Pass That Peace Pipe

"Pass That Peace Pipe" was a song in the musical comedy "Good News," a film written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who said it ranked as one of "the Big Three of Cinema" along with "Birth of a Nation" and "Battleship Potemkin."

This item is, however, not about passing the peace pipe, pleasurable as that might be.  It is about the custom in churches of passing the peace by handshakes.  Since the arrival of H1N1, and a renewed emphasis on hand washing, many congregations have felt uneasy about shaking hands.  Some churches have installed hand sanitizers.  Seen recently on television was a minister demonstrating her flock's alternative to shaking hands at the peace.  It seems to call for the worshippers to stand side by side, arms around each other's shoulder, while swinging and bumping hips.  It looks remarkably like a 1960s disco dance. 

The patrician William F. Buckley, Jr., expressed his horror at the very custom of exchanging the peace.  While attending a service at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, he reported, "some man to whom I had not been introduced turned around and presumed to shake my hand." Buckley added "I am only glad for Evelyn's sake he is not around to endure this."  (Evelyn being Waugh.)

And writing of crusty English gentlemen, one is reminded of a distinguished professor of Middle East studies at the University of British Columbia.  At a church service while visiting England, he turned and offered his hand to a tweedy squire of the Colonel Blimp era, and said "Peace be with you."  To which the resident worshipper responded "Go to hell!"

"And also with you," said the UBC prof. 

Pass that peace pipe.