THE AGENDA OF Christian education and youth ministry has been dominated in recent years by a concern to relate the Gospel across cultural boundaries. Such a relational hermeneutic needs to be supplemented with a hermeneutic of resistance in situations in which the culture of those to whom the Gospel message is addressed is incompatible with the integrity of Christian faith. Contemporary dance culture is identified as just such a context. Its post-modern and new-age credentials may be traced back via romanticism to traditions of esoteric gnosticism fundamentally opposed to the Christian understanding of reality. This is especially the case in its rejection of meta-narrative, reliance on the immediacy of experiential sensibility, and failure to achieve an adequate anthropology of being-in-relationship. However, the possibility of a Christian hermeneutic of resistance is undermined by a failure of the church to hold fast to an adequate Christian stance in these areas.
