Introduction
If we mean to caution a fellow believer that some activity is sinful, we owe him more than an appeal to custom, or to our own discomfort with it. The testimony of the church across the centuries, gathered in the appendix to this paper, is old, wide, and nearly unbroken, and a consensus of that kind among godly and careful men is not nothing. It is corroborating witness. It is not, by itself, the ground on which a conscience may be bound. Scripture alone does that. This paper asks a narrower question than whether dancing as such is sinful: what does the Bible actually say about the practice, and does that testimony, read together with its plain teaching on worldliness and on our duty to the weak, still support the conviction our fathers held regarding mixed social dancing?
I write as one who holds that it does. But I write also wanting the reasoning to be sound enough to survive its own scrutiny, and warm enough that a brother or sister who has not yet been persuaded will still recognize a pastor speaking to them and not merely a rule being enforced upon them. Where earlier drafts of this paper leaned harder on assertion than argument, I have tried here to close that gap.
I. What Scripture Actually Records
The Old Testament’s vocabulary of dance consistently pictures leaping and whirling movement bound up with exuberant, often religious joy, rather than the close, paired movement of the modern ballroom or nightclub. Solomon can speak of “a time to dance” without embarrassment (Ecclesiastes 3:4), and the New Testament’s own language of joy runs in a similar vein, as when the lame man healed at the temple gate goes “leaping” (hallomai) and praising God (Acts 3:8). The two are not the same word in the same language, but they belong to the same picture of the body given over entirely to gladness before the Lord.
Scripture records this leaping joy chiefly in connection with worship and with the great mercies of God to His people. Miriam led the women of Israel in dance after the crossing of the sea (Exodus 15:20–21). David danced before the ark with all his might (2 Samuel 6:14). The women of the cities came out singing and dancing to celebrate David’s victory over Goliath (1 Samuel 18:6–7). The father of the prodigal marks his son’s return with music and dancing (Luke 15:25). In every one of these scenes the movement is an act of worship or of household gladness, led by one voice or instrument and followed by the rest, and it is, without exception, practiced by one sex at a time.
No text records men and women dancing together as an act of worship or of domestic celebration. Where dancing appears for amusement rather than worship, the company keeping it is never commended. Job names it among the marks of the household that says to God, “Depart from us” (Job 21:11–14). The daughter of Herodias dances before Herod’s court to deadly effect (Matthew 14:6). Michal calls David “vain” for dancing before the Lord in a manner she judged undignified, and is herself rebuked for the comparison (2 Samuel 6:16, 20–23). These are the only occasions where dancing is joined to entertainment rather than worship, and in each case Scripture’s own narration marks the company as worldly, dangerous, or worse.
II. Seven Conclusions from the Pattern
Read together, the texts in which dancing occurs (some forty occurrences across both Testaments) yield a consistent pattern rather than a scattered handful of proof-texts.1
1. Dancing was a religious act, practiced both by idolaters and by the worshipers of the true God.
2. Among God’s people it functioned as an expression of spiritual joy for deliverance and mercy received.
3. Women danced with women, and men with men.
4. No example is recorded of the two sexes dancing together.
5. Where dancing shifted from worship to amusement, it was regarded as disreputable and practiced by “vain fellows.”
6. The three instances of dancing purely for amusement—Job’s worldly household, the daughter of Herodias, the men Michal names—carry no association with purity or with the glory of God.
7. Scripture nowhere sanctions dancing as an amusement practiced between the sexes.
That last conclusion, honestly stated, is an argument from pattern, not from a single command. The next section is owed to it, because a pattern alone does not settle a case of conscience. It has to be joined to something Scripture does command.
III. From Pattern to Command: Answering the Charge of Silence
A careful reader is right to ask whether an argument built on the absence of a positive example can bear the weight I am putting on it. Scripture’s silence about a thing is not, by itself, a prohibition of that thing; if it were, we could forbid a great many innocent customs never mentioned in its pages. So the case for mixed dancing being sinful cannot rest on absence alone. It rests, rather, on three converging lines, only one of which is an argument from silence.
