Touching Ladies for Christ

Hello, I’m Bertie. This column is basically a place for me to call bullshit on girl related stuff that I think is dumb. While I appreciate the importance of girl talk, I’m not about to braid your pubic hair or send you the results of my latest smear test. Instead, I will pass on any remotely useful knowledge I happen to discover re: being a FEMALE. Trust me: I’m not a doctor, but I do have a Ph.D in pretty girl bullshit.

PRETTY GIRL BULLSHIT #11:TOUCHING LADIES FOR CHRIST

Last weekend, I attended a church service in Peckham called “Touching Ladies For Christ”. Given its frankly terrifying title, and a flyer that, from afar, looked like it could be advertising anything from flower arranging to a lesson in how to embalm household pets, I assumed this service would be an opportunity for all God’s creatures to unite in the name of Christ through fondling boobs. Not scary at all.

But – weird – at no point was I manhandled by a prophet. And actually I was kind of surprised how fun it is singing what I guess were hymns (although they all seemed to hinge on repetitions of "Je-ho-vah" and "Ha-lle-lu-jah") in a room full of women in beige skirt suits who were trying desperately to SAVE ME. This is less Pretty Girl Bullshit and more White Girl Church Bullshit, I suppose, but whatever: Let’s press on. Rather than subjecting their regulars to inappropriate cupping in a way only the Roman Catholics can pull off (oi oi), Christ Embassy Peckham was more like one of the radical "healing" super-churches that have been sweeping America ever since Louis Theroux’s documentary made them popular over there a few years back. But instead of conducting their own services, CEP thought (correctly) that it would be much safer, easier and cheaper to project videos of MIRACULOUS MIRACLES that have already "happened" elsewhere, rather than having to hire the actors to perform them in real life. Amen. It’s hard to describe how awkward it is to sit in a room surrounded by devout Christian matriarchs who are all watching in dumb-struck horror as a woman describes, on loop, how her crippling back pain has forced her out of work and “she couldn’t even take a bath… take a bath… take a bath.” (Gr8 editing BTW Healing School, have you heard of witch house?) Not only was everyone completely rapt by this woman’s story, but they all subsequently burst into floods of tears, “praise the lords” and legit parcel-tongue hissing fits when she leapt up and ran around bathed in a holy aura achievable only through spiritual enlightenment or basic iMovie skills. It was totally spiritual. (FYI, it’s really terrifying when glamorous women start screaming in tongues two feet behind you in a small room filled with fake flowers. I wouldn’t recommend it if you have a fragile disposition. Well, I wouldn’t really recommend it if you don’t, either.) Anyway, I’d gone in, guns blazing, with the hope of finding some less than holy Pretty Girl Bullshit to grapple with. But evidently this was a sermon less focused on gender and more on a general conviction that your doctor’s a blaspheming moron and you should probably fill out this credit slip addressed to the House of God, like right now, and here’s a pen. I have to hand it to CEP though, they had a crack team of ladies in the building, and apart from the main speaker (fuck, I don’t know the correct terms, come on) who complained about “never being able to find the psalms without my iPad”, it was pretty much a room full of excitable women with great nails and a desire to colour co-ordinate above and beyond the call of duty. Snappy. Unfortunately I’m not sure I was received with the same enthusiasm. Due to my apparently satanic demeanour, I was on the receiving end of a LOT of pitiful looks and more than a few sudden and pointed declarations that: “Some newcomers may only very recently have struggled free from the devil’s clutches.” Fun. I was also shuffled to the front, probably so they could be sure I wasn’t chugging goat’s blood from a human skull or something, which had pretty much the same effect as it does during Fashion Week: intense self-consciousness and sweating. I guess this was kind of like the exact opposite of Fashion Week though, because when I left they handed me a gift-bag full of food and asked if I wanted to be born again. Karl would be so mad. Despite sticking out like a pre-cooked engagement chicken, I also happened to have raging PMS, which meant my eyes welled up with tears several times during the three hours I spent in church. If I'm honest, I’m pretty sure I decided midway through that maybe there was something in this whole religion thing after all. Thank god (small ‘g’) that was almost immediately dispelled by the instruction to: “Look into the eyes of a person near you and shout 'I WILL SAVE YOUR SOUL.'” You have no idea how many people in the room turned to me for that little gem of an exercise. Anyway, it all became pretty clichéd and tired after a while, and I spent the last 30 minutes wondering how I could legitimately walk out without being called up onto the stage and publicly exorcised. I mean god, church is really boring. And like, dumb. I guess the most important thing is that somewhere in the world there is a substantial length of film of me, surrounded by over-zealous African women with impeccable hair attempting to purge the devil from my soul by waving their arms and singing about God being “awesome”. Awk.

Follow Bertie on Twitter: @BertieBrandes

Previously: Pretty Girl Bullshit - Touching Ladies For Christ

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