Baptist fear of dancing

Most people have no understanding of the Baptist fear of dancing.

I myself, who grew up Baptist, don't quite understand it.

But as I had some of it explained to me...dancing leads to terrible things.

Now, mind you, using the following examples as 'why not to dance' really misses the fucking point. Not to mention removing things way the fuck from context. Both big problems of mine. But oh well.

1. The dancing girl who really impressed Herod, and in return got to ask for John the Baptist's head. I don't know, maybe the moral is that lascivious dancing for emperors gets saints killed...I'm not sure of the logic behind this.
2. David returned from a battle, and was so overjoyed at how the Lord had blessed the efforts of the Israelites that he took off all of his clothes and danced a Dance of Joy in Praise of the Lord. His wife was ashamed to see him wagging it in public, and denounced him. So the Lord, rather pissed at her for denouncing open and free praise of Himself, struck her barren. So the lesson is that Dance, no matter the reason, can lead to the fall of others, like it's not their responsibility or something...*sigh*

I personally find David's dance of praise immensely inspiring. He was so utterly in awe of what the Lord had done that he danced naked before the entire (present) Nation of Israel. He just didn't care who saw him, all that he wanted to do was praise God with all of his being.

Which is damn cool.

I've heard other examples, but they follow this pattern. People are dancing, and bad things happen. The fact that cause and effect are not, in fact, part of the equation doesn't seem to enter the picture.

I think that much of the "Sex standing up can lead to dancing" line of thought stems from many religious groups being trained, unfortunately, to find content far more important than context.

The Baptist fear of dancing is less to do with biblical events and more to do with the fact that in western cultures, in many different periods, dancing was seen as decadent. Consider these settings:

• Dancing halls
• The Rock and Roll revival (you've heard all that "rock and roll is the devil's music" stuff)
• Cabaret acts in pubs

While this is not anything like an exhaustive list, you will notice that all these settings had (at certain points in history) massively "non-christian" connotations... hence the fear of dancing.

A piece of little known trivia: many baptist churches built in the past 100 years or so have slightly sloping floors. I always thought it was so the people at the back could see better, but apparently it was so as to render dancing more difficult. The tradition of fixed pews (benches) also owes something to the same train of thought.

mblase tells me that originally "rock and roll" was a euphemism for, as he puts it, "bedroom sports." In other words, the two terms were, in fact, closely associated.