Performing Family: Ritual Kissing and the Construction of Early Christian Kinship

Abstract

Early Christians described and performed the ritual kiss in ways that helped them create a cohesive, family-like community. The kiss could include certain people in the church, exclude others, and help distinguish Christian behavior. An investigation of the ritual kiss presents an opportunity to illustrate how performance theory's emphasis on embodied action can help us better appreciate how practice, as well as rhetoric, affected early Christian communities.

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