Charismatic conservative evangelical Tony Cummings reviews the 39th GREENBELT arts festival
Continued from page 3
5.25pm
The rain has started yet again and I'm Beyond Tired. But
this is a fest going on all around me and I need to make a final
effort to forget about wet socks, alarmingly diminishing money and
wondering when I will be getting a phone call to say if and when I can
get a ride home. I stand at the edge of Mainstage listening to Karine
Polwart. It's obvious why she's a BBC Folk Awards winner and her voice
soars out to a small, welly-shod throng. But her sometimes sad,
sometimes angry music isn't doing much to lift my spirits or bring a
blast of energy.
5.39pm
The Rubber Wellie with the luxuriant ginger beard offers
me a cup cake. To a hungry man who only minutes before had been
ruminating whether to spend his fast disappearing cash on an Atlum
Schema limited edition box set or an overpriced foodstall snack, it is
a God-send.
5.50pm
The G-Music tent is jam-packed with rubber wellies. Quite
literally. Harry Bird & The Rubber Wellies are playing a mini-set
and everywhere in the G-Music tent feet attired in the suitable
footwear are endeavouring to tap in time, if such a thing is possible
on a chocolate-brown glue-like floor. Harry has a smile of such
dazzling intensity that it seems to hover in the air, like Lewis
Carroll's Cheshire Cat, even after the Bilbao-born frontman and his
two rollicking travelling folkie colleagues have left the stage. Their
opening song "Links In The Chain" is a gem and even yet another cloud
burst and the sound of Seth Lakeman on Mainstage drowning out some of
the Wellies's last two songs can not stop those Bird-smiles spreading
through the rhythmically squelching crowd.
7.03pm
In an act of gratuitous kindness John the drummer tells
me he'll drive me home to Stoke-on-Trent, even though he's already
made one detour after playing at an Elim church conference.
8.58pm
On the way home John the drummer, whom I've never met
before tonight, and I find ourselves enjoying Holy Spirit-wrought
ministry together. We pray, we hear fragments of each other's faith
journeys, we feel God's Spirit presencing himself in the car. It's an
unexpected and wonderful end to my excursion to Cheltenham.
WEDNESDAY, 29th August
7.01am
Today's the
day my Greenbelt piece will be published. I stand in the bathroom
belatedly cleaning off mud from my leather jacket. As I do the
iPod-in-my-head is playing a great track by Liam Blake, a brilliant
singer/songwriter I "discovered" at the 2010 Greenbelt. The track
goes, "I can't quote the Good Book, I don't know the verses, I just
know the hook." Brilliant. Suddenly I stop mud-scraping and rush for
something to write on. The Bible, the infallible word of God is what
we all need. Not used for legalistic point scoring, not taken as a
helpful pointer to Jesus - lover of the poor and oppressed - but
ignored when it comes to pinpointing our own sins. When the Scripture,
empowered by the Holy Spirit, takes a grip on our lives the
charismatics and post evangelicals, the Greenbelters and those who
attend Elim chuch conferences, the Catholics and Seventh Day
Adventists, the pietists and activists, the socio-political right and
the socio-political left can at last be that church of unity demanded
by God's word. How will this come about? God knows.
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.