Dan J. Brennan

Kissing Christians: Worship, Boundaries, and Love

I've mentioned once before this fascinating book, Kissing Christians: Ritual and Community in the Late Ancient Church by Michael Phillip Penn.  I would like to look at it in more detail in the days ahead.  I don't know about you, but I was completely in the dark about the social and communal significance on kissing between Christians in the early church until I came across this book.  I discovered this book while doing research for my own book.  I was startled when I found out Christian men and women kissed each other on the lips in early church communities.  Not on the cheeks, but on the lips.  Have you ever kissed anyone on the lips other than for romantic purposes?  When I was growing up my father and I used to kiss each other on the lips goodbye before he left for work until I was about 12 I think.  My mother rarely kissed us, but when she did (even when I was an adult) she kissed her children on their lips. 

Have you ever kissed someone from the other gender (any kind of kiss not just on the lips)?

Kissing Christians

From Kissing Christians: Ritual and Community in the Late Ancient Church:

“Friends also frequently kissed each other.  There are dozens of references to male friends kissing, a few to female friends, and one to a male and female exchanging a kiss.  Particularly common was a public greeting kiss and a kiss before departing.  These too mainly occurred on the lips. Speaking specifically of the ritual of kissing in the Christian community, a couple of observations from Michael Phillip Penn, "Like Chrysostom, other early Christian writers continually emphasized the kiss as a means of uniting individuals and communities….The institutionalization of Christianity also may have contributed to the demise of cross-gender ritual kissing…When the church was seen as domestic space, it would have been much easier to justify cross-gender kissing under the rubric of familial gesture.”