Dancing on Church Premises

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23883, 27 February 1943, Page 4

Dancing on Church Premises

“ It takes all the wisdom of the " wise to counteract the folly of the “ good," said a cynical sage. The remark might have been applied to the traditional ban on dancing discussed by the Methodist Conference in Christchurch on Thursday. It seems to have been a longestablished rule that Methodist Church, property must not be used for dancing: and this custom the Birkenhead circuit, by remit to the committee on church welfare, has

sought to break down. The belief that dancing is sinful originates in days when rigid personal austerity passed from the esteem of a way of virtue to the esteem of virtue itself. But times and ideas have changed. Most Christians see today that joy and Christian faith are not incompatibles, and that joy includes gaiety, the natural and innocent gaiety of dancing not excluded. There is slight need to fear that dances properly conducted on church premises may develop excesses, or that, as one conference member suggested, "liquor will be “ introduced.” The changing and broadening viewpoint of Methodists to what is, after all, a question of regulation rather than of morals, was happily evident in discussion of it. It will be hoped that a surviving rule will be modified in the Methodist Church by the wider truth, expressed by one member, that “ there is nothing inherently “evil in dancing”: and that its modification will be the means of drawing young people pleasantly and blamelessly together under the protection of the church.