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IR 21.1 (2018) 44–69 Implicit Religion (print)
ISSN 1463-9955
https://doi.org.10.1558/imre.37354
Implicit Religion (online) ISSN 1743-1697
Christian Discourses and Cultural Change:
The Greenbelt Art and Performance Festival
as an Alternative Community
for Green and Liberal Christians
Maria
Nita
University of Birmingham
M.Nita@Bham.ac.uk
The article examines the Greenbelt festival in the UK, looking at
how Green and Liberal Christians experiment with sacred spaces
during worship occasions, talks and workshops. I show that Green-
belt represents a syncretic encounter between the modern festival
culture on one hand and Christian community experiments and
aspirations on the other, some that can be traced back to the
nineteenth century Romantic Movement. I posit that the festival
represents a trans-denominational community of choice for a pro-
gressive faction within the main Christian congregations in Britain,
and in particular the Anglican Church. Furthermore I discuss ways
in which participants experiment with cultural change, adopting
a circle model of spatial organisation or via artistic expression. I
observe relations between speakers and audiences, showing that a
discourse of “openness and vulnerability” represents a critique of the
“rigidity” of the Church, whilst a discourse of “secret meanings and
misunderstandings” functions as a mechanism for revision inside
the tradition. I postulate that the multiple outdoor spaces and fields
of the modern art and performance festival can better accommodate
the wider contemporary “believing and belonging” spectrum.
Introduction
The present article is concerned with the intersection between the Chris-
tian tradition and the modern festival culture, which is an under-researched
area of study. I will investigate this syncretic encounter through the prism
of the Greenbelt festival in the UK, a Christian art and performance fes-
tival that began in 1974 in Charsfield, a small village in the South East of
England, and since 2014 has been located at Boughton House, in Ketter-
Keywords: Greenbelt festival, Liberal Christians, Green Christians,
sacred space, Christianity and politics, audience involvement, religious
leadership, modern Christian discourses
© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2019, Office 415, The Workstation, 15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield, S1 2BX
© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2019
Christian Discourses and Cultural Change 45
ing UK.1 The early art and performance festivals which started in the late
1960s and early 1970s represented a significant expression of a counter-
cultural movement that influenced and was in turn shaped by some widely
acknowledged trends that began at this time: increased secularisation and
decline in church attendance, religious fragmentation, high religious inno-
vation, individualism and privatisation (Heelas et al. 2005; De Groot 2009;
Wuthnow 2003). I explore the effects of these trends as well as interactions
between the early festivals and Christians in Britain elsewhere. Together
with Sharif Gemie, I argue that since their beginning, in the early 1970s,
art and performance festivals attracted the cooperation and support of the
Anglican Church, over what was seen as a congruence in anti-material
values and aspirations as well as a new “opportunity for the church to serve
among the people” (Nita and Gemie 2019).2 This prevailing attitude was
also supported by the postbellum aspiration for ecumenism outside of the
various churches, a contributing factor to the (re)establishment of an
innovative pilgrimage centre in Scotland, the Iona Community, in the
1950s and 1960s (Morton 1960). These trends were accompanied by a
nostalgic reclamation of a pre-Christian space, present in “themes of
celticity,” in both Christian and neo-Pagan contexts (Bowman 2007). The
Celtic revival, with roots in the Romantic Movement, was itself a search
for a common past and thus part of this wider “ecumenical” project.
Greenbelt is a festival of arts, faith and justice. […] Thinking of Greenbelt
as
just
another
‘
f
estival
’
doesn
’
t
do
it
justice
.
It
is
also
an
idea,
a
wa
y
of
see
ing, a gathering of the clans—part movement, part moment.
(Greenbelt 2017a)
The above quote, from the festival’s website, conveys the special, slightly
mystical and unique status Greenbelt enjoys among insiders and support-
ers. At Boughton House, the beautiful Tudor manor’s landscaped gar-
dens are quickly becoming a stage for experiments with different kinds
of spaces. “The Mount” for example, a small hill in these gardens, was
used in 2014 for the Sunday Sermon, pointing to a nostalgic reimagining
of biblical times.3 Other outdoor spaces at Greenbelt, suggestively named
“the Glade,” “the Grove,” and “the Canopy,” are developing a material,
artistic and political tradition modelled on such famous festival spaces as
1. The festival was previously located at the Cheltenham Racecourse from 1999
to 2013; some of my data was gathered there.
