- Jan 14, 2006
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Hundreds queue for 'Erotic Church Service'
'A female dancer dances in a skin coloured stocking in the middle of
the church in front of the altar. She crawls about on the floor and
wraps herself in a hanging down white cloth. Is this a blasphemous
provocation, a scoffing at the Christian religion?
'No it is only one of the items on the agenda of the Protestant Church
Assembly. The six-hundred-year-old church, the Church of the
Carthusians in the south of Cologne has become the stage for an erotic
church service. Nearly one thousand interested people waited outside
the door of the former monastery, despite a thunderstorm- but in the
end there was only room for four hundred people.
'For those who managed to get in, they had to take off their shoes on a
white painted church interior. Above the entrance, there was the
caption, “a warm welcome to the Vineyard of Love”. The space
between the benches had been overlaid with velvet and from the ceiling
wine and rose leaves were strewn onto the spectators. A man came to the
microphone and announced, This is an erotic church service, can you move
a bit closer together, all of you. This was followed by saxophone music
and dance.
'The vicar arrived in a black cassock and barefoot. He announced that
eroticism and lust are not taboo areas pushed aside by God. In fact,
"lust has to be lived out", said Armin Beuscher, who tempered his
speech immediately, by saying, “we are of course today in this
service only able to implement this in a limited manner”.
'A female dancer dances in a skin coloured stocking in the middle of
the church in front of the altar. She crawls about on the floor and
wraps herself in a hanging down white cloth. Is this a blasphemous
provocation, a scoffing at the Christian religion?
'No it is only one of the items on the agenda of the Protestant Church
Assembly. The six-hundred-year-old church, the Church of the
Carthusians in the south of Cologne has become the stage for an erotic
church service. Nearly one thousand interested people waited outside
the door of the former monastery, despite a thunderstorm- but in the
end there was only room for four hundred people.
'For those who managed to get in, they had to take off their shoes on a
white painted church interior. Above the entrance, there was the
caption, “a warm welcome to the Vineyard of Love”. The space
between the benches had been overlaid with velvet and from the ceiling
wine and rose leaves were strewn onto the spectators. A man came to the
microphone and announced, This is an erotic church service, can you move
a bit closer together, all of you. This was followed by saxophone music
and dance.
'The vicar arrived in a black cassock and barefoot. He announced that
eroticism and lust are not taboo areas pushed aside by God. In fact,
"lust has to be lived out", said Armin Beuscher, who tempered his
speech immediately, by saying, “we are of course today in this
service only able to implement this in a limited manner”.
