Sacred Folly Coming in March

Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools by Max Harris (Cornell University Press), is scheduled for publication in March of this year. Previously I have written on the significance of the concept of sacred follow for the church:

This book will update and correct remarks Harris has made previously about the Feast of Fools in his book Carnival and Other Christian Festivals: Folk Theology and Folk Performance (University of Texas Press, 2003). As I have argued previously in my masters thesis on Burning Man, and in several posts on this blog, western evangelicalism would do well to reflect on the importance of festival and play in connection with ecclesiology and worship and how the historical Feast of Fools, properly understood in its historical and ecclesiological contexts in the past, might be recontextualized in certain subcultural contexts for the present.

The publisher's website describes the book as follows:

For centuries, the Feast of Fools has been condemned and occasionally celebrated as a disorderly, even transgressive Christian festival, in which reveling clergy elected a burlesque Lord of Misrule, presided over the divine office wearing animal masks or women’s clothes, sang obscene songs, swung censers that gave off foul-smelling smoke, played dice at the altar, and otherwise parodied the liturgy of the church. Afterward, they would take to the streets, howling, issuing mock indulgences, hurling manure at bystanders, and staging scurrilous plays. The problem with this popular account—intriguing as it may be— is that it is wrong.

In Sacred Folly Max Harris rewrites the history of the Feast of Fools, showing that it developed in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries as an elaborate and orderly liturgy for the day of the Circumcision (1 January)—serving as a dignified alternative to rowdy secular New Year festivities. The intent of the feast was not mockery but thanksgiving for the incarnation of Christ. Prescribed role reversals, in which the lower clergy presided over divine office, recalled Mary’s joyous affirmation that God “has put down the mighty from their seat and exalted the humble.” The “fools” represented those chosen by God for their lowly status.

The feast, never widespread, was largely confined to cathedrals and collegiate churches in northern France. In the fifteenth century, high-ranking clergy who relied on rumor rather than firsthand knowledge attacked and eventually suppressed the feast. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century historians repeatedly misread records of the feast; their erroneous accounts formed a shaky foundation for subsequent understanding of the medieval ritual. By returning to the primary documents, Harris reconstructs a Feast of Fools that is all the more remarkable for being sanctified rather than sacrilegious.

Reviews

"Sacred Folly is a major achievement; it is a book that we have needed, and Max Harris is preeminently the person to have written it. It reads gracefully, and the author is an attractive presence throughout."—David Bevington, Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities, University of Chicago

"In this bracingly revisionist book, Max Harris overturns long-held assumptions about the nature and functions of the Feast of Fools. Denounced by fifteenth-century French theologians as a wanton and ungodly rite, the Feast of Fools was in reality, as Harris shows, a reverential, not a rowdy, holiday. With incisive analysis and meticulous scholarship, Sacred Folly sets the record straight. In doing so, it unearths the fascinating history of one of the most misunderstood liturgical festivities."—Claire Sponsler, University of Iowa

"Max Harris has written an important and necessary book, offering for the first time an accurate history of a subject that has been persistently and consistently misrepresented in scholarship. No other book has even remotely approached the thorough revision of the history of the Feast of Fools successfully undertaken here. Harris takes on the daunting tasks of sorting accurate from biased interpretation, tracing the passing down of error from scholar to scholar, and identifying the deliberate introduction and transmission of misinformation. Harris not only demolishes an inaccurate history but also constructs a new and durable one to replace it."—Pamela Sheingorn, Bernard M. Baruch College and Graduate Center, CUNY

"The modern history of medieval ritual has long been a history of misinformation and misunderstanding. This engaging book is a crucial intervention that should recalibrate the methods for studying early liturgy, drama, and popular culture; it also suggests the need for a reevaluation of larger historical narratives. By gathering, disentangling, and contextualizing primary and secondary sources produced over two millennia, Max Harris proves that the Feast of Fools was a legitimate liturgical celebration shaped by specific historical developments in the twelfth century and in certain areas of northern France. In so doing, he not only reconstructs the circumstances in which clergy conceptualized, crafted, performed, and defended a particular festive liturgy; he also exposes the ways that changing notions of propriety distorted secondhand accounts of it, leading to its suppression in the fifteenth century and the metastasizing of these erroneous reports down to the present day. This is an exemplary work of scholarship: careful but wide-ranging, lucid, and humane."—Carol Symes, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