2. See for example: “Letter from the Bishop of Reading.” Lord Melchett’s
working group to review policies on pop festivals. National Archives POL 75
0455 Document Number 41.
3. In 2016, 2017, and 2018 this landscape feature was decorated with white stars
and a sign reading “The Mount,” yet it was cordoned off.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2019
46 Maria Nita
“Silver Hays,” a field for protest art at Glastonbury. Visually Greenbelt is
almost undistinguishable from other modern art and performance
festivals, drawing on a festival model that has spaces for community,
talks and workshops, art, festivity, experimentation, showcasing of
innovation, performance, and so on. Greenbelt is a charity and is co-
created by a variety of actors —such as trustees, volunteers, activists and
artists (Greenbelt 2018)—following what I have defined elsewhere as an
art and performance festival model that became established in the early
1970s (Nita and Gemie 2019). According to inside sources Greenbelt is
presently attended by around 20,000 people. There are many activities for
children and young people and organisers strive to attract younger people
into the fold.4
In the last decade Greenbelt has offered its support of other, newer,
Christian festivals that have a similar ethos: Solas in Scotland, Gwyl Coda
in Wales, Carafest in Ireland, Wild Goose in US and Slot in Poland. On
the Greenbelt website these are listed under the headline “A Family of
Festivals.” Greenbelt acknowledges its influence on and support of these
newer festivals, yet it disclaims: ‘Greenbelt in not a franchise, it is an
inspiration’ (Greenbelt 2018). In some cases Christians have established
churches at other modern festivals, such is the case with the ‘Church at
the Glastonbury Festival’, whose members are in contact outside of
festival times via social media and other events. There are also a small
number of so-called festivals that provide spaces for reformulations
inside the Christian tradition, yet they are not connected with the modern
festival culture, in fact they are positioned against modern culture, thus
having their own countercultural flavour—like for example the New
Wine festival in UK, an event that brings together Evangelical Christians,
consisting in a series of talks, seminars and Bible teachings and built
around what may be understood as a “retreat model” (Guest 2007, 198).
The emphasis New Wine places on leadership, frequently offering
leaders’ retreats and leaders’ workshops (Guest 2007, 199) is
immediately in contrast with the lack of emphasis on leadership at
Greenbelt—which has in turn a liberal and experimental ethos. In 2016
the Sunday Mass was simply con- ducted by children, who alternated
between telling jokes and leading the congregation into prayer. In 2017
the Greenbelt Sunday Mass was led by young people with disabilities and
the congregation was asked to sign their responses using basic sign
language. I will now follow with my methodology, literature review,
theoretical framework and data analysis.
4. A full price ticket for an adult is £190 (2018); concessions are generously
offered to many participants, particularly to young people.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2019
Christian Discourses and Cultural Change 47
Methodology and Questionnaire Results
For this project I used a predominantly ethnographic approach, gathering
data that consisted mainly of participant observation at Greenbelt 2008,
2012, 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2018, as well as over fifty recordings from
workshops held during the 2016 festival, alongside festival ephemera. I
started interviewing participants specifically about their involvement in
the festival in August 2016 and I have seven in-depth interviews to date:
four women and three men, with ages between twenty and seventy-two.
This was a random sample of participants—many of whom filled in a
short questionnaire and agreed to a follow up with an interview. To date
I have had twenty-eight returned questionnaires. For the present article I
am mainly focusing on the data from my participant observation and the
Greenbelt talks (2016). The interviews were unstructured: I simply invited
participants to talk about the festival and their own experiences, in any way
they wished to tell their stories.
The qualitative data was analysed using methods and tools from
Grounded Theory, using coding and memoing in order to find the over-
arching themes or concerns in the texts (Charmaz 2006). A key scholarly
influence on my approach to data analysis has been Norman Fairclough’s
application of discourse analysis when addressing social change (1992;
2006). Building on Pierre Bourdieu’s 1991 obervation of parallels between
language use and the market economy, Fairclough shows how political
discourses, such as neoliberal discourses, are assimilated and
appropriated to serve individual economic and symbolic interests (2006,
148). Fairclough talks about the material and semiotic nature of discourse
and shows that discourses “may under certain conditions be
operationalized, ‘put into practice,’ a dialectical process with three
aspects: they may be enacted as new ways of (inter)acting, they may be
inculcated as new ways of being (identities), they may be physically
materialized e.g. as new ways of organizing space” (2013, 182). This is
congruent with other approaches to material culture that stipulate the
embodied nature of cultural trans- mission (Shilling 2018), but
Fairclough’s notion of an operationalized dis- course (2013, 182) is
particularly useful when looking at novel ways of interacting with sacred
spaces, which I will suggest here are constructed in opposition to/counter
to customs and “styles” (modes of being) in traditional settings or the
church as an institution. The novel elements in the arrangement of sacred
spaces can speak to us about the present concerns of the participants and
the relationships they wish to represent, oftentimes pointing to themes of
inclusion and equality, as may be the case in the above example of the
2017 Greenbelt Sunday service led by young people with disabilities.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2019
48 Maria Nita
In the interest of recognising my own cultural filters, I should say that I
am a British-Romanian scholar. I was born, grew up and was educated
up to degree level in Romania. Having lived and worked in Britain since
2000 I have been somewhat assimilated by British culture but I still have
in many respects an outsider perspective.
