"Lord of the Dance" is a hymn written by English songwriter Sydney Carter in 1963. The melody is from the American Shaker song "Simple Gifts" composed in 1848. The hymn is widely performed in English-speaking congregations and assemblies.
The song follows the idea of the traditional English carol "Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day", which tells the gospel story in the first-person voice of Jesus with the device of portraying his life as a dance.
In writing the lyrics to "Lord of the Dance", Carter was inspired partly by Jesus, but also by a statue of the Hindu deity Shiva as Nataraja (Shiva's dancing pose) which sat on his desk. He later stated, "I did not think the churches would like it at all. I thought many people would find it pretty far flown, probably heretical and anyway dubiously Christian. But in fact people did sing it and, unknown to me, it touched a chord."
Carter wrote:
Verse 3 of the hymn, which includes the line that "[t]he Holy People said it was a shame", has been analysed as implying collective Jewish responsibility for the death of Jesus.