Lord of the Dance (hymn)

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For other meanings, please see Lord of the Dance

Lord of the Dance is a hymn with words written by Sydney Carter in 1963. He adapted the tune from the famous American Shaker dance song "Simple Gifts". The hymn is widely performed in the United Kingdom and the United States, and is often mistakenly thought to be a much older traditional hymn. On one occasion its author was informed it had been written in medieval times by a certain Sydney Carter.

It follows the idea of traditional English carol, "Tomorrow shall be my dancing day" which tells the gospel story in the first person voice of Jesus of Nazareth. A comparison reveals this, but also shows Carter's liveliness and wry humour in his adaptation of the theme.

Verse 8 of "Tomorrow shall be my dancing day" is:

Before Pilate the Jews me brought,

Where Barabbas had deliverance;

They scourged me and set me at nought,

Judged me to die to lead the dance.

This verse is paraphrased in verse 3 of "Lord of the Dance":

I danced on the sabbath when I cured the lame,

The holy people said it was a shame;

They whipped and they stripped and they hung me high;

And they left me there on a cross to die.

Some Christians have expressed the view that this stanza should be omitted because it suggests that the Jews killed Jesus. For example, a prominent Quaker publication^[1] stated that although "Lord of the Dance" is "one of our most popular and widely sung" modern hymns, this particular stanza should not be sung, because "[e]ach time we sing this verse together we lend emotional power and the appearance of support for what is in fact a lie". Similarly, one religion/philosophy professor at a Methodist-affiliated college expressed concern that "one of [her] favorites" in The United Methodist Hymnal, "'Lord of the Dance,' is full of antisemitic notions,"^[2] and therefore she recommended various other hymns be used instead.

These criticisms certainly have not persuaded all people. The Quaker publication mentioned above quotes the Quaker hymnal Worship in Song as stating that "the holy people" refers only to certain Jewish priests, and the "they" in the third line refers not to the Jewish Pharisees (the "holy people" of the second line) but rather to the Roman authorities. However, the article regards the latter claim as weak on grammatical grounds. The hymn "has been taken up widely throughout the Christian Church"^[3] and remains popular for wedding ceremonies^[4].

A persistent myth exists that the song is old and originally pagan. This error was popularised in the Hellblazer story Lord of the Dance by Garth Ennis, in which the eponymous character claims that the song is an ancient Yule tune and provides the supposedly 'original' lyrics, such as substituting 'and I danced through the nights of revelry and mirth' for 'and Bethlehem's where I had my birth'.

There is an unauthorized neopagan adaptation of the song, which is usually sung to a different tune.^[5]