Dance in the Early Church: sources and restrictions

Laura Hellsten, Åbo Akademi, Systematic Theology Laura Hellsten is a PhD student in Systematic Theology at Åbo Akademi University. She has a Master’s degree in Education from Oulu University 2008 and Master in Theology from Åbo Akademi University 2012. She is currently working on her thesis, on dance and theology, which deals with the practices of dance in the Western Christian tradition. The thesis will be ready in 2017 and combines ethnographic studies in the Church of Sweden between the years 2014–16 with more historical materials stretching from Biblical narratives to the Middle Ages. She also teaches Religious Education at the International Teacher Education programme at Oulu University.Understanding the role of dance in the Western Christian tradition is an underexplored territory. Sources of historical investigations are few and many of them are problematic. In this article commonly used sources are questioned and a re-examination of earlier research is begun. Focusing on the Early Church in dialogue with writing from the patristic period, a new interpretation is done around the theme of dance prohib-ition. The important contributions of Donatella Tronca as well as Graham Pont and Alessandro Alcangeli to the understanding of dance in the Early Church period are expanded by means of a more extensive theological framework. This article also aims at bringing a broader philosophical and societal understanding of the worldview and social imaginary of the Early Church period to bear on earlier research studies