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At the terracotta-brick Zion Church, an organist played the
movie series' theme and Ulrike Garve, a vicar in training,
opened the Protestant service with the words "The wait is over -
the Force has awakened!"
A screen set up next to the altar showed a clip from a Star Wars
movie in which Luke Skywalker fights off Darth Vader and
declares to The Emperor that he will never turn to the Dark
Side.
Garve and fellow vicar in training Lucas Ludewig, fans of the
seven-part epic space movie series, said Skywalker's actions
showed it was important to eschew violence.
Speaking to a packed church with capacity for 500 people, they
said this was also a message found in the New Testament of the
Christian Bible, in which some passages refer to overcoming evil
with good.
"The more we talked about it, the more parallels we discovered
between Christian traditions and the movies," said Garve. "We
wanted to make churchgoers aware of these analogies."
Some on social media called the service "sinful" and
"disgraceful". But priest Eva-Maria Menard, who is mentor to the
two trainees, said: "We need to address contemporary issues or
our faith will not be able to carry us through it."
(Reporting by Tina Bellon; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)
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