About the Author

Max Harris is Executive Director Emeritus of the Wisconsin Humanities Council, University of Wisconsin–Madison. He has also taught at Yale University and the University of Virginia. He is the author of four previous books, including Carnival and Other Christian Festivals: Folk Theology and Folk Performance and Aztecs, Moors, and Christians: Festivals of Reconquest in Mexico and Spain.

Forthcoming Book on Sacred Folly

A friend and ministry colleague of mine attended Burning Man Festival recently and has been posting his photos and a few observations on his Facebook profile. The latest profile update mistakenly identified Burning Man as neo-pagan, and asked why the festival included a strong emphasis on festivity. This has led to my posting several comments on my own in response, correcting the claim that Burning Man is neo-pagan, and borrowing from an argument by Peter Berger in A Rumor of Angels that play and festival can serve as a "signal of transcendence."

Today I received an email from Max Harris informing me of his book Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools (Cornell University Press, forthcoming). This book will update and correct remarks Harris has made previously about the Feast of Fools in his book Carnival and Other Christian Festivals: Folk Theology and Folk Performance (University of Texas Press, 2003). As I have argued previously in my masters thesis on Burning Man, and in several posts on this blog, western evangelicalism would do well to reflect on the importance of festival and play in connection with ecclesiology and worship and how the historical Feast of Fools, properly understood in its historical and ecclesiological contexts in the past, might be recontextualized in certain subcultural contexts for the present.

See my previous interview with Harris on Carnival and Other Christian Festivals here. Related to Harris's forthcoming book is his article "A Reassessment of the Feast of Fools: A Rough and Holy Liturgy," See also my post "Burning Man and Play Theology."

Carnival, Festival, and Folk Performance: Max Harris interview

One aspect of my research on Burning Man Festival dealt with festival and folk performance. One of the helpful pieces of research I interacted with was done by Max Harris, Executive Director Emeritus of the Wisconsin Humanities Council. His first book, Theater and Incarnation was reissued as a paperback by Eerdmans in 2005. He spent Fall 2006 as a visiting professor of Religion and Literature at Yale Divinity School. He is now working on a book called The Feast of Fools: A History. Max is also a Presbyterian minister and has pastored churches in England, Virginia, Maryland, and Wisconsin.

Morehead's Musings: Max, I found your academic work very helpful in my reflections on Burning Man Festival as a form of festival and folk performance. One of your books that I found most interesting was Carnival and Other Christian Festivals: Folk Theology and Folk Performance (University of Texas Press, 2003). I think most readers, particularly Protestants, would not think of the excess of Carnival and connect that with a Christian festival. In your book you point out that Carnival has "often been demonized as pagan or heretical." Can you sketch the contours of Carnival and its connection to Christianity?

Max Harris: First, it may be helpful to realize that Mardi Gras in New Orleans, which informs most American’s perceptions of the festival, is in many ways an exceptional rather than a typical Carnival. Carnivals worldwide display considerable variety and some are openly religious. Even in rural Cajun Louisiana, the Mardi Gras masqueraders are predominantly Catholic and go in faith to church on Ash Wednesday. In Oruro, Bolivia, the second largest Carnival in Latin America (after Rio de Janeiro) is held in honor of the Virgen del Socavon (Virgin of the Mineshaft). After the opening procession through town to the Virgin’s sanctuary, the masqueraders remove their masks and approach on their knees the sacred painting of the Virgin. There is, I believe (as I have set out in Carnival and Other Christian Festivals), a profound theological message about God’s acceptance of the marginalized at work in this Carnival. Historically, I believe Carnival had its origins in the traditional topsy-turvydom of the medieval Christmas season, which in turn was grounded in the doctrine of the Incarnation and expressed in Mary’s words in the Magnificat: “He has put down the mighty from their seat and raised up the humble and meek. He has fed the poor with good things and sent the rich empty away” (Luke 1:52-53). During the Middle Ages, the Carnival season gradually expanded (especially in Italy) to fill the period from Christmas to the Tuesday before Lent. When those in authority wished to suppress Carnival’s critique of the powerful, they demonized Carnival by separating it from Christmas, confining it to the last few days before Lent, and then declaring it a last pagan fling before Lent. Specifically, they linked Carnival with ancient Roman festivals such as the Bacchanalia and Saturnalia. While good for hostile propaganda and, more recently, for attracting hedonistic tourists, this pedigree has no historical warrant. Whatever Carnival may now look like in some places, I believe its historical roots are Christian.

