DESCRIPTION:
Barbara Ehrenreich explores the impulse that has been so effectively suppressed that we lack even a term for it: the desire for collective joy, historically expressed in ecstatic revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing.
Ehrenreich uncovers the origins of communal celebration in human biology and culture. Although sixteenth-century Europeans viewed mass festivities as foreign and “savage,” Ehrenreich shows that they were indigenous to the West, from the ancient Greeks’ worship of Dionysus to the medieval practice of Christianity as a “danced religion.” Ultimately, church officials drove the festivities into the streets, the prelude to widespread reformation: Protestants criminalized carnival, Wahhabist Muslims battled ecstatic Sufism, European colonizers wiped out native dance rites. The elites’ fear that such gatherings would undermine social hierarchies was justified: the festive tradition inspired French revolutionary crowds and uprisings from the Caribbean to the American plains. Yet outbreaks of group revelry persist, as Ehrenreich shows, pointing to the 1960s rock-and-roll rebellion and the more recent “carnivalization” of sports.
Dancing in the Streets concludes that we are innately social beings, impelled to share our joy and therefore able to envision, even create, a more peaceable future.
Review:
Dancing in the Streets was a book I needed to read for my doctoral work. This book explores, as the above description states, “the desire for collective joy, historically expressed in ecstatic revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing.”
Through the book she looks at the rituals and festivals of civilizations across the world and throughout all times. She explores ancient Greek and Roman festivals, including religious festivals, and even looks at the festivals of the Old and New Testament. She also looks at how people from European countries viewed those of African nations: they were savages. Their festivals, while greatly rehearsed, timed and thought out rituals, were considered to be uncontrolled, ecstatic, and trance-inducing revelries and should be stopped to be civilized according to religious and governmental officials.
She continues through the days of the slave trade in Europe and North America and how that abuse led to the integration of many of the African rituals across tribal lines. The author also shows how these rituals were even integrated into the religious practices of the day, including African American Christianity, as tribes were mixed together to separate families. Ehrenreich then works into the 20th century, discussing the puritanical aspects of western culture and the impact rock music had on reviving festivals and communities of joy.
If this book is correct, and I have no reason to consider that it isn’t, we are faced with a great need to re-think communities, festivals, and even our religious practices. For instance, glossolalia was practiced in the early church and in first century religious culture as well. In addition, first and second century Christians continued to practice the movement of the Spirit as an act of worship. It was revived in the early 20th century, as an addendum to African American worship practices and is in full-blown expression in Christianity today. What this indicates to me is that while a western Christianity did not accept or practice the gifts, eastern and African areas may have continued the practice. It would then be a cultural expression of Christianity.
I would also suggest that we have lost our participatory practices in worship, which were common before the last two centuries moved us into an audience atmosphere. The rise of non-participatory worship has given rise to the consumer Christian and created a whoe new expression of Christianity, again, that is cultural.
I would suggest the read, despite the fact it is not a “Christian” book. It offers great insight to us as we examine how we develop communities of faith and bring people together for times of collective joy.