Questionnaire Results
The questionnaire asked participants for their age, gender, ethnic identity,
place of residence, first attendance of the festival and subsequent visits,
some of the main activities they engaged in at the festival, religious
affiliation, such as tradition/church/denomination (in any way they
wished to describe this); political involvement—if any; and any other
impressions they wished to share. Another section of the questionnaire,
titled “Values,” drew on the European Value Study survey (2008) and
asked more specific questions about their religious beliefs. Question 2 in
this Values section asked “which of these statements come closest to your
beliefs: a) There
is
a
personal
God; b)
Ther
e
is
so
me
sor
t
of
spir
it
or
f
or
ce;
c)
I
do
n
’
t
r
eall
y
kno
w
what
to
think; d)
I
do
n
’
t
think ther
e
is
an
y
sor
t
of
spir
it,
God
or life force.” Question 4 in the Values section asked
participants “which of the following questions “one sometimes hear”
would they mostly identify with: a) there is only one true religion; b)
there is only one true religion, but other religions do contain some basic
truths as well; c) there is not one true religion, but all great world
religions contain some basic truths; and finally d) None of the great
religions have any truths to offer.”
The respondents represented a random sample: I approached people
whilst they were queuing for the showers inside four of the main festival
campsites, since the questionnaire only took about five to ten minutes to
complete and many agreed to do this, whilst queuing. Among the twenty-
eight respondents there were nine males and nineteen females, with ages
between twenty and seventy-two and an average age of forty-six.5 When
asked to describe their religious affiliation, most respondents identified as
“Church of England” (nine); “Catholic” (two); followed by “Christian”
(no denomination) (seven); “Methodist” (two); “Baptist” (two);
“Vineyard”6 (one); “Iona Community” (one), whilst a small number of
respondents identified as “Agnostic” (two) and “Atheists” (three). One
respondent wrote “I’ll put widespread Christian but I do not like what
5. All twenty-eight respondents identified as “white” (twenty-six) or “white
other” (two). All of the respondents came from England and Wales, with two
exceptions, one from Poland and one from Australia.
6. Vineyard is associated with the Pentecostal and Evangelical movements.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2019
Christian Discourses and Cultural Change 49
that is associated with”—which is evidence for how Christians feel that
they are perceived in a post-Christian world. One Agnostic respondent
specified next to “Agnostic”: “parents are Christian and I play the organ”
—which shows how participants link religious identity with one’s
heritage and occupation. This spread is somewhat congruent with the
British religious demographic, as indicated by the British Social
Attitudes (BSA) Survey, which identified in 2016 that whilst Church of
England (fifteen per cent) and Roman Catholics (nine per cent) were well
represented, “other Christians” represented the largest group (seventeen
per cent).7 This data is of course just an indicator, since recent
congregational studies in UK show that such denominational identities
are far more complex and relational, and that ethnographic studies are in
a position to show the real “messiness” of lived religion (Tusting, Guest,
and Woodhead 2016, xiv).
Many respondents indicated that they came to the festival with friends
(ten) or family (three), whilst others mentioned coming with “their church”
or “church youth group.” Most respondents (sixty per cent) indicated that
they believed in a personal God (2a), almost half of respondents believed
that there is only one true religion but other religions contain basic truths
(4b), whilst eight respondents (twenty-eight per cent) chose option 4.c.
“there is not one true religion, but all great world religions contain some
basic truths.” Most respondents indicated that they were politically active
and involved, mentioning a diversity of ways is which they were
involved in activism: “I am campaigning against sexual slavery and
trafficking,” “the festival makes me think about being an ethical person
and helping others,” “I do email campaigns and rallies,” “local and
national green activities,” “I am active in the local council, attend
meetings and chair a residents’ association,” “online
participation/discussion with MP,” “write to MP, local campaigning,
inclusion,” “I am able to lobby,” “Labour party,” “I vote,” “I have regular
debates with my family.” This simply shows the spectrum of beliefs and
attitudes among modern Christians, demonstrating that Greenbelt is a
trans-denominational event attended by many Christians interested in
social justice issues, many of whom would have become increasingly
aware of such issues because of their regular attendance to Greenbelt,
over many years—some indicated they first came twenty or thirty years
ago and “every year after that.”