Morehead's Musings: One of the concerns if not fears of both Protestant and Catholic theologians is syncretism. After some discussion of Catholicism interacting with Aztec religion, and a few examples in the Old and New Testaments, you state that "festive syncretism is not..something to be feared by the Christian theologian," and your remind the reader that the "folk theology of fiesta is more likely to reside in its mixed, syncretic, or inclusive elements." Can you say a few words that addresses the fear of syncretism where cultural aspects like festival are involved, a fear that seems to be increasing in the Protestant Christian West in the context of a vibrant Christianity in the Southern Hemisphere and the shift to a global rather than Western Christianity?

Max Harris: It is important to realize that there is no such thing as a Christianity that is not already inculturated, i.e. that is not expressed in terms of a particular culture. God became flesh in Jesus Christ at a particular time and place and therefore in the midst of a particular culture. Jesus was (by divine intent!) not some kind of generic human being, transcending all cultural expression. He was Jewish, spoke Aramaic, knew Jewish songs, etc. Early Christians were hugely influenced, in their mode of articulating and practising their faith, by the Hellenistic culture in which they lived, and, in their way of organizing the church, by the Roman imperial model of hierarchical government. The church still bears strong marks (scars?) from this influence. And so on through history: the western European church expressed itself largely in terms of western European culture; the U.S. church is distinctively North American. Christianity is always and everywhere syncretistic, in the sense that it must express itself in terms of a particular culture. Our calling as Christians is to do our utmost to distinguish those aspects of our culture that are incompatible with the gospel from those that can contribute to legitimate forms of Christian expression. The most damaging example of Christian syncretism at the moment may well be the conservative American church’s embrace of a political and economic ideology that, to my mind, is incompatible with Christ’s call to care for the poor and the stranger and to begin the search for peace by turning the other cheek. Part of the problem is that we only see the other’s syncretism; we are blind to our own.

Morehead's Musings: In chapter 9 of your book you describe some interesting festive behavior from the 1400s that mocked the established civic and ecclesiastical order, including that involving the clergy, and then state that this is not associated with Carnival, but rather with early Christmas celebrations. I was struck by how much of this activity from a Christian festival in the past finds parallel expression in Burning Man Festival in the contemporary period in the U.S. Can you describe some of the mocking-type behaviors that took place in early Christmas "reversals of status" as you describe them, and how this might be connected to the Feast of Fools?

Max Harris: This is the part of my Carnival book that I would now most like to rewrite! What you find in that chapter is in line with conventional scholarship on the Feast of Fools, but I am now in the process of consulting the early sources themselves rather than the later secondary scholarship. As a result, I am writing a book on the Feast of Fools that will show that much (most?) of the conventional scholarship on the subject is inaccurate. To quote one of the few perceptive scholarly remarks on the topic: “Some of the wilder excesses said to have been committed [during the Feast of Fools] lay more in the wishful imagination of later commentators than in fact” (Nick Sandon, The Octave of the Nativity, London, 1984, p. 69). Some light-hearted “rites of reversal” remain, however: the repeated chanting of the Deposuit (the lines from the Magnificat that I quoted above) during Vespers at the feast of the Circumcision (January 1) in twelfth-century Notre-Dame de Paris; the orderly processional admission of an ass to Beauvais cathedral in the early twelfth century; and a procession through the streets of twelfth-century Chalons-sur-Marne (now Chalons-en-Champagne) during which clergy and townspeople joined in a round dance ahead of the procession. (You will notice that I’m still working on the early material, but I strongly suspect that the same will hold true when I reach 1400 and beyond.) So, there were small, merry festive rites of reversal, but they appear to have been surrounded by orderly liturgy and to have expressed joy in the good news of the Incarnation. They do not appear to have descended into disorderly, drunken revels, as so many scholars and clerical critics have assumed.

