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.
