Dramatics in the Church
In all Christian worship the dramatic element survives. It finds its most elaborate expression in the Roman Catholic mass, but even the simple order of service in the church of Puritan lineage has certain dramatic elements. The sacraments of baptism and of the Lord’s Supper in those communions are intensely impressive to children simply because of their dramatic elements.
In liturgical churches, where the entrance of the clergy and the choristers in processional is followed by a variety of consecutive and historic ceremonies, performed by rising, sitting, kneeling and going to the altar in turn, and concluding with the recessional of the celebrants, children who have been trained in churchly ways find a keen and lifelong delight. Surely, nothing but the dramatic character of such services can explain the joy which little children take in going to church where the sermon and much of the service are incomprehensible.
The festival, even more than the ordinary service of worship, makes its dramatic appeal to children. No one could have been present in an Italian city on some high feast day, when the main street of the village was decorated for the great procession, when all the treasures of the church were exposed to view, and when the band, the crowd of venders, the best clothes of everybody, and, most of all, the dramatic services themselves, both in the church and on the street, were heightening the impression, without realizing that here is the secret of much of the power of the church in the lives of these imaginative people. To be in such a village at Christmas time and to go into the lighted church and see before the high altar the Christmas crèche, with its cardboard scenery and its toy images of Joseph, Mary, and the Christ-child, the shepherds and the Wise Men, thronged, as it is, with wide-eyed children, is to appreciate the wisdom of the Roman Church in visualizing for the children the drama of the incarnation.
Those who have been brought up in a colder atmosphere can hardly fail to remember the thrill which they felt when they witnessed or participated as children in the dialogues, exercises, and choruses of Sunday school concerts. There has been of late the beginning of a revival, even in Protestant churches, of the miracle play, in which boys as well as girls have been delighted to take part, and in which the spiritual impression of the enacting of Scripture stories without scenery has been profound upon both actors and audience.
The religious pageant, as well, with its simple yet suggestive scenery, and its appropriate music, lights the imagination of the children and young people until they themselves live through, in a measure, the experiences of those staunch men and women who lived centuries ago in the Holy Land. By making these Bible characters seem real human beings, who thought and acted much as we do to-day, we help to make them a real power to shape character in the lives of our boys and girls. The program of the church needs to consider more fully the power of appeal through the dramatic and imaginative instincts of its youth.