Anglican Primate Fred Hiltz and Lutheran Bishop Susan Johnson attest that the Anglican Church of Canada and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada are simpatico by giving a demonstration of ballroom dancing during the Eucharist.
I don’t know about you, but I find this Anglican-Lutheran mating ritual very moving – although, if Fred must clap, I do wish he’d learn to clap off the beat..
To the tune of “Lady in Red”—my apologies to Chris De Burgh.
“Lady in robes,
Is dancing with me,
There’s no-one here–
It’s just you and me.”
There is a time for every season, and I’m sure there was dancing at the party in Cana, but at the the Lord’s Last Supper, and our most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist?
I do not know which ponders me most; ballroom dancing at the Eucharist, or the death spiral dance of two organizations twirling away from the Body of Christ.
Unseemly at best
But not unexpected
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” — Hunter S. Thompson
Dancing on the Titanic.
I’m sorry. I know you posted this in a very serious frame of mind, but I started laughing at second 1 and couldn’t make it much further. Somehow what came to my mind was, “So You Think You Can Dance” with Nigel et al judging.
It almost makes me ashamed to an Anglican. But then I remind myself that Fred Hiltz is not an Anglican. Still, this kind of behavior, dancing through the Eucharist, is completely inappropriate! I have no idea what message he is trying to send with this stunt, and perhaps neither does he. But the message that I get is that he considers the Church that he is supposed to be leading to be nothing more than a sad and pathetic joke.
The idea that our Lutheran bishop, Susan Johnson likes to dance is not a problem for me. The problem for me is her thinking that people actually WANT to see her dance.
At the last ELCIC Saskatchewan Synod convention in Yorkton, the organizers had one of the local pretty boy pastors who could sing and play guitar (sort of) entertain people during the breaks with, for the most part, secular pop songs. Susan Johnson decides that what was missing to make this even more “enjoyable” is a dancing bishop. Ah yes, exactly the image I needed to make me feel better about being there … Susan Johnson wiggling her arse like an aging, oversized groupie at a KD Lang concert.
Oh well, I guess it could have been worse. She could have been doing a pole-dance.
Next year.
In the Niagara Diocese the Bird dance is particularly popular.
Have to say that ‘I’m not impressed’.
Liturgical dance is one thing, but this just seems so out of place and actually stilted or stiff. The ‘Fresh Expressions’ theme continues to showcase ideas both good and not so good. This dance to me, is of the latter.
There is a mystery and wonder in our liturgy. Save the ballroom dancing for the coffee hour. (I retired in 2010 at the age of 62; am not against some new ideas, but I do fear we may throw the baby out with the bathwater if we are not careful.)
The baby is long gone, all that’s left is bathwater as far as I am concerned.