me or other have wondered just what would happen if he or she burst into laughter in the middle of a church service. Thus, when the time came to consider an appropriate norm to violate for this exercise, this was the one that came to mind. The great question was whether I would have the courage or foolhardiness to carry through with it, or would retreat to something more innocuous.
In my case, the temptation to use laughing in church as a test case was perhaps the stronger because I was raised in the Episcopal Church. Although the Episcopal Church is a rather liberal church theologically, and in terms of the political stance of much of its clergy (it now accepts the ordaining of women, for example), Episcopal worship is for the most part notably solemn. It is a joke among Episcopalians that we are "God's Frozen People." The service itself resembles the Catholic Mass, and is thus highly structured and formal. Moreover, the sort of conversation and visiting among the pews that seems acceptable in other churches while waiting for the service to begin is less visible in most Episcopalian churches. Only after the re
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