Morehead's Musings: While conservative Protestants and Catholics might be put off by such festive reversals, in your book you mention the connection between this and various biblical teachings, such as the Magnificat of Luke's gospel. Can you discuss the biblical materials on this and help readers make the connection to ancient, and possibly contemporary festivals of inversion?

Max Harris: In the Magnificat, Mary rejoices in a God who characteristically overturns privilege and favors the poor and the hungry. The church, whether Catholic, Presbyterian, or Baptist, has too often been supported by, sided with, and wanted to belong to the the rich and the well-fed. There have been wonderful exceptions: the early desert fathers, St. Francis of Assissi, Gustavo Gutierrez, to name just three. Many more are no doubt known only by God. But the Magnificat reminds us of our call to stand with God among the poor and the hungry. In chapter 3 of my Carnival book, I describe the Fiestas de Santiago Apostol en Loiza (Festivals of St. James the Apostle in Loiza), held each July in one of the most Afro-Caribbean communities of Puerto Rico. The fiestas enact a joyous exodus of the marginalized from the local seat of power in Loiza to the poorer neighboring community of Mediania, blessed especially by the presence of the smallest of three local statues of Santiago. In many ways, I see this festival as a folk mediation on Luke 14:21: “Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.”

Morehead's Musings: You also discuss the Feast of Fools as more than "mere parody of conventional liturgy," stating that it "deserves respect as a genuine expression of liturgical drama." Can you help us understand this?

Max Harris: I would no longer even call it a parody. I would now argue that, at its best, the Feast of Fools was an integral part of the liturgy of the feast of the Circumcision (January 1), insisting on the astonishing truth that God not only became human in Jesus of Nazareth, but (perhaps sotto voce) that God became poor, homeless, and a victim of unjust social structures. What I will argue when my book is finished remains to be seen!

Morehead's Musings: Given the connections between Christmas and Carnival, how was it that the church suppressed "the ecclesiastical Feast of fools, but its counterparts survived"?

Max Harris: Beginning about 1400, for reasons that I have yet to establish but which I suspect have more to do with broader cultural trends than with any real fault in the feast itself, ecclesiastical reformers began to press for the suppression of the Feast of Fools. Local cathedral chapters, often with the support of local bishops and archbishops, resisted. As a result, the Feast of Fools was gradually transferred from church buildings to city streets, where its organization was eventually taken over by secular groups. The “fools” became part of such outdoor activities as the Procession of Our Lady of the Trellis in Lille and the incipient Carnival in Dijon.

Morehead's Musings: You state that festivals like Carnival "can display a creative folk theology in dialogue with the official dogma of the church." You also mention "the festive God of folk theology," a conception of God and a form of theology all too absent from both Catholic and Protestant theologies. How might we look more positively at "popular religious festivals ..as a source of theological wisdom, otherwise unarticulated and therefore unnoticed by formal theology, that is worthy of a place alongside sacred text, reason, and ecclesiastical tradition"?

Max Harris: It’s not a simple matter. First, there is the problem of miscommunication (or lack of communication) between scholars and folk performers. Scholars are, by and large, trained to read written texts or to interview informants. Folk performers express themselves with great sophistication, but they do so in performance rather than in text or spoken word. As I try to make clear in my Carnival book, anyone who is truly interested in what folk performers have to say must acquire a sensitivity to what I call “the signs visible only in performance.” I came to this with some advantage, having a background in theater, but it still took much practice. In my book, I’ve tried to set out some hermeneutic principles for understanding folk performance, but there is no substitute for close and patient observance. As for such festivals being a source of theological wisdom, I mean by this that the traditional sources of theological authority (sacred text, reason and ecclesiastical tradition) all privilege those in power in the church: the educated clergy and theologians are the ones who interpret the sacred text and establish/guard/reform the traditions. Voices from below are rarely included in the process. My own theological reflection over the last twenty years has been significantly influenced by my participant observation of folk festivals in Spain and Latin America. I’ve never had a theological conversation as such with a folk performer, but I’ve learned a great deal from watching folk performers in action. And, part of what I’ve learned is the blessing of an exuberant joy in God’s love even for me!

