessity of ritual that actually helps to define and shape us in what it means to be human. Here is Bishop Rowell in his own words:
Patterned movement is sacred dance. In the ancient Orthodox church of Ethiopia the choir of debteras, holding their T-shaped monastic crutches, dance in a rhythmic pattern to haunting drums and the metallic beat of the sistrum reminding worshippers of the hammering of the nails into the hands and feet of Christ at the Crucifixion. In the cathedral of Auxerre in medieval France the bishop and clerks danced to the plainchant of the Easter sequence over the pattern of the labyrinth in the floor of the choir, tossing the Easter ball to each other in a sacred pattern of rejoicing.Read it all at Times Online.
Stern Christians, nervous of corybantic excesses, disapproved of dancing. But others saw in the drama and movement of the sacred dance of worship a real rejoicing in God. St Gregory of Nazienzen, one of the great early theologians, tells his people that they are to dance the dance of David before the ark of God. His contemporary St Gregory of Nyssa speaks of the round dance of love as the very life of God the Holy Trinity, a dance into which men and women are to be caught up and transformed. St Paul speaks of Christ leading the powers of evil captive in a triumphal procession, and St Patrick praises the risen and ascended Christ “riding up the heavenly way”. Christ is, as Sydney Carter wrote, “Lord of the dance”.
"Christ is, as Sydney Carter wrote, “Lord of the dance”"
Um, news alert to the author of this piece: Carter was pretty surprised that his song became popular in churches. He makes no bones that he did not intend it to be a Christian song, and that he was inspired by the image of Shiva.
Never knew the Schottishe, travelling cha-cha, and horse shoe were sacred.
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