Word: shaffer
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...bizarre come-on for Barnum & Bailey. Not at all. The 200 clowns were a congregation. The popcorn pass-along was part of a two-hour Christian Communion service conducted entirely in mime and gesture by the Rev. Floyd Shaffer, the red-and-white clown, who is really a Lutheran minister from Roseville, Mich. Both services and parades were among the highlights of a weeklong workshop on the use of clowning, mime, puppetry and dance in Christian worship and ministry that attracted some 350 people to the campus of New Orleans' Loyola University. More than 400 attended a second gathering...
...Last Supper, ordinary bread and cheap table wine became eternal symbols of Jesus' love and sacrifice. At Pentecost, a group of illiterate fishermen were turned into inspired preachers who could speak to every man present in his own language. "Isn't that Christ's message," asks Shaffer, "that even ordinary people can become divine through his love...
...tradition. Clowns often had an important role in medieval church services: they played the part of "holy interrupters," popping up to illustrate a theological point through mime, magic or even mockery. Gradually, however, they began to satirize the church and secular society. "This did not make clowns very popular," Shaffer notes. They fell out of favor with the church and eventually were declared satanic. Thereafter clowns kept to the secular world of the circus-at least until their current revival...