Morehead's Musings: After reflection on religious festivals and folk performance, its connection with the church, and its absence in America and the West with the strong influences and history of Protestantism, I wonder whether the rise and increasing popularity of festival alternative subcultures like Burning Man in the U.S. and ConFest in Australia might represent attempts by other subcultures to fill a void not addressed by the churches of Christendom in its various branches. Your thoughts?

Max Harris: I don’t know Burning Man or ConFest first hand, so I’m not really in a position to comment. They may well be evidence of a festive gap in American religion (both Protestant and Catholic), but I have no way of knowing whether they fill that gap in healthy or unhealthy ways. (My own town of Madison, WI, is famous for its annual Halloween festival, during which several thousand costumed students and out-of-town visitors take over the downtown area. I took part one year: it left me very disappointed.) This festive gap, by the way, is partly a byproduct of the separation of church and state, which, for other reasons, I favor strongly. It is effectively illegal in this country to hold large-scale outdoor communal religious celebrations. So we hold large-scale secular celebrations (e.g., July 4th, the Super Bowl), which are, to my mind, poor substitutes for real fiestas! Some comparatively small Native American, Hispanic, and Cajun communities in the Southwest do hold outdoor religious festivals, but that’s about it.

Morehead's Musings: Max, thanks again for these thoughts. As I said, I have benefited greatly from your work, and I hope this interview helps provide food for thought for others to look at festivals more positively and to see their significance for church and society.

Festivals and Festivity

In a previous post I noted the signfiicance of play theology to Western Christianity, particularly in reflection on how this is expressed as a major facet of alternative cultural events and intentional communties like Burning Man Festival. Play takes on special significance when connected to the issue of festivals and sacred festivity.

Festivals present specific challenges to Protestantism. While Roman Catholic and secular scholars have devoted serious attention to festivity, this is not the case with Protestants. Festivity is not taken seriously either as a cultural phenomenon or as a topic for scholarly exploration by most Protestants, and yet Catholic scholars have argued “that festivals belong by rights among the greatest topics of philosophical discussion” (Pieper 1999, back cover).

In the work of Yinger on countercultures, he includes a chapter on symbolic countercultures which use rituals of inversion that reverse and mock the established order. These countercultures have existed in the past and the present, and Yinger says that “such activities can be matched in the medieval and contemporary worlds” (1982, 154). Peter Burke discusses such phenomena in his book on popular culture in early modern Europe. He says that, “[c]arnival was, in short, a time of institutionalized disorder, a set of rituals of reversal” (1990, 190). Duvignaud references the same thing in his comment that “festival involves a powerful denial of the established order” (1976, 19). In the context of early modern Europe, this celebration of social inversion involved a number of phenomena, including dressing in costumes, cross-dressing, intense sexual activity, as well as weddings and mock weddings (Burke 1990, 186). Burke sees these activities as fulfilling an important social function as ritual regardless of “whether participants are aware of this or not” (ibid., 199).

Here we might note the connection of the festive and ritual expression of acts of social inversion to Burning Man. First, individuals come to the festival in order to carve out their own place in space and time which includes acts of creativity as well as social inversion. Second, the activities of social inversion at Burning Man exactly parallel those expressed in carnival and festival in early modern Europe, including costuming, cross-dressing, sexual activity, weddings, and mock weddings. Thus, the activities at Burning Man may be understood as a contemporary expression of festival with historical and cross-cultural precedents.

