Charismatic conservative evangelical Tony Cummings reviews the 39th GREENBELT arts festival
Continued from page 2
8.20pm
The Canopy venue was conceived as a venue, unlike The
Underground, that could draw in listeners casually passing. It
certainly works with Listener and the crowd builds to catch this
thrilling collective from Fayetteville, Arkansas. They play "talk
music" which is neither screamed or just spoken. Bits of metal,
country, grunge and folk blur in a vortex of sound over which MC Dan
Smith holds forth. As their biog says, "The lyrics are more like
ranting poetry."
8.55pm
As any Cross Rhythms reviewer will tell you, worship
music of any type is difficult to review - there being the potential
of a "spiritual" dynamic within worship music, even sung and played
badly. And such a situation is exacerbated when endeavouring to review
a worship event so that in past years when Cross Rhythms sent six or
seven volunteer reviewers to Greenbelt to cover as many music
performances as they could, they tended to keep away from the "new
expressions of worship" events, save for the truly wonderful Aradhna.
With friend Paul I am walking towards the InSense venue to attend the
Molten Meditation & Soul Circus presentation Sacramental
Charismania. "Charismatic" is a word seldom if ever appearing in a
Greenbelt programme so, as a believer who was filled with the Holy
Spirit shortly after my conversion in 1980 and who continues to be a
happy (and occasionally clappy) member of a charismatic church, I
trudge on. After my traumatic experiences in tents, my mood changes to
actual enthusiasm as I see that this will be my first (and for
Greenbelt '12 my only) musical performance to be played in a building.
The rain can't get me here!
9.00pm
What a strange mish mash is Molten Meditation & Soul
Circus' Sacramental Charismania. One part testimony confessional where
a post evangelical churchgoer offers a dialogue interspersed with
occasional questions from a ghostly (godly?) female head-and-shoulders
talking to the dejected looking chap via TV screens dotted around the
InSense venue; one part alt worship service where Tomlin and Redman
songs are given a rather limp pop techno makeover interspersed with
clips from grinning TV presenter Brian Cox; and one part expose of
what some post evangelical film clip editors consider to be
charismania. This turns out to be a random selection of all the
excesses - ranting Todd Bentley; Nine O Clock Service's Chris Brain;
white-suited Benny Hinn and numerous shots of people falling down and
occasionally writhing, interspersed with clips of the Blues Brothers'
notorious movie spoof on Black Pentecostalism and the admittedly funny
South Park cartoon potshot at OTT religion. In all this blur of clips
the activity of the Holy Spirit and the operation of biblical gifts is
never explained or portrayed nor is it pointed out that Chris Brain's
theology didn't emanate from American Pentecostalism and is as post
modern as it is possible to get. The most indelible clip of all though
isn't people falling in the Spirit but a pompous American conservative
evangelical denouncing charismatics as the greatest danger in today's
Christian Church. It's richly ironic that the very same minister could
as easily deliver a similar attack on some brands of emerging
church/post evangelical theological mushiness. Like most
Bible-believing charismatics I am grieved by the OTT theatrics of TV
ministries who sometimes turn something holy and mysterious and
supernatural into surreal religious entertainment. But I am also
grieved by the smug name-calling of some conservative evangelicals and
some post evangelical leaders. But worst of all is that this confused
and confusing jumble of clips makes absolutely no attempt to
differentiate between charismania and charismatic. There are a couple
of clips of OTT Pentecostalists pushing over congregation members but
there are others of people simply falling down in the power of the
Holy Spirit. There are, tragically, dishonest manipulative practices
in some outposts of the charismatic Church. But the same can be said
for Catholicism. Or the emerging churches. To portray charismatics
with film fragments showing a huckster preacher using spurious words
of knowledge from the Hollywood film Leap Of Faith starring Steve
Martin isn't comment, isn't truth, it's propaganda. Scarily,
Charismania Sacramentalism's cobbled together clips get dangerously
close to the kind of fact-and-fiction blur the Nazis once used in
their film efforts to turn a nation against the Jews.
9.55pm
I'm still digesting Charismania Sacramentalism's video
farrago when we finally get to the "sacramental" part of the
presentation. It turns out to be the organisers passing out bits of
string and suggesting we tie them onto the wrist of someone standing
or sitting close to us and saying or praying a blessing over them. A
punk poet I know shares a fragment of testimony and a prayer with me
while tying on the string. I do the same to him. Both of us,
charismatics that we are, feel a surge of Holy Spirit joy. Suddenly
stewards are ushering everyone out the door. It seems the rain storms
have even affected the race course buildings. Falling ceiling tiles
are causing a Health & Safety danger. Ho hum.
MONDAY, 27th August
7.00am
I lie in my
tent facing a conundrum. I need to go to the toilet. Yet my mud
saturated trainers are all but incapable of taking me to the nearest
portaloo without danger of me slipping into the slough of despond.
