Kissing Christians: Ritual and Community in the Late Ancient Church

Description

In the first five centuries of the common era, the kiss was a distinctive and near-ubiquitous marker of Christianity. Although Christians did not invent the kiss—Jewish and pagan literature is filled with references to kisses between lovers, family members, and individuals in relationships of power and subordination—Christians kissed one another in highly specific settings and in ways that set them off from the non-Christian population. Christians kissed each other during prayer, Eucharist, baptism, and ordination and in connection with greeting, funerals, monastic vows, and martyrdom. As Michael Philip Penn shows in Kissing Christians, this ritual kiss played a key role in defining group membership and strengthening the social bond between the communal body and its individual members. Kissing Christians presents the first comprehensive study of the ritual kiss and how controversies surrounding it became part of larger debates regarding the internal structure of Christian communities and their relations with outsiders. Penn traces how Christian writers exalted those who kissed only fellow Christians, proclaimed that Jews did not have a kiss, prohibited exchanging the kiss with potential heretics, privileged the confessor's kiss, prohibited Christian men and women from kissing each other, and forbade laity from kissing clergy. Kissing Christians also investigates connections between kissing and group cohesion, kissing practices and purity concerns, and how Christian leaders used the motif of the kiss of Judas to examine theological notions of loyalty, unity, forgiveness, hierarchy, and subversion. Exploring connections between bodies, power, and performance, Kissing Christians bridges the gap between cultural and liturgical approaches to antiquity. It breaks significant new ground in its application of literary and sociological theory to liturgical history and will have a profound impact on these fields.

Get the book

Amazon.com

Search the book

eBay.com

Search the book

Other editions

• 

  Kissing Christians: Ritual and Community in the Late Ancient Church

  • 2005-09-26
  • 195 pages
  • Paperback
  • University of Pennsylvania Press

Similar books

• 

  Kissing Fish: Christianity for People Who Don’t Like Christianity

  By Roger Wolsey

  While the intended target audience for this work would seem to be those who have either left the Christian faith or never adopted it at all; the work is filled with pearls of wisdom for all of us, whether associated with Christianity or not ...

• 

  I Kissed Dating Goodbye

  By Joshua Harris

  Dating. Isn't there a better way? Reorder your romantic life in the light of God's word and find more fulfillment than the dating game could ever give - a life of purposeful singleness.

• 

  Kissing Fish

  By Roger Wolsey

  While the intended target audience for this work would seem to be those who have either left the Christian faith or never adopted it at all; the work is filled with pearls of wisdom for all of us, whether associated with Christianity or not ...

• 

  How to Stay Christian in College

  By J. Budziszewski

  Filled with quotes, statistics, resources, stories, and encouragement, this book will equip students to conquer the dangers that lie ahead.

• 

  Kissing Cousins?: Christians and Muslims Face to Face

  By Bill A. Musk

  "In a world marred by religious conflict, can Christians and Muslims discover more positive views of one another? "

• 

  When Christians First Met Muslims: A Sourcebook of the Earliest Syriac Writings on Islam

  By Michael Philip Penn

  Through its critical introductions and new translations of this invaluable historical material, When Christians First Met Muslims allows scholars, students, and the general public to explore the earliest interactions between what eventually ...

• 

  Kiss the Wave: Embracing God in Your Trials

  By Dave Furman

  “I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the Rock of Ages.” What does it mean to “kiss the wave?” These words, attributed to nineteenth-century British preacher Charles Spurgeon, speak to the Christian’s only hope ...

• 

  Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist

  By John Piper

  Scripture reveals that the great business of life is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever. In this paradigm-shattering work, John Piper reveals that the debate between duty and delight doesn't truly exist: Delightisour duty.

• 

  Kissing Toads: A Christian Girl's Guide to Dating and Falling in Love

  By Elizabeth Demarest

  How do I know he's THE one if I don't date?In Kissing Toads, Elizabeth Demarest shares her personal story as she finds herself pinned up against the back of shed with a boy in the middle of the Amazon, and it's far from the fairytale moment ...

• 

  Invitation to Syriac Christianity: An Anthology

  By Michael Philip Penn

  Despite their centrality to the history of Christianity in the East, Syriac Christians have generally been excluded from modern accounts of the faith.