But an aspect of festival that may not be familiar to evangelicals is its connection in the past to the life of the church. As Bakhtin reminds us, carnival and festival provided a “second life of the people, who for a time entered the utopian realm of community, freedom, equality, and abundance” (1984, 9), and further “[a]ll forms of carnival were linked externally to the feasts of the church” (ibid., 8). Harris notes a similar historic connection between the church and festival and states that, “[a] good case can be made, however, for the argument that Carnival developed within the Christian community from the topsy-turveydom of Christmas” (2003, 140). Festivals thus have a historic connection to Christianity, both through Christmas celebrations as well as the connection between Carnival and Lent. Carnival is a Roman Catholic celebration with the carnival season being a holiday period that is celebrated during the two weeks before the traditional Christian fasting of Lent. Lent is a time of preparation for Holy Week, and its forty days of observance are symbolic of forty day periods of religious significance found in the Judeo-Christian narrative, most especially Jesus’ retreat into the wilderness for a time of fasting and temptation.

Yet even in this ecclesiastical context the social inversion of festivity was still present. Harris notes that carnival celebration in connection with Christmas in medieval and early modern Europe involved “[c]ross-dressing, masking as animals, wafting foul-smelling incense, and electing burlesque bishops, popes, and patriarchs [that] mocked conventional human pretensions” (ibid.).

If festival was connected at one point in history with the church’s sacred calendar, why did it disappear? At least two reasons seem likely. The first is that such festive play is perceived as dangerous in ecclesiastical contexts. As Manning states, “[p]lay theology, it seems, is frightened of sensuality, excess and ambiguity which all reside in the body and are unleashed in play process – as if it is frightened of the carnality of birth and death itself” (1983, 369). Krondorfer develops this idea further when he states that,

[p]lay processes (such as dance, festivals or ceremonies) are often excessive, transgressive, inversive and passionate. They can be carnivalesque in structure and ‘anti-theological’, as Julia Kristeva explains. They challenge ‘God, authority and social law’.

A few play theologians are aware of the fact that actual play processes, including religious rituals (such as the medieval Feast of Fools), are transgressive, subversive and dangerous; but they do not fully integrate this knowledge in their theological thinking’” (1993, 368).

Krondorfer’s analysis converges with Miller’s in that he later states that, “[p]lay theology, it seems, is frightened of sensuality, excess and ambiguity” (ibid., 369), and this frightening and dangerous form of expression and theologizing apparently proved threatening to the church.

The second reason why festivity has lots its connection to the church and its sacred calendar of celebrations may be connected to the Protestant Reformation. The celebration of certain holidays in the church calendar “diminished in importance” with the Reformation (Santino 1994, xvi), and further, some seem to have been expunged as a reaction against aspects of Roman Catholicism. As an example, Hutton comments on contemporary Protestant concerns over Halloween and its connection to All Saints and All Souls Day from the past:

Such an attitude could be most sympathetically portrayed as a logical development of radical Protestant hostility to the holy days of All Saints and All Souls; having abolished the medieval rites associated with them and attempted to remove the feast altogether, evangelical Protestants are historically quite consistent in trying to eradicate any traditions surviving from them. If so many of those traditions appear now to be divorced from Christianity, this is precisely because of the success of earlier reformers in driving them out of the churches and away from clerics… (1996, 384).

I suggest that despite the potential danger that festival celebration poses to the church with all of its rituals of social inversion, that the vacuum created in Western culture as a result of a lack of sacred festivity that includes social inversion has resulted in the creation of new forms of sacred festivity that are interpreted outside the Christian context through alternative cultural events such as Burning Man. Thus, festivals and festivity represent another “unpaid bill of the church.”

I argue that festivity need not be divorced from the context of Protestant community and church life. Indeed, the rediscovery and experimentation with festivity will play an essential part of the church’s engagement with Burning Man as well as other facets of postmodern spirituality. I believe that the church can benefit from fresh exploration of festivity in three areas, that of festivity serving as a reminder of the biblical teaching on social inversion, festivity as a tool for theological reflection, and as a source for fresh ritual in the church.

