I have seen several hakas as well, having grown up in New Zealand, and they have served different purposes depending on the context. One very moving example you can see online is the student population of a boys school doing a haka at the funeral of a teacher they all respected.
Whether a haka is appropriate in a worship service would depend on why it was performed. It would be unusual, yes, and John Wesley wouldn’t like it. But the idea that it would be pruriel like a ballet perfomance is off the mark.
Not sure it’s not prurient. It’s raw masculine sexuality, is it not? In any culture. I’ve seen it in Africa (although not haka, specifically) and it struck me as likely to awaken prurient desires. Love,
It’s no more the women than the men. Consider the excellent parallel in Keller’s worship and ask who likes it more—men or women? Prurient is as prurient does.
For whatever my own poor wisdom is worth, it seems that the Church today is vastly more tolerant of such displays than she has ever been in the past. Many of our Puritan forebears, not to mention the best-known lights of the much earlier Church, would have frowned upon either the ballet or the haka in any context, and might have had a conniption at the suggestion that we include them in a worship service. No doubt many of these men went too far in their austerity, absorbing unbiblical attitudes from their own cultures and so forth – and the stuffiness and formalism of European Christianity is often happily corrected by our majority world brethren. Nevertheless, to my own spirit, while the effeminacy of the ballet dancers is abominable, there seems something unseemly about the haka as well: it glorifies men and their strength; it is well suited to be the challenge of a boastful man, more akin to how Goliath would approach a battle than would David.
Yes, but of course, well-suited to David in the way he worshipped as the ark was restored to Jerusalem, for which Michal despised him. Not to contradict you, brother, but that’s been hanging in my head the whole discussion.
What some may not know is that, years ago, the most “successful” pastor of the PCA hosted General Assembly at his church campus, and had his wife lead her liturgical dance troupe in GA’s worship service. To say the Puritans would have had conniptions over this may be an understatement.
Not against dance in worship if it is not salacious or a performance, but spontaneous expression of joy in the Lord. Love,
Which in a western context is to say dance as a form is forbidden, but bodily displays of exuberance and joy are not (and are not in a western context considered ‘dance’).
But there would be a categorical difference between an African church celebrating God’s glory and the liturgical dance troupe you mentioned previously wouldn’t there?
I think the voices about dancing in church are often talking past each other and with different concepts in mind.
