Dance: Plie

I grew up in the Church of Christ in East Texas. Most people identified us as the people who did not have music in church. This was a misconception, because we sang a lot, but we sang a capella. What we did not have was instrumental music. We did not believe in pianos or organs or guitars in worship. This was a matter of some importance.

When  as a kid I pointed out to a Sunday School teacher that David played the harp when he composed his psalms -- the very word psalm comes for the word psaltery, the instrument he played, which was not exactly a harp -- , she told me in all seriousness that that was the one thing God did not like about David. Really, the one thing? Not that whole Bathsheba adultery-murder thing? It was the harp that bothered God? 

At the time, I think I just took her at her word, although I searched diligently and unsuccessfully for some specific Bible verse about this.             

The Church of Christ claims to speak when the Bible speaks and to be silent when the Bible is silent. This was an admirable ideal but largely ignored. Still, we always wanted a Bible verse to prove or disprove a disputed point, whether or not the verse actually had anything to do with the matter under discussion. You think kids today are obsessed with texting? In our own way, we became deadly text-ers sixty years ago. 

Today one gets the impression that Jesus came to reveal that same-sex marriage and abortion are the main thing God hates. (God apparently got over that whole David-with-a-harp thing.) In my day, however, the main reason Jesus came was to say no instrumental music and no dancing. NO dancing!
  

You can see how the prohibition against dancing, which was taken very seriously, was going to become a problem for a gay boy later on. The collapse of my total commitment to the Church of Christ is undoubtedly tied to my desire to dance. You thought that scene with Kevin Kline breaking into dance in In & Out was a joke? Trust me: I knew exactly how it felt. (I preferred Kevin Bacon teaching Willard how to dance in Footloose, needless to say.) 

To be continued ...