7. “NatCen’s British Social Attitudes Survey: Religious Affiliation Among
Adults in Great Britain” (National 2016) also shows that the percentage of
those identifying as not religious had grown from thirty-four per cent in 1986
to fifty-three per cent in 2016.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2019
50 Maria Nita
Literature review: Christians and festival cultures
Festivals, in general, entertain an ambivalent relationship with the Chris-
tian tradition.8 Media reporting on the early festivals, of those who made
up the so called “Woodstock nation” were recognised as “Jesus freaks,”
“high on God” and even referring to Woodstock as “a Jesus revival
movement” (Aarons, 1970). The zeitgeist of the so called long 1960s is
one of rejection of Western and Christian values, teachings and norms,
concomitant with spiritual searching, often by entering into a diversity of
(some- times Eastern) communities and/or religious discourses, a practice
enabled by increased globalisation (Campbell 2010; De Groot 2009). This
spiritual searching, oftentimes directed away from the present time and
the West, toward the distant East and the Celtic past, profoundly altered
the religious landscape in Britain and the West and had global
reverberations (Sutcliffe and Gilhus 2013). The American sociologist
Robert Wuthnow cites his informants, who were involved in this 1960s
countercultural revolution as finally being or feeling “free from an angry
God and the hypocritical church experiences of their childhood”
(Wuthnow 2003, 91). The early music festivals appear to have provided
both an alternative political space (McKay 2015), as well as an alternative
sacred or religious space for this disenchanted youth (Campion 2016).
Liberal Christianity, Liberal Protestantism in particular, represents an
important facilitator of this interaction between the Christian tradition
and the modern festival culture. Liberalism is not one church or
denomination but “a movement within existing churches, both Catholic
and Protestant” (Woodhead 2001, 220). Liberal and Conservative
Christians will worship in the same church, though they may disagree on
“theological, ethical and lifestyle issues” (Woodhead 2001, 220). Whilst
some denominations or movements may be inclined towards either a
liberal or conservative stance—for example Unitarians are mostly liberal,
whilst evangelicals are conservative—the Church of England has both
liberals and conservatives in its fold (Woodhead 2001, 220). Liberal
Protestantism, with roots in post-Enlightenment thought, understood
itself as an agent of modern progress, which gave rise to traditionalist re-
interpretations, like Evangelicalism (Woodhead 2001, 206). Post 1960s
Liberal Christianity in Britain embraced the need for modernisation and
‘demythologisation’,
8. Barbara Ehrenreich argues that the very model of carnival as a ‘secular’
pursuit was unintentionally created by the church through the exclusion of
religious ecstasy, dance and joy from religious observances, and that festivals
may entertain a historical opposition to the church and establishment.
(Ehrenreich 2007, 77–95).
© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2019
Christian Discourses and Cultural Change 51
supporting social reforms (Hugh McLeod 2007), and actively assisting the
“sexual revolution,” possibly out of a conviction that this was the only way
to continue to be involved in a public dialogue on morality (Brewitt-Taylor
2017). The Greenbelt festival clearly shows these directions, being a com-
munity of choice for the Christian progressives. Additionally the Green-
belt festival represents an important place of convergence for many Green
Christian networks, networks I have been researching for the past decade
(Nita 2014; 2016; 2017).
An important root for Liberal Christianity is to be found in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Romantic Movement and the Liberal
Theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), who was a key figure
in the German Romantic movement (Livingston 1971, 80–114).
Schleiermacher, like other Romantics, protested against post-
enlightenment rationalism and privileged emotion and feeling, both in his
theology, as well as during sermons and public occasions
(Schleiermacher 1890, 29, 52). Greenbelt is most certainly a hub for
Liberal Christianity: the spirit of Romanticism, the importance of
feelings and emotions, and a drive toward nature, coupled with suspicion
of authority are being almost revived and embodied at Greenbelt.
Although Liberal Christianity is itself a wide spectrum, we can expect
some shared political and ethical concerns, such as a concern for the
environment; thus, Green Christians are oftentimes Liberal Christians.
Evangelicals and other traditionalist Christians do find innovative ways
to become involved in green campaigns and climate activism, even when
their churches have other traditional political allegiances—especially in
the US where Evangelicals support the Republican Party, oftentimes
distancing themselves from environmental concerns or rejecting the
science of climate change (Wilkinson 2012).
Similar to Liberal Christianity, “Green Christianity” represents a diverse
set of values and attitudes shared among a diversity of Christian
traditions. The greening of the Christian tradition is a debated theory in
the study of religion, with some authors claiming that despite some
worthy initiatives worldwide, “rank and file members” are simply not
“greening” in significant ways (Clements et al. 2014). My own research
with Green Christians in the UK indicates that this is a plural movement,
covering a wide range of political orientations and traditions: from the
Forest Church that resembles Contemporary Paganism, to much more
traditional Chris- tian Greens who are politically active but may not
necessarily adopt other aspects of this material culture. Green spirituality
is understood by Bron Tylor (2010) as “dark green religion”—a powerful,
virus-like cultural phenomenon that is changing other religious traditions
from within. I however argue that the concept of “dark green religion”
© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2019
52 Maria Nita
simply does not capture the complexity of this ideology and material
culture, nor does it acknowledge its Christian roots. As I show here the
Romantic Movement had a plurality of Christian dimensions that accord
well with present trends towards nature. I postulated that the greening inside
the Christian tradition indicates a self-governed process of eco-reformation
(Nita 2016, 227–241).
