The line-up at Greenbelt
always has something new
to catch your eye,
be you conservative or liberal,
there to be challenged
or there to be affirmed.
Eclectic, yet undeniably,
undoubtedly and
gloriously Christian,
writes Jonathan Langley
Protesters earnestly hand out leaflets and engage in
heated discussions with passers-by.
Pretty standard for Greenbelt, you might think.
Or, at least, you'd think that if you didn't really know Greenbelt.
If you thought it was full of angry picket types,
all liberal activism and lack of sense of humour.
It's not like that, really.
Greenbelt is Christian in the fullest sense possible:
not just in the profession of faith,
but in action, in attitude and in effect.
The protesters were objecting to the launching of a UK response to the
Kairos Palestine document called Time for Action.
Christian Zionists, they had come, some said, from as far away as Wales
to demonstrate against what they saw as an attack on Israel
by an heretical festival. They stood outside and argued and
leafleted and did as their consciences dictated.
But inside the festival, on Sunday as the document was being launched,
a Jewish American signatory to Time for Action
reminded the gathered crowd of well-wishers,
Amos Trust supporters, Embrace the Middle East followers and activists
that the people outside were not Israelis,
not the board of Jewish Deputies, but Christians.
And he suggested that, as Christian Zionism has long
propped up support for Israeli actions
regardless of their legality or morality,
bringing justice to the Holy Land was a Christian issue,
and that those Christians outside the gates would have to be engaged.
What could be more Christian
than a call to go to those beyond our conceptual,
political and theological walls and calling them in,
calling them to repentance,
recognising that without them we will all be poorer?
What could be more Christian than, in the name of Jesus
and in the spirit of the prophets, calling followers of Christ
to speak boldly on behalf of both the body of Christ as it suffers
and those not in the body,
who God also loves?
What could be more Christian than asking these things
in the knowledge that they will result in anger and in vilification?
Among some Evangelicals, Greenbelt has a funny old reputation.
And at times you can see why.
The Christian festival with not just non-Christians on the bill,
but the theologically suspect and the spiritually 'other'.
As I scrolled through social media over the weekend,
I saw pictures from another Christian event happening at the same time,
no doubt with motives as pure and love of God
as centrally placed in its direction.
Friends I love and respect were there.
But the pictures of crisply clad young people standing with arms raised
before a stage-designed cross and a beautiful worship leader
failed to move me.
I could hear the perfectly played triumphalist songs and in my mind
I could hear the sermons doing the much needed work of
building boundaries and spiritual identity in young people
who are daily surrounded by a sea of postmodern relativism.
It's important work, but it does nothing for me
and would doubtless do little for many of the Greenbelt crowd.
For the Palestine, tax, poverty, sexual violence,
gender equality, LGBT equality, pacifist
and other justice activists, or for the misfits,
post-Christians and thinkers who find they are no longer stretched
or moved by the same old theology, the same old worship.
Greenbelt may be different from an Evangelical worship festival,
but it is undeniably, undoubtedly and gloriously Christian.
Worship and prayer in their most
emergent and most traditional expressions
(including and encompassing mainstream evangelical anthemising)
take up much of the bill,
from the contemplative and liturgical to approaches
that soak up all our culture's creativity and inject it
into the sacramental and the spiritual.
Les Mis Mass. Goth worship.
The wonderfully named and beautifully realised 'U2charist'.
Hymns are sung in the Jesus Arms beer tent over a pint.
Communion on Sunday affirms women and the world's poor
before the kyrie is sung and the bread that festival-goers
have baked over the weekend is broken and consumed alongside the cup.
A grandstand full of people sing in harmony for the joy of it,
and the songs they sing are hymns to Jesus Christ
and through artworks and music, dramas and talks,
eyes fill with tears as hearts are moved to metanoia after kairos.
The Holy Spirit is at Greenbelt this year, have no fear.
Yes, Marx and Malcolm X are occasionally referenced in talks.
Yes, drag artists on segways cavort amusingly
with quickly accumulating crowds.
Yes, feminism,
liberation theology and post-Christian thinking are given an airing,
but so is the mainstream,
the down the line Anglican, the charismatic and the evangelical.
One runs into Baptist - pastors,
former missionaries and Union worthies -
Anglo-Catholic Charismatics and Franciscans at Greenbelt.
And those who thought they'd travelled too far from Church
to ever recognise God again are given hope
and reminded of their love for Jesus.
In the campsite, in the beer tent and around the food stalls,
the talk is almost constantly about God and what he is doing,
the shackles of denominational expectation loosened
and leaving room to flex the muscles of thought and empathy.
People dance together and pray together and sing
and worship and listen and talk.
In the space of a day I heard a Muslim and a Jewish man speak
in glowing terms of the Jesus I worship,
and heard Christians speak with respect and love
about and to people of other faiths and marginalised sexualities.
I laughed at Christian comics, listened to economics lectures
and heard activists from the
'I got arrested for disabling a B52'
end of the spectrum to the 'I got a call from Paul Ryan last week'
end speak passionately about how
Jesus inspires them to change the world.
And the beauty is that if I asked three people
what they saw and heard
they would have had entirely different experiences.
It's always the way.
The line-up at Greenbelt is always different,
always has something new to catch your eye,
be you conservative or liberal,
there to be challenged or there to be affirmed.
In that way, it is also always the same.
It's a good place, this Greenbelt.
A good time.
A little glimpse, I always think,
of the Body of Christ and the Kingdom of Heaven,
where not everything is easy and
where we don't all have to be the same,
think the same or act in ways that
everyone will understand.
This year has been no different.
Long may it last.
For more photos from Greenbelt