First, the pattern itself is not neutral silence but a consistent, positive shape. Every biblical instance of dance as worship or family joy is single-sex; every biblical instance of mixed or amusement dancing is narrated as belonging to worldly, idolatrous, or dangerous company. That is not the same as Scripture simply never mentioning a fork or a coat. It is a repeated moral pattern, and repeated patterns in the text are themselves a form of instruction, the same way the repeated pattern of Israel’s kings is instruction about kingship even where no single verse says “no king shall do thus.”
Second, and more decisively, Scripture does not leave the underlying company and conduct of Greco-Roman social dancing unaddressed. Paul names it. The word rendered “rioting” in Romans 13:13 and “revellings” in Galatians 5:21 and 1 Peter 4:3 is komos, the term for the very party-circle amusements of the Hellenistic world in which paid dancers performed for mixed and often drunken company.2 Paul does not condemn dancing by name because he does not need to. He condemns the komos, the revel of which dancing was the recognized centerpiece, and he does so in three separate epistles, listing it alongside drunkenness, chambering, and wantonness as marks of the old life a Christian has put off. This closes most of the gap between pattern and command. The relevant conduct is named and forbidden; dancing was simply the vehicle everyone in the first century understood the word to describe.
Third, Exodus supplies a case Scripture treats as paradigmatic rather than incidental. When Israel made the golden calf, “the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play” (Exodus 32:6), and what that “play” included is made explicit two verses later, when Moses draws near the camp and sees “the calf, and the dancing” (Exodus 32:19). Paul takes this very scene in 1 Corinthians 10 and holds it up to the church at Corinth as a warning against exactly the kind of festive idolatry that begins in table fellowship and ends in immorality: “Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them... Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition” (1 Corinthians 10:7, 11). Scripture’s first extended narrative account of dancing outside the worship of the true God is, on the apostle’s own reading, an ensample and a warning, not a neutral report.
Put together, these three lines move the argument from pattern to something closer to a command, applied through its plainest historical referent. I do not think this proves that every conceivable form of mixed movement to music is, in itself and in every culture, damnable. I do think it proves that the specific practice these texts describe, mixed social dancing pursued as entertainment, is precisely what Paul forbids under another name, and that the burden of proof has shifted to the one who would separate the modern practice from the apostolic condemnation, not to the one who identifies them.
IV. Romans 12:2 and the Meaning of Worldly Conformity
“And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Romans 12:2). The word translated “conformed”, syschematizo, has to do with taking on the outward pattern, the schema, of the age; the companion exhortation to be “transformed” (metamorphoo) by a renewed mind concerns the whole inner disposition, will, and affection, not merely outward behavior. Calvin’s comment on the verse is worth having in full:
The term world has several significations, but here it means the sentiments and the morals of men; to which, not without cause, he forbids us to conform. For since the whole world lies in wickedness, it behooveth us to put off whatever we have of the old man, if we would really put on Christ: and to remove all doubt, he explains what he means, by stating what is of a contrary nature; for he bids us to be transformed into a newness of mind.
— John Calvin, Commentary on Romans
Paul is not condemning styles, trades, or the ordinary furniture of civil life merely because the world also makes use of them. He is condemning a mind and a set of affections shaped by the age rather than by grace. The question a believer must ask of mixed dancing is not whether the activity is technically forbidden by name, but whether taking it up requires borrowing the world’s affections along with its steps. Given what the practice was built to do, animate a feast, stir romantic and physical attraction between the sexes, hold and be held, that borrowing is not incidental to the form. It is the form’s purpose.
V. 1 Peter 4:3 and the Company Dancing Keeps
“For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries” (1 Peter 4:3). The word rendered “lasciviousness”, aselgeia, denotes an absence of restraint, a wanton and unbridled indulgence of the flesh; Thayer glosses it as unbridled lust manifesting in wanton acts and manners, including indecent bodily movement and the unchaste handling of one sex by the other.3 Peter is not inventing a new vice category for dance specifically. He is naming the same cluster Paul names in Romans 13 and Galatians 5, revelling (komos) alongside excess of wine and abominable idolatries, the whole complex of Gentile festivity the church had renounced at her baptism. If the ballroom answers to this description, and by its own history and stated purpose it does, then a believer need not locate the word “dance” in the text to know the practice is addressed.
