With their use of original, house - style dance music in praise and worship, NOS have been pioneers. But now criticism and controversy threatens to overwhelm the Sheffield radicals. Tony Cummings reports.

"To me personally they speak about harmony," responded Chris Braine.

"We are not all logical, totally rational human beings. We are feeling people and they are universal symbols really."

But why use symbolism that's transparently associated with Eastern religion and the New Age movement?

"If we gave up all the symbols that the New Age used I don't think that we'd have any left," Chris replied.

Another area of the NOS worship presentation which produced shocked disapproval was a section of the service which contained strongly sexual overtones. In the Greenbelt programme Chris Braine had spoken about NOS' controversial intention to explore human sexuality in the context of a worship service.

He commented, "You don't have to enter NOS and leave your bollocks outside. We can't leave eroticism to the pornographers or film stars who create lying images and ultimately dehumanise models."

During the service NOS brought on mainstage two bikini-clad dancers. The scale of the incomprehension and distaste with which evangelicalism greeted this move can be gauged by subsequent press conference questions like
"Why did you use go-go dancers?"

After feigning ignorance Chris Braine finally explained why the ladies in bikinis were there.

"I think you're thinking of the small Middle Eastern dance that was going on during the song 'Stay With Me'. The dance group at the moment are primarily girls within the community; the males are just beginning to move into it now. It was there because there was an obvious Eastern feel to the music and the visuals and that was an interpretation that they put together of that song."

At the Greenbelt Press Conference Kevin Lewis of Classic Trax, Belfast radio asked Chris Braine, "How can a girl that doesn't have many clothes on direct people towards and not distract them away from God?"

With some reluctance Chris Braine answered. "If you're talking about a bikini, if you go to a beach or to a swimming pool where some raves take place or worship events could take place you'll see girls in bikinis. Therefore, what's the problem, I don't understand."

Kevin Lewis tried to elucidate. "What purpose was that particular part of the presentation? Why was it there?" Chris Braine: "It was an expression of dance in worship. I think it's a perfectly natural thing for a dancer to wear. The journalist from BBC Radio 4 was not convinced that one NOS song wasn't deliberately full of sexual innuendo and ambivalence."

It wasn't intended in any way to be directly sexually ambivalent. The lyrics are, in a way, dealing with issues of desire. The moment you are dealing with issues of desire, human emotion of any type, particularly passionate human emotion, which sexuality is just one of the many, many kinds, people will start saying it's sexual, sexual, sexual! It is not intended to be sexual; we tried very hard to do things in a way that people would relate to, without killing the passion in it, and the life in it. We tried very hard to do that.

People look through different cultural glasses and there are many different cultural glasses out there. People will look and feel it falls one side, some people will feel it falls another and not even notice it. So it was not intended to be in any way sexual directly. It was dealing with the whole language of desire. If you notice we've got hunger, eating, tasting, breathing and birthing and all the other heights of ecstasy of human experience in there. Some of them you may identify in your terms as sexier than the others."