Wednesday 29th August 2012

Charismatic conservative evangelical Tony Cummings reviews the 39th GREENBELT arts festival

Folk On (Jonathon Watkins / Greenbelt Festival)

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.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

About Tony Cummings

Tony Cummings is the music editor for Cross Rhythms website and attends Grace Church in Stoke-on-Trent.

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Reader Comments

Posted by Derek A Collins in Exiled in East London @ 20:55 on Oct 18 2012

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.

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Posted by Chip Kendall in Stockport @ 17:28 on Sep 18 2012

I'm with Tony.

Greenbelt's website claims, "Our roots (are) in the Christian tradition, and our approach is inclusive and wide-reaching."

However, The Jewish Chronicle published an article labelling Greenbelt as an anti-Semitic Christian Festival. So the question must be asked, how 'inclusive' and 'wide-reaching' is Greenbelt anyway?

Not that far I guess.

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Reply by Chip Kendall in Stockport @ 14:17 on Oct 5 2012

Here is the link to a similar article (although not the one I read a few years ago) online:

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/37305/christian-festival-s tyles-itself-gaza-strip

Christians should be recognized because of our love, not our political agenda.

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Reply by Leanne in Stoke on Trent @ 23:58 on Sep 25 2012

Could you include a reference to where the Jewish Chronicle states Greenbelt is anti semitic as I can't find it? Thanks

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Reply by Leanne in Stoke on Trent @ 23:24 on Sep 25 2012

On what grounds does it claim that Greenbelt is anti semetic, Chip? And why do you assume the Jewish Chonicle is correct - or more correct than Greenbelt? This isn't something that Tony appears to have picked up in his review.

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Posted by Peter Ryder in Northumberland @ 20:19 on Sep 7 2012

Back from an over-memorable GB12 nursing a broken shoulder after coming off my motorbike in dreadful rain heading back into Cheltenham on Monday night, can I back what Andy B says, there are many wonderful and though-provoking things on offer, but also an anti-evangelical bias and prejudice that keeps cropping up.
Tony makes it quite clear where he is coming from, and I am not from quite the same place, but I feel some of his concerns. But keep coming, Tony, and expressing yourself, we need you

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Posted by Rob Halligan in United Kingdom @ 17:21 on Sep 4 2012

Tony!! Where were you??? You seemed to miss a fair bit including the performance cafe on Monday afternoon. Shame!

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Posted by Chris Goan in Scotland @ 11:31 on Sep 4 2012

I was saddened as I read this article. I was a contributor @ GB this year, and as ever it was a mix of the wonderful, the bizarre and the deeply moving. I have some sympathy with discussions about the balance/mix of different elements at the festival- this is a hard one to call, but having escaped from the Christianised ghettos of CCM, Evangelicalism, legalism etc, the last thing I want is for this agenda to dominate Greenbelt.

It would be entirely possible for me to go to Spring Harvest, or Clan Gathering and write a piece decrying the hard edges of American-Evangelical-Charismatic interpretations of Faith. But what would be the point?

Greenbelt is a melting pot- a place for experimenting and debating. A place for dipping your toes into other pools of the thought, other culture, other art forms. The only way you can do this is to attempt a position of openness and humility- accepting that some of what you encounter will place you in positions of discomfort. Accepting that we all still have lots to learn, and that God is bigger than the boxes we place him in.

I hope that Mr Cummings will come back to the festival because all voices are needed. But come and enjoy, celebrate, encounter.

After all the rain falls on both the righteous and the unrighteous.

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Posted by dave in Nottingham @ 10:07 on Sep 4 2012

Tony, I think you should give Greenbelt a miss next year. It sounds as if it's doing your blood pressure no good. One of the many things I appreciate about the Festival is it's diversity and willingness to listen to other opinions on matters of faith and justice. Evangelical, Charismatic, Catholic, Orthodox, Liberal, even Christianity itself generally..no one has a monopoly on Jesus. We can belong to him, but he never belongs to us.

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Posted by Matt Page in Loughborough @ 00:33 on Sep 4 2012

Richard Coles is not a "practicing gay" (sic.). See this interview with The Telegraph last year, for example.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8423614/Rev-Richard -Coles-from-pop-star-to-pulpit.html

You might communicate your position with more respect if you check your facts before you bash someone over the head with your opinions. Certainly I'd have thought you'd check things like that before potentially committing libel.

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Posted by Marc Lungley in Stourbridge @ 00:02 on Sep 4 2012

Interesting review from Tony Cummings. I have to admit for the first time in about 15 years I didn't go to Greenbelt this year. Partly because Greenbelt since the end of 2008 has seemed to decline in the number of Christian acts that play there. When I did get a press pass I was more interviewing bands from a local to Stourbridge Unsigned POV than a Christian smuggle you onto my radio show point of view. The bands on Stage 2/Underground/Canopy Stage seem to have come more from the UK medium sized festival touring circuit than ever before. How much the criteria GB used to have of being:-
1) A Christian band
2) A band with members who are Christian
3) A band that agrees with the ethos of the festival
I would like to know?

The thing in the end I went to Greenbelt for was The Meltdown Sessions which sadly although one of the most well attended things of Stage 2/Underground were canned in 2012. Which IMHO was a shame. But to that end I did go to Cheltenham over the bank holiday weekend and saw some awesome Christian Alternative/Metal bands at The 2 Pigs in Cheltenham which Meltdown had hired out. (Shame you were stuck up at Greenbelt Tony). Just a quick review for you guys cont....

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Posted by Tim Eveleigh in Croydon @ 21:00 on Sep 3 2012

"How will this come about?"

Well, it won't come about by writing divisive articles like this that criticise anyone who disagrees with the author. Ironically this is the opposite of what Greenbelt tries to do. Oh well.

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Posted by April Scott @ 23:41 on Sep 2 2012

loving the comments and strong thoughts myself which I have aired on the greenbelt facebook page. Agree that there should be more Christian music at the festival but as for the rest....isn't that the beauty of greenbelt? That we can explore our faith and ask those 'un-said' questions? I myself have been challenged and inspired at greenbelt (and afterwards)....

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Greenbelt '12: A moment-by-moment review and reflection

Charismatic conservative evangelical Tony Cummings reviews the 39th GREENBELT arts festival

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