VI. The World’s Own Testimony
It would be enough to rest the case on Scripture alone. But it is worth noting that the world has rarely pretended dancing between the sexes was anything other than what these texts describe. Fred Astaire, speaking of his celebrated and comparatively modest partnership with Ginger Rogers, said plainly that they “accomplished sex through dance” and told more through movement than through embrace. The Encyclopedia Britannica’s entry on the art of dance describes the end product of social dancing, across every era from the waltz to the twist, as “physical pleasure in the activity of dancing and sexual awareness of a partner, whether embraced or half-consciously observed.”4 Collier’s Encyclopedia describes the social dance as, historically, the joint product of “physical exuberance and sex stimuli.”5 None of these sources write as moralists with an axe to grind.
This is offered as corroboration, not as the foundation of the argument. A Christian does not need Fred Astaire’s permission to believe Paul. But when the world’s own account of a practice matches, almost word for word, the apostolic description of revelling and unbridled lust, it should at minimum remove any temptation to think the church’s historic caution was prudish or uninformed.
VII. A Word on Weddings, Liberty, and Charity
Much of what prompts this question in practice is not the nightclub but the wedding reception, where a bride and groom, their families, and often other believers are asked to consider hiring music and opening a floor for mixed dancing as part of the celebration. I want to say clearly that nothing in this paper is meant to cast doubt on the goodness of feasting, music, or bodily joy at a wedding. Scripture rejoices in weddings. The Song of Solomon does not blush when husband and wife delight in each other, and a wedding feast is Christ’s own chosen picture of the marriage supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:7–9). The question is never whether joy, music, and even movement belong at a wedding. They plainly do. The question is only whether this particular form of movement, paired and mixed dancing among guests, is the vehicle that joy ought to take.
To a couple or a family who remain unpersuaded that mixed dancing is, in every conceivable instance, intrinsically sinful, I would still press a second and independent argument that does not require settling the first. Paul was willing to forgo meat, a thing he considered lawful in itself, permanently, rather than risk the conscience of a weaker brother (1 Corinthians 8:13). He grounds this not in the metaphysics of meat but in love: “It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth” (Romans 14:21). Even a reader who judges the exegesis above to be approximate rather than certain should ask what is lost by declining an amusement our own tradition has almost universally regarded with suspicion, our own weaker brethren might be wounded or emboldened by, and our own witness before an unconverted world can only be helped by foregoing. “Abstain from all appearance of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:22) is not a demand for moral certainty before we act. It is a demand for care where certainty is not required to see the danger.
None of this is said to shame those who, out of a genuinely different reading of these same texts, have permitted the practice within careful bounds, nor to place this question on the same footing as the articles of the faith. It is said because I believe the plainer reading of Scripture, the near-unanimous witness of the church catholic across two thousand years, and simple pastoral prudence for the flock all point the same direction, and a shepherd who sees three lines converging owes his people more than silence.
Conclusion
We have traced the biblical vocabulary of dance, the consistent shape of every instance in which it occurs, the apostolic naming of revelling as a work of the flesh, and the world’s own candid account of what mixed dancing was built to do. None of this proceeds from a distaste for joy or for the body God made. It proceeds from taking seriously that the same Lord who commanded Miriam’s timbrel and David’s leaping before the ark also commanded His church to walk honestly, not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness (Romans 13:13), and that these are not two different gods speaking, but one.
“The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light” (Romans 13:12). “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them” (Ephesians 5:11). Our forefathers did not write on this subject in a vacuum. They wrote with these texts open before them, and with love for the souls entrusted to their care. May the Lord grant us the same humility to receive correction where we need it, and the same courage to give it where we are asked.
Notes
1. The relevant occurrences include Exodus 15:20–21; 32:19; Judges 11:34; 21:21, 23; 1 Samuel 18:6–7; 30:16; 2 Samuel 6:14, 16, 20–23; 1 Chronicles 15:29; Job 21:11; Psalm 30:11; 149:3; 150:4; Ecclesiastes 3:4; Isaiah 13:21; Jeremiah 31:4, 13; Lamentations 5:15; Matthew 11:17; 14:6; Mark 6:22; Luke 7:32; 15:25.
