Editorial (03/02/08)
Shiva for the Introit: Why Lord of the Dance is Pagan, not Catholic
The Gentle Reader must excuse my recent delays in posting new materials. I left for my yearly, week-long retreat – and already long for my next one! – and upon my return found a mound several feet high of mail, messages and other urgent matters.
Today our topic is that song, The Lord of the Dance. What should a Catholic think about it?
I do not refer to the dance performance that goes by the same name, but to Sydney Carter’s song, often sung as a hymn by Catholics.
One of the many sad consequences, not of Vatican II, but of the things that happened after Vatican II, was that the faithful at large reduce their assessment of anything Catholic by the criterion, “I like it,” or it’s opposite, “I don’t like it.” God’s salvation of our souls, His Redemption of our sinful beings, is not a question of liking or disliking; and anyway, who likes the Cross by which we were saved, which we must carry every day? The cross, the real cross, hurts and purifies.
I wish to propose that the Lord of the Dance be banished definitively from every aspect of Catholic life, including both the liturgy and public and private devotion. The whole Church, starting with the Bishops, could not act swiftly or strongly enough to ban this abominable song from every aspect of Catholic life.
The reasons for this are seven: that this song is non-Catholic in its origin; it portrays a flippant, silly and superficial God; it appeals to the delight of one’s feelings and not to the elevation or conversion of one’s heart; it is anti-historical; it is polytheistic; it portrays a vision of reality which is not truthful; it applies a title of demons to God; and it proposes the erotic. To these seven, greater minds could surely add more.
Allow me now to discuss each one of these reasons with more precision.
1. I begin with the weakest argument first. The Lord of the Dance song is non-Catholic in its origin. Such a comment might be considered merely an ad hominem attack, and I will concede that to my interlocutor. Yet I must raise the context of the author’s version of religion and Christianity, so that his song may be assessed with the proper context.
The author, as I mentioned, is Sydney Carter (1915-2004), who was a Quaker; the Quakers (or the Religious Society of Friends) are not quite Christian, even if some of their inspiration can be seen as taking its origin in Christianity. In one obituary, the Guardian described his life as “a musical journey in search of an unconventional God.” There is, of course, only one God, whether Mr. Carter thinks he is conventional or not.
The music to which it was written and is widely sung or performed is from a Shaker hymn, “Simple Gifts.” The jolly melody rolls right along to the words “They whipped and they stripped / And they hung me on high, / And they left me there On a Cross to die,” all with a slappy-clappy dance rhythm and joyful melody.
All this is indicative of the interpretive context of his song, The Lord of the Dance.
2. This song at best portrays God as a silly God, one superficial and recreational, dancing about as he is doing the most magnificent works – creation and redemption – besides the endless act of love proper to the interior life of the Holy Trinity. Of dancing, St. Ambrose discusses the immodesty of it (Concerning Virgins, 6, 31), and he quotes the pagan Cicero (in Pro Murena) who says, “No one dances when sober unless he is mad.” (ibid., III, 5, 25). If one should say that it is a more serious dance, something not flippant but “mystical,” then we are to worry; for the dance to which Mr. Carter refers is that of destruction proper of the pagan god Shiva; the proofs of this are adduced in point number 5, below.
3. A careful study of the Church’s documents reveals that Sacred Music is basically Gregorian Chant, Latin Polyphony, and certain types of hymns; all this music is at the service of the liturgical action, which is essentially the work of the Trinity into which the faithful are brought and mystically participate. Yet this song simply “appeals,” and it appeals to jocularity, dancing, and nursery-song type melodiousness. It does not in any way, in music or in text, address the truth of the Trinitarian action or any other teaching of the Church, and so does not serve the liturgy. It reaches to the senses and emotions, and not to the heart and soul. This alone is enough reason to exclude it from Catholic worship and devotion.
4. This song is not historical. Yet the real words and actions of Jesus are a revelation of God the Father, in the Spirit, and are efficacious for our salvation. So attributing to Jesus words or actions he didn’t do is out of bounds, even if for poetry or literature such license may be admitted to other authors on other subjects. We have not one instance of Jesus ever dancing or leaping, either with men (such as James and John, as Carter writes) or with women.