8.55am
I eat my way-too-expensive cheese canapé sitting on the
stalls bench and discuss HP Lovecraft, literary criticism, opinions
(they're like backsides - everybody has one), post modernism and more
with an English teacher/poet and a steward. We are joined by Ned, an
Anglican youth worker in a poncho who turns out to be a charismatic
evangelical. So there are some here! Ned tells me that each year he
goes to Soul Survivor for the worship, Keswick for the Bible teaching
and Greenbelt as a mission field. "It's easy to engage people in
conversations about God," Ned tells me, then goes on to sound off
about yesterday's Communion Service. He had understandably been
bemused by the preacher referring to Jesus as being "made by the
elements" rather than Jesus making the elements.
9.15am
In the queue waiting for the Press Office to open a lady
Methodist vicar tells me that the appalling weather will hopefully
draw the Church's attention to the Global Warming issue. She could
well have a point.
10.25am
George Luke tells me that Simon Parke has just given "a
very good seminar on solitude." "Was anybody there?" I quip.
10.30am
A golden Greenbelt moment. As I stand and watch from the
Grandstand balcony 60 or so couples show scant regard for the drizzle,
jiving and jitterbugging as the Swing Dance Class is conducted from
The Canopy. Young and old, mackintoshed and t-shirted, they happily
dance.
12.30pm
Gentry Morris is a charming young man from the US now
living in Belfast. It's a shame that I won't be able to catch the
singer/songwriter's set at the Performance Café tonight. "Awake Oh
Sleeper" is one of my favourite songs in the iPod always running in my
head. Anyway, he gives a good interview.
1.20pm
After their Greenbelt appearance last year Cross Rhythms
were predicting Folk On, those zany practitioners of folk comedy, were
"becoming a Festival institution." Now they have. Thousands of people,
teens, children, mums, dads and stewards are milking imaginary cows,
chortling over the latest songs on Folk On's new album 'Men Of Folk'
and genuinely having the time of their lives, casting aside all
irrelevancies like bad weather and immanent departures. Folk On are
the big hit of Greenbelt '12. After their uproarious set on Mainstage
the G-Music manager tellis me the flat-capped threesome are the
biggest selling CD act G-Music has seen for years. The signing session
becomes a marathon for Donald Cornfoot, Derek Tinkleberry and Edmund
Sidebottom. Folk On will be back at next year's Greenbelt or there
will be combine harvester riots.
3.05pm
Ad-Apt is in the house - well, the Press Office at least.
This charming young evangelistic rapper is excited about his first
solo release, the EP 'Broken Bones'.
3.41pm
Greenbelt chairman Andy Turner and director Paul Northup
are facing a line of journalists/broadcasters, all with spectacularly
mud-caked footwear. Unsurprisingly, many of the questions are about
the emerging procedures introduced to get campers and their belongings
away from the quagmire and into their cars. Personally, I think the
Greenbelt organisers are doing a magnificent job in responding to the
situation. Even the most informed meteorologist or the most anointed
prophet wouldn't have predicted a flash flood. And the happy spirit of
the sodden and sticky Greenbelters is amazing to behold.
5.10pm
I've missed the wonderful Austin Francis Connection.
Blow! So I sip a tea and listen at The Canopy's compere bigging up the
new venue. He tells his listeners that at last year's Greenbelt
Mobo-winning rappers Judah & Secret attracted an audience of five
(one of them being a Cross Rhythms reviewer!) to their gig in the
Underground. So maybe it was a wise move to do away with a venue
locked away in the bowels of a building, unheard and unnoticed by many
Greenbelters in favour of this outside venue.
I'm sitting here reflecting after reading Tony's article. Were we at the same festival? I know we were because I was at the same Bruce Cockburn Press Conference as he was and heard be question Cockburn in a rather rude manner.
Greenbelt is a Christian festival, but it is no longer exclusively - or perhaps even in any way a Conservative Evangelical Christian Festival. It seems to me that Conservative Evangelicals think they have a monopoly on Christian Faith (I am not slinging mud here. Conservative Evangelical is part of Tony's own description of himself) They are the only ones allowed to interpret scripture and tell everyone else what it means. They are the only ones whose theology is reflected in the Bible. They are the only ones whose theology OF the Biblke is valid. They are the only ones who get to dictate what is and isn't Christian.
Greenbelt left this kind of attitude long ago. It recognises that there are other expressions of Christian faith which are just as valid expressions as Conservative Evangelicalism. There are other forms of music as beautiful and as uplifting as CCM - even music made by people without Christian faith. Conservative Evangelicals are of course still welcome at Greenbelt, but they no longer run things - thank goodness. Greenbelt represents a much broader and more humane agenda than that. If Tony can't cope with that, then perhaps he ought, as one commenter has suggested, stop going for the sake of his own blood pressure. As for me, I can quite happily declare that I am a Christian who is most definitely not a conservative evangelical and someone who has always found greenbelt a vital source of spiritual refreshment, uplift and support.