Theoretical framework: Festivals as plural spaces
for a wide “believing and belonging” spectrum and experimenting
with sacred spaces as a strategy for cultural change
A key debate concerning religion in Britain has to do with the so called
secularisation/ privatisation and desecularisation/ deprivatisation theories
(Woodhead 2012, 3). Whilst many scholars propose that either “reli-
gion’” or “secularisation” are predominant in our contemporary modern
world, some scholars maintain that both secularity and religion have both
survived and that we need a different frameworks to think though the
evidence (Woodhead 2012, 3). Thus although generally speaking in UK
church attendance continues to decline, as well as a belief in a “personal
God”—this is not equally distributed around the churches that make up
Christianity in Britain.9 The decline in Church attendance is not
necessarily synonymous with secularisation since those who call
themselves Christians may think of themselves as “Christian in my own
way” and not “accept the whole church package” (Woodhead 2012, 6).
The sociologist of religion Grace Davie (1994) influentially referred to
this inclination as “believing without belonging.” On the other hand,
“[i]t’s not just the non-religious who are not religious” says Andrew
Copson in his discussion of religion in Britain (Copson 2017, 210). My
data from the afore- mentioned questionnaire also support this
“belonging without believing” faction—since some respondents
indicated that they were Christians, but did not believe in the existence of
a personal God. Simply put a “Christian” identity alone fails to capture the
wide spectrum of belief and belonging permutations. Similarly religious
and secular identities are in reality arbitrary binary classifications. This
could suggest that festivals like Greenbelt can cater for this complexly
wired “belonging and believing” spectrum, and thus be more inclusive.
It can be argued that festival spaces are almost a material representation
of the contemporary plural religious and secular market. Privatisation does
not necessarily have to mean branching out into a completely different
direction and it does not have to mean isolation. At Greenbelt one can
9. Whilst church attendance declined amongst Anglican and Roman Catholic
churchgoers, it expanded amongst Charismatic and independent churches
(Woodhead 2012, 6).
© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2019
Christian Discourses and Cultural Change 53
visit the Franciscans at 5pm, Forest Church at 6pm, sit in an LGBTQ
group at 7pm, and join an Iona choir at 8pm. The festival allows people
to take part in a multiplicity of personal and customised experiences, to
do their “spiritual seeking” in the space of an afternoon. Festival spaces
can support and drive contemporary engagement with religious traditions,
marked by curiosity and experimentation.
For the present investigation I would like to use a broad theoretical
framework of space relationality developed in my previous research
concerned with Green Christians (Nita 2017). My investigations found
that Green Christians were initially marginalised in the Green
Movement, and to some extent they were not entirely happy in their own
home churches. During one conference in 2012 the Christian participants
were asked to remember when “they ‘came out’ as a Christians in their
Green networks and also as a Green in their Church,” here the metaphor
of a hidden identity very powerfully expressing how dissonant their
Green and Christian identities used to be (Nita 2016, 234).10 However my
research showed that they were able to merge their Green and Christian
identities, particularly whilst attending retreats and other such events
away from their home churches, since being part of a community of
choice enabled these net- works to experiment with new models of
organisation and different power relations. In these new settings they were
able to more freely develop eco- logical practices, such as new rituals
performed outdoors that involved tree hugging or contemplative walks in
nature for example.
I found that an important strategy for reform was related to the use of
sacred spaces, as well as other communal spaces (Nita 2017). I postulated
that the organisation of space in Green Christian circles can represent a
powerful critique of traditional structures. In the Christian tradition the
interior of the church building has cosmic symbolism and represents a
means of transcending the earthly plane. Tim Ingold’s (2015) discussion
of indoor vis-à-vis outdoor spaces also suggests that historically, in
performative indoor spaces a connection between materiality and cosmic
infinity, between “air” and “ether” became possible (Ingold 2015, 74).