First, festivity reminds the church of it own traditions on social inversion. A number of biblical passages touch on this topic, with the “Magnificat” from the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel being one of the most relevant with its discussion of the raising of the humble and the bringing down of rulers from their thrones (verse 53). Harris discusses the connection between the social inversion of festival and the Judeo-Christian scriptural narratives in this area:

The Feast of Fools, with its explicit justification in the Magnificat, noisily proclaimed the Christian basis for festive roles of reversal…. [This is echoed in] Christ’s utterances about children and the Kingdom of Heaven, Isaiah’s prophecy that a little child shall lead them (Isaiah 11:6), and the theme of inversion and the world turned upside-down found in texts like the ‘Magnificat’.. (2003, 141).

Second, festivals provide the church with another tool for theological reflection. Once again Harris’s comments are helpful:

The popular elements in patronal saints’ day festivals, like Carnival, have often been demonized as pagan or heretical...Could it be that popular religious festivals offer a source of theological wisdom, otherwise unarticulated and therefore unnoticed by formal theology, that is worthy of a place alongside sacred text, reason, and ecclesiastical tradition? Such a perspective would partly balance the standard sources of theology, which privilege clerical exegesis, educated reason, and authoritative legitimation of tradition (ibid., 28).

Third, festivity provides a source for fresh ritual in the church. Chad Martin has written an intriguing paper that explores the potential for carnival as a form of ritual that holds great promise for the church (1999). In his view, “Carnival is the necessary Dionysian expression that counter-balances the church’s otherwise Apollonian heady approach to religion” (ibid., 35). He draws attention to the “ecclesiastical symbolism” of festivals, including Mardi Gras (ibid., 36), and sets forth a case for the possibility of “ritual transformation” that takes place through Carnival and festival with its “precarious social inversion” (ibid., 37). Like Harris, he draws a connection between festive social inversion and biblical themes, and then makes a case for the necessity of the chaos and revelry of carnival for Christian worship (ibid., 40). In his view, festivity is important for Christian worship for two reasons: “first, the glorification of the humorous, light-hearted side of human experience; and second, the inversion of social standards (in the biblical settings this means the opportunity for social change)” (ibid.). Martin’s discussion then moves from the theological exploration of festival to its implementation and exploration in his local church setting, which involved the creation of carnival themes, reflection on biblical stories, costuming, music, “dancing, eating and laughing,” and carrying the festival out into the community through a “closing parade” (ibid., 39). For Martin, carnival involves an important theological message: “God’s kingdom is for the oppressed, and it can come surrounded with laughter, irony, celebration and freedom. ‘The chief attitude of [carnival] is one of peaceful revolution. When the spirit rules, the kingdoms of this world are overturned’” (ibid., 42). Through his discussion and example, Martin provides a way “for developing a meaningful carnival ritual” (ibid., 45) for church and community.

References Cited

Bakhtin, Michail. 1984. Rabelais and His World. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Burke, Peter. 1990. Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, rev. ed. Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate.

Duvignaud, Jean. 1976. “Festivals: a sociological approach,” Cultures 3/1: 13-25.

Harris, Max. 2003. Carnival and Other Christian Festivals: Folk Theology and Folk Performance. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Hutton, Ronald. 1996. The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press.

Krondorfer, Bjorn. 1993. “Play Theology as Discourses of Disguise,” Journal of Literature & Theology 7/4 (December): 365-380.

Manning, Frank E. 1983. “Cosmos and chaos: celebration in the modern world,” in Frank E. Manning, ed., The Celebration of Society: Perspectives on Contemporary Cultural Performance. Bowling Green, OH: Bowing Green University Press.

Martin, Chad. 1999. “Carnival: A Theology of Laughter And a Ritual for Social Change.” Worship 73/1 (January): 33-45.

Pieper, Josef. 1999. In Tune with the World: A Theory of Festivity. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press.

Santino, Jack, ed. 1994. Halloween and Festivals of Death and Life. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press.

Yinger, J. 1982. Countercultures: The Promise and the Peril of a World Turned Upside Down. New York: The Free Press.