2. On komos as the technical term for the Greco-Roman revel and its association with professional dancing, see the standard lexical treatment in Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, s.v. κῶμος; compare Cicero’s remark, reported by earlier writers on the custom, that among the Romans “no one dances unless he is either drunk or mad.”
3. Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, s.v. ἀσέλγεια.
4. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “The Art of Dance,” 1979 ed., vol. 5, 455–456.
5. Collier’s Encyclopedia, “Dance,” 1964 ed., vol. 7, 683.
Appendix: A Sampling of Historical Testimony
What follows is offered as corroborating witness only, not as the ground of the argument above. That so many careful and godly men across so many centuries and traditions arrived independently at the same conviction is worth a hearing, even where their reasoning is not identical to my own.
From “A Sermon on the Sinfulness of Dancing,” The National Preacher and Village Pulpit, 1867
Let not our youth and maidens deceive themselves. The social dance cannot make proper those motions of the body and that familiarity with the person which are universally condemned... In this view of the matter the Westminster divines placed dancing in the list of things forbidden by the seventh commandment. They understood its tendency and were not under the influence of foolish prudery.
A life of humble piety is a standing rebuke to sin; but is sin rebuked when piety is thus concealed? Let a church become addicted to this pastime. Let the pastor, elders, deacons, and all the members indulge in it, would she not be shorn of her strength and wholly paralyzed?
Thomas Watson
Take heed of mixed dancing. Dances are instruments of wantonness. From dancing, people come to dalliance with another, and from dalliance to uncleanness. ‘There is,’ says Calvin, ‘for the most part, some unchaste behavior in dancing.’ Dances draw the heart to folly by wanton gestures, by unchaste touches, and by lustful looks.
J. C. Ryle
Concerning dancing, or going to balls, I only ask Christians to judge the amusement by its tendencies and accomplishments... If dancing were taken up for mere exercise, if dancing took place at early hours, and men only danced with men, and women with women, it would be needless and absurd to object to it. But everybody knows that this is not what is meant by modern dancing.
Who would like to be found in a modern dance-hall when the Lord Jesus Christ comes the second time?
Wilhelmus à Brakel
Dancing has always been despised by the saints and held in contempt by civilized heathen. It neither proceeds from God nor is commanded anywhere; rather, it proceeds from the world and belongs to the lusts of the flesh and the lusts of the eyes (1 John 2:16), as well as to the unfruitful works of darkness (Ephesians 5:11).
Westminster Larger Catechism, Q. 139
The sins forbidden in the seventh commandment... idleness, gluttony, drunkenness, unchaste company; lascivious songs, books, pictures, dancings, stage plays; and all other provocations to, or acts of, uncleanness, either in ourselves or others.
Thomas Boston
Promiscuous dancing, or dancing of men and women together. This entertainment, however reckoned innocent among many, is evidently an incentive to lust, Isaiah 23:15–17... It is offensive to the grave and pious, is condemned by our church, yea, and has been condemned by some sober heathens.
Chrysostom (4th century)
Where dancing is, there is the devil. For God did not give us our feet for this end, that we might demean ourselves indecently; but that we might walk decently... Dancing is the devil’s invention.
The Councils
The fifty-third canon of the Synod of Laodicea enacts: ‘Christians when coming to weddings must not caper or dance; but dine or sup decently as becomes Christian people.’ The eighth ecumenical council (in Trullo, A.D. 692) enacts: ‘We also forbid and expel all public dances of women, as producing much injury and ruin.’
The Scottish Assemblies
The Westminster Assembly’s Larger Catechism, Question 139, declares lascivious dancing and stage-plays breaches of the seventh commandment. The Scottish Assembly of 1649, ‘finding the scandal and abuse that arises through promiscuous dancing, do therefore inhibit and discharge the same.’ The Assembly of 1701 revived the same discipline.
Matthew Henry, on Judges 21
The dancing was very modest and chaste. It was not mixed dancing; no men danced with these daughters of Shiloh, nor did any married women so far forget their gravity as to join with them.
R. L. Dabney
The Scripture has virtually included the modern dance in an express prohibition in three places, Romans 13:13, Galatians 5:21, 1 Peter 4:3, where it sternly inhibits the komos of the heathen... The dancing of females with males for social amusement would have been regarded as an act so inconsistent with decency that an instance can scarcely be heard of in reputable society.