Unlike what he sang Daniel Alonso in the song “La Rave of God” of his band, Pony Bravo, is not the American city of Wichita, but Berlin, the German capital, where last Saturday it was about reaching the Most High through electronic music.
The party tent distributing the “healing fire” that the Pony Bravos spoke of was in the church of Santo Tomás, a monumental 19th-century Protestant temple. That religious building in the German capital, in size, is only behind the Berlin Cathedral.
This church hosted a party with several techno music DJs finished off with a session chill out spiritual. “Love heals the soul: rave in the church of Santo Tomás”, this is how they presented the festival in the Association of Parishes of the Central District of Berlin. rave You have to understand “massive partygenerally clandestine, in which techno music is heard”, according to the foundation dedicated to the good use of the Spanish language FundéuRAE.
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From 10:00 p.m. on Saturday until 8:00 a.m. on Sunday, electronic music thundered in this great Berlin temple. Thanks to the contribution of the diverse and renowned Berlin nightlife scene, the St. Thomas Church it became another club. It was a space like those that tourists from all over the world come to visit, be it Berghain, Water-Gate or About Blank. There was a makeshift bar counter at one of the ends of the transept of the plan of the church. There were sold soft drinks, alcoholic beverages, also of high graduation.
There was no, in this Berlin house of God the sexual atmosphere that other clubs in the city do distill, such as the famous KitKatClub. Of course, there was no shortage of ‘ravers’ who attended the techno party at the church of Santo Tomás very lightly clad. They were also wearing black fishnet T-shirts, other forms of transparencies and up to X-shaped nipple shields.
Clothes seemed to be left over for many of the revelers at five in the morning on Sunday. At that point in the rave he played the latest DJ, placed in the transept of the church, in front of a cross on which beams of light came and went. About two hundred people danced in the central nave of the temple in front of the DJ as if there were no tomorrow.
Rave at the St. Thomas Church in Berlin.
There were those who accompanied the pulse of the music shouting at times in a form of ecstasy that his companions celebrated. Then, that same someone, members of the party’s security team would take him down from a piece of equipment installed in the church so that the temple sounded successfully like a nightclub with Berlin fever on Saturday night.
The ecstasy of techno
Ecstasy like that of the young man who shouted to a techno rhythm, and not the one that some seem to betray at this type of party pupils, jaws and behaviorsis what, apparently, interested the organizers of the rave of the church of Santo Tomas. Not surprisingly, ecstasy is, in fact, “a state of the soul characterized by a certain mystical union with God.”
“We are taking an old tradition from our Church. In the Middle Ages, the churches always had ecstasy in their masses. To realize this, you have to see what the descriptions of the masses of the time are like. It is nothing new,” Bertold Höcker, head of the Group of Parishes of the Central District of Berlin, explained to EL ESPAÑOL before the party.
“We do not use instruments from Biblical times or from the Middle Ages; but the new possibilities: techno“
“We are simply taking something that was already there. We are not taking the instruments from Biblical or Medieval times. We use the new possibilities, and this is techno“, according to this expert theologian in Gregorian chant.
Techno, yes, helped bring hundreds of people to the church of Santo Tomás on the night of Saturday to Sunday. Capacity was limited to about 1,000 people.. Among the organizers there were those who expected to sell a maximum of eight hundred tickets. However, it was finishing the VADH session -name of the fourth and last DJ- and suddenly lowering all the emotion that could be experienced in the place. At six in the morning, and until eight, the session of chill out spiritual served, in the best of cases, to reduce the excess of pulsations left by the closing performance.
choose your blessing
Next to the mixing desk, a kind of metal cubicle was installed during the party, inside which blessings were offered. In it there was also a rainbow of decorative lights, a detail that reminded that the party is celebrated in the framework of the month of gay pride in Berlin. The two shepherds responsible for the chill out they were going back and forth from the mixer to that cubicle waiting for partygoers to walk into it. Very few did.
An evangelical pastor explained to EL ESPAÑOL before starting to “work” that the moment of chill out spiritual tried to be “like a mass”. “These people, in general, do not go to church. Today we bring them to church. It would not be the same if we went to the clubs to talk about religion,” says the pastor in a quick conversation with this newspaper. “In the Protestant Church we can afford this kind of thing.”
In front of the mixing desk, when the time came, she would take a microphone and, with somewhat calmer background music, she began saying evocative words in English “Holy, your body, holy, your desire, holy, your joy, holy, your love, holy, you’re holy, thank God you’re here”… either “sacred, your body; sacred, your desire; sacred; your joy, sacred; your sacred love; you are sacred, thank God you are here…”. no sermon stricto sensu, but leaving that message there, the pastor returned to the metallic cubicle in search of partygoers who wanted to be blessed. But by now the place was emptying out. The waiters were picking up. They were the death rattles of the party.
Tickets for the ‘rave’ in the church of Santo Tomás cost 30 euros
EL ESPAÑOL speaks to an Irish tourist who says he is not religious and who went through that cubicle. He received a blessing from the nun who was acting as the master of ceremonies. “I didn’t know that she was a nun, but I saw the sign and I did what she said”, he says with difficulty, his eyes lost after hours of partying.
It refers to some improvised signs that read: “Choose Your Blessing”. They propose: 1) Words of blessing without body contact. 2) Anointing: blessing by receiving the sign of the cross in the hand or on the forehead. 3) Blessing of hands: blessing with contact with the hands. 4) Imposition of hands: blessing with the hands on the shoulders or on the head.
money, only god
Another kid, after passing through the blessing area, tells this newspaper “No regret” Of having done it. “The opportunity to do it simply arose. There was a lot of eye contact,” says the assistant, who confessed “not a believer” that he hides his face with a cap and wide glasses. What he does not hide, along with his companion, is his certain disappointment. “I give this party a scratching five, the music was good, although it was not our style. But I expected more things from the church scene, people dressed more like that,” he says.
It does not seem to satisfy him that, disguised, at the height of the party, there was only a man in a very tight white T-shirt and very short pants with little wings on the back and a crown of angel. He is a Berliner, a good two meters tall. This disguised man confesses that he expected a “more familiar party”.
St. Thomas Church in Berlin.
He found what another attendee defined as “a party with very good music because the teams belong to the people from Berghain, with an incredible staff, but the people were very young, there was a lot of ‘I want to and I can’t be techno’ and only at the end did the party get good”. “Now, the place of the party has been incredible”, comments this other young man. Another of the attendees who left just before the mass chill out He even said: “What this event shows is that we only believe in one God: money.” The entrance to the party cost almost 30 euros.
Jona, a young boy who has ended up dancing alone next to the DJ, rests on a bench placed behind the cross and from the mixing desk of the church. “Before, I had only gone to church with my family,” says Jona. It’s the first time she’s come alone to a church and a techno party, she says. Perhaps this is the type of “miracle” that the rave when celebrated in a church.
