c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) When Denise and Roger Friesen planned a Valentine’s Day dinner for their Omaha, Neb., church, they immediately knew their theme: the Song of Solomon _ sometimes called the Song of Songs _ the sexiest book in the Bible.

“O, that you would kiss me with the kisses of your mouth!” says a woman to her lover as the book begins. “For your love is better than wine.” Later language compares male legs to alabaster columns and female breasts to clusters of fruit on a tree.

The Friesens, both 47, credit the little book in the Hebrew Bible with helping to move their 23-year marriage from rocky to romantic.

“We think that most marriages devolve and we feel like ours has evolved,” Denise Friesen said. “We have more romance, more love. We look forward to coming home and being together as opposed to two people sharing the same address.”

The couple lead a marriage and family ministry at their Evangelical Free Church in America congregation. In addition to last year’s Valentine’s dinner, they have hosted adult studies of Song of Solomon in their home.

Others are also quoting the eight-chapter book tucked between Ecclesiastes and Isaiah. Texas pastor Tommy Nelson has led conferences on the topic for almost a decade. A Florida company recently issued a CD featuring a spoken-word dialogue between the lovers in the book. Pope Benedict XVI cited it in a recent encyclical on erotic and spiritual love.

But in other circles, the Bible’s sexy love poems are hardly ever read, in part because they make believers blush.

“I don’t recall ever receiving a sermon from the Song of Solomon,” said Michael Duduit, editor of Preaching magazine, who has accepted sermons for possible inclusion in his bimonthly publication for 20 years.

“I suspect many pastors aren’t quite sure how to deal with Song of Solomon.”

Some biblical scholars interpret the book as a tale of the courtship and marriage of King Solomon and his wife while others view it as a fantasy about love between a man and a woman.

Nelson, pastor of Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas, said people who attend his Song of Solomon conferences are surprised to learn there’s Scripture so candid about sex.

The 55-year-old, who speaks primarily at evangelical churches, unpacks the book verse by verse, explaining its dual emphasis on sexuality and purity.

“You can see that she is undressed and they’re right to the point of consummating their union,” he said of verse 12 of chapter 4.

“He mentions the sexuality of the woman as a garden that has been locked to him and a spring that is sealed off to him,” Nelson said of the newly married couple in the book. “The anatomical metaphor is very clear, of a spring, an opening where life comes forth.”

Nelson said the book’s passion can catch people off guard.

“When you start talking about a man and a woman’s accountability to God in the home, and especially in the areas of sexuality and tenderness, you’re about to get a real quiet church service,” Nelson said. “Because, the fact is, everybody struggles with this but nobody talks about it.”

Nelson’s ministry includes books, a Bible study series on DVD _ which the Friesens share when they host Song of Solomon gatherings _ and the Web site, http://www.songofsolomon.com.

Guy Bickel, vice president of Book 22, a Tampa, Fla.-based recording label, debuted the CD titled “The Original Love Song: Guidelines for Passion from the Song of Solomon” in November following an unsuccessful search for a similar product. After becoming a Christian in 2004, the former agnostic had tried to find a romantic anniversary present for his wife.

“We were just hoping that this would give everybody in the Christian world something romantic to listen to that isn’t porno,” said Bickel, a concert promoter who attends a nondenominational evangelical church.

Available online (http://www.originallovesong.com), the CD comes with a pamphlet that includes five pages titled “Rules for Men” and five more dubbed “Suggestions for Women.” The recording, which features sounds of nature and gentle music in the background, comes in a red velvet bag decorated with the universal symbols for male and female.

Beyond Nelson’s conferences and the new CD, this section of Scripture is also a topic for scholars. Richard S. Hess, an Old Testament professor at Denver Seminary, wrote an article in the Winter 2005 issue of Bible Review magazine on the topic.

“It’s one that’s very difficult to preach from,” said Hess, who has never heard a sermon on it. “The Song of Songs is erotic love poetry. … The song would be very difficult to do in a mixed audience because you would be dealing with themes and ideas that just aren’t appropriate in that context.”

He teaches about it in seminary classes on Old Testament and on human sexuality.

Those that pay attention to this biblical book on love have long differed on how to interpret it and whether to use it at all.

“Even as late as the second century A.D., Jewish rabbis debated whether or not Song of Songs should be considered Holy Scripture,” reads an introduction to the book in The Learning Bible, published by the American Bible Society. “Early Christian writings reveal similar debates. Eventually, however, many Jewish teachers said the book symbolized God’s love for the people of Israel.”

Pope Benedict XVI, in his encyclical, “God Is Love,” issued Jan. 25, affirmed the stance “that these love songs ultimately describe God’s relation to man and man’s relation to God.”

However the Song of Solomon is discussed, it tends to draw a crowd.

Hess found 40 people _ one-fifth of his small Presbyterian Church (USA) congregation _ turned out for Sunday school last fall when he taught a class on it.

Nelson said his church grew in the early ’90s when he started teaching on it. His Song of Solomon Conferences increased in attendance from about 700 when he started in 1998 to an average of about 2,000 today.

And, Nelson said, conferences around Valentine’s Day are the most popular.

“The church that we go to better have room for 3,000 people.”

MO/JL END BANKS

Editors: Suitable as an advance for Valentine’s Day. To obtain photos of artistic renderings of the Song of Solomon, Tommy Nelson, or the CD cover of “The Original Love Song,” go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

http://www.songofsolomon.com in the 17th graf below and http://www.originalloveslong.com in the 20th graf are cq.

With sidebar slugged RNS-SOLOMON-EXCERPTS, which is also available as a graphic in the online RNS photo and graphics archive (see above).

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