Therefore outdoor spaces as preferred spaces for worship already indicate
a transformation or revision in Green Christian cosmology. Moreover I
found that in these settings, both indoor and outdoor, the centre of a
sacred space was rarely a place of power, as traditional interpretations of
sacred space claim (Eliade 1957, 32–62). Quite the contrary, in my
10. Progressively in the last decade (2009–2019) Christians have moved from
the margins of the climate movement to a more central position, with Pope
Francis publically voicing many of the activists’ concerns.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2019
54 Maria Nita
research with Green Christians, this was often a place of isolation, with the
edges of the circle or the spiral being privileged instead. Cultural change is
thus prefigured or accompanied by challenging the organisation of material
space itself, and particularly sacred space as an important powerful space.
This was realised by dividing sacred space into more than one centre, by
neglecting the centre of a sacred space, by reversing the polarity of such a
space (through the use of negatively charged objects such as coal, which
would replace other altar furnishings), by making the central marginal (and
vice versa) and by inserting a dynamic movement—such as skipping with
joy through the middle of a room where the altar was found—into
established models of sacred space.11
Festivals provide Christians with opportunities to experiment with
sacred and communal space. The fields are to a certain extent a canvas
where rules and relations can be revised and reinvented. Thus by observing
space relationality in the festival fields we are promised a better under-
standing of the main concerns of the Christian participants.
Data analysis: Greenbelt discourses
After many years in Cheltenham (1999–2013), on the racecourse grounds,
the recent move in 2014 to the green fields, water features, forests and hills
of Boughton House, has pleased many festival-goers. Many participants
commented during workshops on the festival “finally finding a home.”
This shows that it was of some importance for these Christian participants
and particularly some of the Green Christian networks to find a com-
mon “home” in a distinct location, representing almost a communion with
nature—with its own cultural and symbolic capital, which can literally put
these networks on a map. The festival can be understood as an important
“nodal convergence” (Corrywright 2004, 315), which helps tie together a
larger web of Christian networks. Such a yearly engagement with one’s
Christian community may better fit our busy lives than the “traditional
demands of weekly church attendance” (Davie 2000, 149).
An axial discourse at Greenbelt, present in leaflets and online content,
is simply that Greenbelt is a unique and special event. For the most part
participants shared in this discourse, with only a few conversations taking
a more cynical tone. The festival acts as an important place of convergence
for many social and environmental justice national networks. Organisa-
tions such as Operation Noah, Green Christian, and the Forest Church are
always present at the festival and often have stalls or give talks, engaging
11. In one ritual, called “Moving Mountains” my Christian informants formed
a conveyer belt in the middle of the room where the altar was situated, and
passed stones to each other, stones which symbolised our carbon footprint
(Nita 2017, 146).
© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2019
Christian Discourses and Cultural Change 55
with the public. Moreover in this context the various networks that come
into contact can showcase their newest campaigns and engage in a process
of cross fertilisation, inspiring and motivating each other (Davie 2000,
149). Contemporary festivals and retreats are also alternative pilgrimages
(Nita and Gemie 2019) and represent an opportunity, or perhaps in some
cases, a strategy, for cultural change.12 Therefore the festival itself can be
credited with having an important role in the greening of the tradition.
The festival is understood by many of those I spoke with, both during
interviews and informal conversations, as “middle class,” green, liberal,
progressive” and situated “on the questioning side of the Church.” One
informant, “Gerald,” a climate activist in his early forties, who identifies
as a “Green Christian” and wishes to become a Franciscan monk, told me:
Greenbelt is liberal but not radical, it’s very easy to be liberal when things
are going well, it’s really a very middle class, very gentrified scene, with all
the quaint notions of the middle class you know. […] Everybody is say-
ing Britain is pretty much OK if we just give a bit more money to Africa.
(Interview with Gerald 2016)
Nora, an Anglican, coming to the festival with her teenage children,
liked being exposed to new ideas about art and justice at Greenbelt, where
“the arts meet a Christian moral ground, a conscience” (Interview with
Nora 2017). Nora told me that when she had first started coming in 1982,
the festival was more concerned with issues of faith, but over the years it
had drifted more towards “justice and conservation.”
Holy, a twenty year-old who went to a Church of England yet
Evangelical church and a member of the Green Party, told me that after
years of coming to Greenbelt, first as a child, with her mother, “my
interests and Greenbelt interests are much more aligned now, which
means I make more out of it now.” She told me:
I went to an eighteen to twenty-five meetup in that tent over there […]
they are all people I’d never met before, I had no idea whether they were
students, working or a campaigner […] and it was just really interesting
to find out what people do with their lives and just knowing that all these
people obviously care about social justice issues and are religious, and they
were all there together, so that was quite nice. (Interview with Holy 2018)
The questioning and critiquing of the Christian tradition, and of the
Anglican Church more specifically, is done by various means, art being an
important vehicle. This is often a subtle discourse, in a sense it is an
12. Scholarship concerned with pilgrimage and gender shows that medieval
women enjoyed important freedoms as pilgrims (Morrison 2000). Habermas
discusses discourses concerned with Christian miracles during pilgrimages as
differing from existing patriarchal rhetoric (1991, 65–80).
