Showing posts with label jewish deicide. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jewish deicide. Show all posts

14 Oct 2023

Dancing Jesus

 
 
I. 
 
'Lord of the Dance' is one of those hymns we were expected to sing when I was a young child at school which I truly hated.
 
The problem was, I had a difficult time accepting such a groovy Jesus; even as a six-year-old, I could sense that Our Lord and Saviour, weighed down as he was by the sins of mankind - not to mention a heavy wooden cross - wasn't likely to be light on his feet.
 
The song was thus revisionist at best; fraudulent at worst. 
 
For the fact is, there is no record in scripture of Jesus laughing and I'm pretty sure he didn't dance (or sing) a great deal (if at all) either; he wept, he prayed, he agonised over things, but the Man of Sorrows didn't get down and boogie nor strut his funky stuff. 
 
And I'm sure Sydney Carter, who wrote the lyrics to the hymn - having adapted the melody from an old Shaker song - knew this perfectly well. 
 
Indeed, according his own account, 'Lord of the Dance' was only partly written with Jesus in mind; a statue of the Hindu deity Shiva that sat on his desk also inspired him; as did the idea of Jesus as some kind of Pied Piper; as did the possibility of a cosmic Christ who inspired alien races in far away galaxies to dance the shape and pattern which is at the heart of reality
      
It is astonishing, when one considers this, that the song became such a huge and immediate hit with Christians all over the English-speaking world: I mean, the tune is quite catchy and it has an optimistic message at its heart - as well as an antisemitic verse [1] - but as at least one commentator has pointed out the underlying theology is unorthodox to say the very least.
 
Even Carter was surprised by the hymn's success. He later confessed: "I did not think the churches would like it at all. I thought many people would find it pretty far flown, probably heretical and anyway dubiously Christian." [2] 
 
 
II. 
 
In some ways, thinking about the hymn now, Carter's dancing Jesus reminds me of the resurrected figure in Lawrence's The Escaped Cock (1929) and there's the same interesting mix of Christianity and paganism in the lines "I danced in the morning / When the world begun / And I danced in the moon / And the stars and the sun" [3] which one finds in the latter. 
 
Thus, although the song still irritates the hell out of me - it's just so impossibly upbeat - I acknowledge its heretical character and the fact that it counters the puritanism of those who would reject song and dance as a vital part of religious worship.    
 
To paraphrase Emma Goldman: If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your religion. 
 
 
Notes
 
[1] The third verse of Carter's hymn implies collective Jewish responsibility for the death of Jesus. This dangerous idea of Jewish deicide - which conflicts with Catholic doctrine - is central to much religious antisemitism. 
 
[2] Sydney Carter quoted in his obituary in The Telegraph (16 March 2004): click here
     
[3] Sydney Carter, opening four lines of the first verse of 'Lord of the Dance' (1963). For full lyrics and further information visit the Stainer & Bell website: click here.  
 

26 Dec 2013

It's My Name Day (And I'll Decry If I Want To)

St. Stephen: first Christian martyr 
and anti-Semite

As Maria is keen to remind me, today is my name day [ονομαστική εορτή]: a traditional form of celebration in Greece, as in other Orthodox and Catholic countries where the veneration of saints is a popular practice, but which doesn't mean a great deal to me - particularly as I don't even seem to get a cake out of it. 

As for the saint to whom I am connected by name, what do I know of him? 

St. Stephen was a Greek-speaking Jew who made the fatal mistake of outraging the members of numerous synagogues by his unorthodox teachings inspired by Jesus. Accused of blasphemy and perverting Mosaic Law, he didn't help matters by making a long speech at his trial in which he denounced the authorities who were sitting in judgement upon him whilst keeping a holier-than-thou and supercilious expression on his face; a speech which concludes with the following slur which would resonate to murderous effect through the ages:

"You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One, whom you also betrayed and murdered; you who received the law as delivered by angels, but did not keep it." [Acts 7: 51-53] 

This so infuriated members of the Sanhedrin and the people who had gathered to witness the proceedings, that they rushed upon him, dragged him outside, and then stoned him to death; thus making Stephen the first Christian martyr and an inspiration to anti-Semites keen to hold the Jews guilty of deicide.  

Imitating Christ to the last, Stephen asked that God forgive those who were about to slay him (they know not what they do). More interestingly, sparks were said to fly off his body every time he was struck by a stone; sparks that his later Christian admirers would insist were not of anger, but of love, and which ignited the hearts of those who witnessed his death; sparks which we now know actually helped ignite the Auschwitz crematoria.