Sunday, 26 August 2007

Greenbelt

We're off to the Greenbelt Festival tomorrow at Cheltenham Racecourse.
It is supposed to be a "Christian" Arts Festival but *sigh* it is really just a political agenda driven get together.
We attended every year back in our protolic days, but as we both got to understand the faith and faced more and more at Greenbelt that ranged from not quite right to downright awful we stopped going. But dh wants to maintain some kind of friendship with his protestant friends from the past so we will go for the day and meet up.

The children enjoy the stuff to look at and the space to run and we get to see some good stuff about overseas charities.
They don't have any pro-life stuff there even though I once asked them about it. No one is interested in dead babies and anyway they support Christian Aid which is into...how do they word it?...reproductive rights.
They have seminars on being gay and how to be a Christian medium. So the kids are banned from seminars-although they roll their eyes at the very idea of wanting to hear that stuff spouted at them.

Rowan Williams has attended and doesn't seem to mind the less than Christian stuff that goes on there.
Recently they were going to allow smoking of cannabis but as a lot of families attend there was such an outcry they decided it was best not- and the police were less than enthusiastic about the idea.

Anyway-Greenbelt plays a rather strange roll in my re-version story. More on that soon.
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3 comments:

David Palmer said...

Not going to Greenbelt this year... but have been for the last few, personally have a love hate relationship with the festival, they are beginning to have more Catholic input (two Masses last year and several speakers). This is good, but those speaking, and celebrating the Mass tend to try and play down the fact they are Catholic, which is sad. I had also been going to keep in touch with old protestant friends, undecided about next year. It would however be great to have a truly Catholic version of Greenbelt each year!

26 August 2007 at 09:00
Simon Grandidge said...

Got back from Greenbelt on Monday....my first such experience. I found there to be a good range of talks and seminars to dip in and out of - Billy Bragg particularly good both on stage and in lecture (non-religious) - and the "big sing" of the ten most popular hymns very good. I reply here however as I attended as the only Catholic in a group of about 10 (I am married to a non-Catholic active Christian). I found Mass on the Sunday morning a very moving experience and it was the highlight of a very good weekend. I hear what you say about having a Catholic version of Greenbelt, but I think that it may be better to have more of an input at this event. For all the faults (some of which I have only actually considered on reading the two comments here) - Greenbelt has become a success in terms of number of attendees and has the infrastructure in place - would it not be better to try and involve more Catholics and build up our presence than decamp and set up an alternative?

29 August 2007 at 06:04
WhiteStoneNameSeeker said...

One day I would genuinely love to set up the 'Family Festival' I dream of.
I think Greenbelt could be excellent if it put Christ first instead of politics.
Politics always makes things less honest somehow.
The 'Che' t-shirts and ties should have been thrown out. They would never allow Hitler ones would they?

29 August 2007 at 07:17

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