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56 Maria Nita
insiders’ critique which is aimed at changing the tradition and the
institution of the Church —not to oppose it. In Figure 1 for example we
can see a representation of the Church, which is depicted as battered and
falling apart, yet guarding itself with a solid chain and padlock, an image
that captures the crux of this critique: “the Church is not open and
welcoming enough.” This countercultural, “questioning” status inside the
Christian tradition matches the left wing political values participants
freely express during workshops and talks. Similarly “middle class”
values, such as environmentalism, and other economic preferences,13 put
Greenbelt in line with other forms of “post-materialist
religion”(Lassander 2014), and Mika Lassander identifies Contemporary
Pagans as key representatives for this trend.
Sunday Mass at Greenbelt 2016: A brief incursion into the field
As I arrived the Sunday Mass of Greenbelt 2016 was about to start and
people were told to sit in groups of ten, in a circle. My ‘communion’ group
was made up of three elderly couples and a single woman who was perhaps
in her early twenties. In the middle of our circle, on the ground, there was
a small brown paper bag, containing white pitta bread and a cartoon of
red grape juice.14 These will be shared among participants when the time
comes to take communion. As I show elsewhere (Nita 2016, 202) sharing
the Eucharist or holy communion among participants, whilst sitting or
standing in a circle, and without a priest or deacon officiating this sacra-
ment, is often practiced among experimental Green Christian networks.
The service started with a traditional hymn:
Come Christians/Join to sing/Alleluia Amen/Loud praise to Christ our
king/Alleluia Amen/Let all with heart and voice/Before God’s throne re-
joice/Praise is God’s gracious choice/Alleluia Amen
This traditional song, placed at the beginning of the service, became what
I call a “synchronising song.” Often in my research with Green Christians
I found that the first song or story had a role in reminding everyone of
their common identity, hence synchronising everyone—and this is
particularly true if they were meeting outside of the church (Nita 2016, 41,
200). Synchronising stories are pleas for cooperation and serve the
purpose of reminding everyone of their common identity and obligations.
The second song was different in terms of repertoire, melody and
message. It had elements from nineteenth century Irish folk songs and
started like this:
13. Economic choices/ ethical consumption reflect political views; support for
Palestine is shown at Greenbelt by selling Palestinian produce.
14. On other occasions wine was offered.
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Christian Discourses and Cultural Change 57
Co
me,
all
y
ou
vagabo
nds/Co
me
all
y
ou do
n
’
t
belo
ngs/W
inners and
losers/
Come, people like me/Come all you travellers/Tired from the journey
The writer of this song spoke in a public interview about what inspired
him, saying that the Church was behaving in his view like “an exclusive
club,” whilst he drew inspiration from Jesus himself who welcomed every-
one and invited those marginal people, the tax collectors and prostitutes, to
Figure 1: Iron Art at Greenbelt 2016
the table (Townend 2011). This is a similar criticism to the one suggested
by the iron art church in Figure 1. The emphasis on “journey” and “travel-
lers” is also a means of synchronising participants, this time with hippies
and travellers, since this is a common identity of the festival scene.
This self-critical, countercultural attitude becomes even more
pronounced with the third song, which was still a part of the Sunday
Mass, and took its lead from the Biblical verse in Isaiah 11, a vision of a
future when “[t]he wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down
with the goat” (Isaiah 11:6). Here is what it says:
© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2019
58 Maria Nita
One day the people of America will embrace the people of Mexico and the
people of Britain will exchange recipes with the people of Europe/And the
children of Syria will work together to rebuild their country […]/One day
Catholics and
P
rotestants
will
w
orship
side
b
y
side
in
a
language
the
y
do
n
’
t
even understand/And no one in the church will feel the need to talk about
gender and sexuality anymore/One day . . .
The tone of this last song may appear satirical and cynical but the response
from the audience suggests that there is a lot of hope beyond the satire.
The reaction of the audience, cheering loudly, with a cry of excitement,
when the cantor says “one day the wall between Israel and Palestine will be
torn down/And all the children of Abraham will live side by side in peace”
is very telling.15 This is an extremely important issue for the audience, and
despite it being told in a humorous tone, it also displays a Christian collec-
tive identity in a recognisable “emotional pattern” (Davies 2011), since this
is the equivalent of the congregation responding by exclaiming “Alleluia!”
During workshops speakers often moved the audience from grief to hope,
in a similar way, when speaking about other current political issues, such as
the Syrian migrant crisis. This suggests that in this context political issues
are organised on a specific Christian emotional matrix.