5. The Lord of the Dance is polytheistic. Carter admitted freely that he was partly inspired by Jesus, and partly by a statue of Shiva as Nataraja. Shiva is a Hindu god, often portrayed with features such as a third eye, a blue throat, a crescent moon, matted hair, serpents (!) or a drum. He is called “The Lord of the Dance,” for he dances the tandava upon a dwarf-demon symbolic of ignorance; and as he dances, two of his four hands are of particular interest: the upper right has a drum indicating the sound originating creation, the upper left has a fire indicating destruction. Mr. Carter has successfully, then, introduced this Hindu God, serpents and destruction and all, into countless Catholic parishes.
Allow me to quote the Septuagint where it states “all the gods of the nations [pagans] are demons” (96:5). Many modern translations have softened the translation. St. Paul chimes in, lest there’s doubt, where he says, “the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God” (1 Cor 10:19-20).
One of Carter’s obituaries in 2004 from the Telegraph explains that this song contains, as is recognized both by the public and by the author, more than “a hint of paganism which, mixed with Christianity, makes it attractive to those of ambiguous religious beliefs or none at all. Carter himself genially admitted that he had been partly inspired by the statue of Shiva which sat on his desk; and, whenever he was asked to resolve the contradiction, he would declare that he had never tried to do so.”
If that is not enough to satisfy the Gentle Reader that this song is polytheistic, then listen to what Mr. Carter wrote, in the text I cite in section 6 below; he says: “By Christ I mean not only Jesus; in other times and places, other planets, there may be other Lords of the Dance. But Jesus is the one I know of first and best.” This is of course beyond heretical; there is only one God, and only one Lord Jesus Christ.
6. The song’s text is completely alienated from objective reality. This is not a rare thing to find in any modern art, plastic or performing, and has much to do with the anti-realist and relativist philosophies which dominate our culture.
About this song, Mr. Carter wrote, “I see Christ as the incarnation of the piper who is calling us. He dances that shape and pattern which is at the heart of our reality… I sing of the dancing pattern in the life and words of Jesus… Sometimes, for a change I sing the whole song in the present tense. ‘I dance in the morning when the world is begun...’. It’s worth a try” (from Green Print for Song, Stainer & Bell, 1974 and Lord of the Dance and other Songs and Poems, Stainer & Bell, 2002).
To which we can answer as follows. Christ is not an incarnation of the piper, but of the Eternal Word. “The heart of reality” is an ambiguous statement, but that heart can only be being; and so there is no “dancing” or “pattern” at the heart of reality, but only the creation caused by the Creator. Similarly there is no dancing pattern in the life or words of Jesus, but rather the act of salvation. Still more, one cannot sing “the world is begun” in the present tense; it is a fact which has already happened.
Finally his lack of contact with reality is found in the expression of the song near the end which says, “I am the Dance.” God is no more “the Dance” than he is my toenail; sorry, Mr. Carter, to disappoint you.
7. Finally, the intentional and explicit association to Shiva, the “Lord of the Dance,” brings to this song an element of the erotic. “Shiva’s dance takes two forms: the gentle erotic dance (lasya) associated with the creation of the world, and the violent, dangerous dance (tandava) associated with the destruction of the world… the two dances of Shiva are merely two aspects of a single dance” (Carmel Berkson, Elephanta: The Cave of Shiva, p. 36). I guess sex and violence have been in style long before Hollywood popularized such on the silver screen, and in a variety of “cultures.” More could be said about the association of some uses of the word “dance” as a code word of erotic conduct, but such might impress some Gentle Readers for evil instead of good, so we will omit that analysis here.
There should be no doubt, then, after these seven proofs, that this song is completely inadequate for Catholic worship and devotion. Mr. Carter wrote, “I did not think the churches [sic] would like it at all. I thought many people would find it pretty far flown, probably heretical and anyway dubiously Christian. But in fact people did sing it and, unknown to me, it touched a chord… Anyway, it's the sort of Christianity I believe in” (again from Green Print for Song, 1974).
To those who say, “But I like that song,” I invite them to put aside likes and dislikes, and see this pagan song for what it is; and, having achieved this, never go back to it again, and leave it for the pagans to sing.
The fact that this song, so many other evil songs (such as Sing a New Church, whose refrain contains the damnable words, “let us sing a new Church into being”), have made it into Catholic worship and devotion is yet another sign of the punishment which God has imposed upon the Catholics for our widespread abandonment of the faith. The reform of our lives, in holiness, is the most important thing we can do to chase these wicked things back to the hell from which they came.