Faith Matters - The Church Program

A German artist and a Christian pastor are working together to create something unique. Moritz Götze had the amazing idea of paneling the entire interior of a church, from altar to ceiling, with enameled sheet steel. For more than a thousand years, the former castle church in Bernburg on the Saale has formed part of the history of Saxony-Anhalt in eastern Germany, where many churches fell to rack and ruin during the Communist era. Bernburg’s castle church was no exception, even though it lies in what was once the heartland of Protestantism.

The pastor Sven Baier met the artist Moritz Götze by chance, but the Lutheran clergyman and the secular artist were the perfect duo to interpret the Christian message for a population that knows practically nothing of Christianity. Sponsors were found and the mammoth project got off the ground. Over twelve months we documented its progress: how Götze interpreted the bible stories that the pastor told him and how he filled the church with images that cry out to be touched.