The force was strong with one German church on Sunday where a Protestant pastor marked the unofficial \u201cStar Wars Day\u201d of May 4 with a galactic-themed service.<\/p>\n
Kitted out with atmospheric smoke, special lighting and a replica of the Millennium Falcon spaceship from the beloved sci-fi films, the church near the western German city of Cologne organised its space-themed service in an effort to attract younger attendees.<\/p>\n
Wielding a lightsaber and dressed in a cape like a Jedi knight, Pastor Samuel D\u00f6rr addressed around 60 visitors in Bensberg in the western-German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with some in the audience even showing up in Star Wars costumes.<\/p>\n
Helma Heider, an 82-year-old church-goer, said the cosplay service was \u201cextraordinary and unlike the usual services\u201d.<\/p>\n
Star Wars Day has evolved over the years into an informal holiday celebrating the space epic and its surrounding franchise.<\/p>\n
It was created by fans as a sly nod to one of the films\u2019 most popular catchphrases: \u201cMay the force be with you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The force was strong with one German church on Sunday where a Protestant pastor marked the unofficial \u201cStar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5310],"tags":[10726,37022,557,37024,823,2000,299,1824,37023,37017,714,37021,36545,37018,37020,37019,4242],"class_list":["post-74942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-andor","tag-bensberg","tag-california","tag-chris-taylor","tag-disney","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-germany","tag-greater-new-hope-chamber-of-commerce","tag-helma-heider","tag-joe-biden","tag-lucasfilm","tag-mark-hamill","tag-may-the-4th","tag-north-rhine-westphalia","tag-rancho-obi-wan","tag-star-wars"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114451973634901256","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}