Religious identities are not clearly delineated from political ones and
churches can both mobilize congregations for political goals or influence
participants’ political involvement (Campbell 2004; Winter 2017). There
is a clear and correct assumption at Greenbelt that participants will agree
with the political tone of the sermon on such important and controver-
sial issues as Brexit, Gay marriage, the migrant crisis or the ordination
of women bishops. The third song makes fun of theological differences
between Catholics and Protestants, differences that originate in a language
that “neither no longer understands.” On one hand this reflects the all-in-
clusive space of the festival, this field is a neutral space, the perfect space
for an ecumenical project, since it cannot be claimed by any denomination
or tradition. On the other hand this is also a highly political space, because
it draws on a festival model that is by definition countercultural, expressing
the values of the New Left in the 1960s and thus historically opposed to
mainstream culture. The service shows that the differences that separate
the Christian tradition today are no longer expressed in theological terms,
but political ones. Thus the Greenbelt festival can be understood as what
the sociologist Steven Brint calls an “elective community” or “community
of choice” (Brint 2001, 6) for a liberal, left wing, middle class, educated
faction of the Anglican church, since this group cannot necessarily express
important political and environmental beliefs inside their home churches,
15. The two state solution is clearly preferred in Greenbelt discourse.
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Christian Discourses and Cultural Change 59
which in turn may be understood to represent “communities of place”
(Brint 2001, 5) for participants.
Experiments with outdoor sacred spaces at Greenbelt
Greenbelt draws on an art and performance festival model, yet on this
matrix of traditional festival fields, Greenbelt is also re-imagining a Chris-
tian landscape, with features like “the Mount” being used in 2014 for the
Sunday Sermon. Other spaces at Greenbelt, like the Glade, the Grove and
the Shelter, demonstrate a preoccupation with nature, forests and the out-
doors, which also suggests a nostalgic reimaging of a pastoral Christianity,
an idealised image which accords well with the critical stance towards the
institution of the Church more generally. Oftentimes festival spaces have
a specific or central concern, such as environmental issues, art or protest
culture. Like most art and performance festivals, Greenbelt has spaces for
talks, arts and crafts displays and workshops, where fringe ideas are being
made available through play and other creative social innovations, such
as experimenting with food and dance from other cultures. These spaces
provide a unique stage for marginalised discourses inside the Christian
tradition, such as LGBTQ rights, women’s leadership and interfaith dia-
logue. For example The Canvas’ key concerns in 2016 were: refuges and
migration, climate care, peace and justice in “Israel-Palestine;” The Grove
provided a space for environmental Christians, from Anarchist Christian-
ity to the Forest Church, whilst The Canopy became a space for experi-
mentation, particularly with new forms of worship.
To better understand outdoor practices connected with sacred space, we
can compare these with indoor relationality with sacred space. In her anal-
ysis of how participants relate to space inside a cathedral, Marion Bowman
(2016) shows that in an enclosed sacred space participants are attracted by
ritual objects located at the periphery of the room, where the space can be
understood as ‘loose’ and participants can mingle, light candles and move
freely. Outdoor ceremonies abound in these “loose,” “mingling spaces,”
here there are hardly any other kinds of spaces. In the field there are no
thresholds, some people are barefoot or in wellies and so marking sacred
space by taking off one’s shoes for instance is not practical. This increased
sense of freedom in outdoor settings is confirmed by other research, since
behavioural analysis in indoor spaces for instance shows that these spaces
are more competitive, marked by higher anxiety and behaviour repetition,
which is more likely to lead to people acting similarly (Fry and Binner
2016). This might suggest that church buildings invite a certain kind of
ritualistic behaviour and compliance, whilst this may not be so in outdoor
settings. During retreats Green Christians worshiped both inside and out-
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60 Maria Nita
side, whilst at festivals such as Greenbelt, rituals like the Holy Commu-
nion takes place in the field. It can be suggested that festivals and their
ephemerality challenge well established Western religious space relation-
ality, since they challenge the very importance of indoor space as sacred
and permanent, as well as the interior of a church as a means of connecting
to the eternal and ethereal.
One important feature of these experiments in the field, and in the
absence of pews and chairs, is that participants often used a circle as
a default model for organising space, by sitting or standing in a circle,
holding hands or passing communion. This may be because it is an easier
mode of organisation if you need to make yourself heard by everyone, yet
it also means that everyone becomes equally visible. With no high pul-
pits, the ‘horizontal angles’ implied in this organisation of space reflect and
maintain more equal relationships between those present (Van Leeuween
2006). Moreover the circle without a marked centre serves as a critique of
the leadership model expressed in traditional models of space organisation.
In Figure 2 we can see that participants who are listening to a Franciscan
Monk and one other speaker are almost forming a circle around them, yet
they are also loosely organised in rows. In Figure 3 we have three members
of the Forest Church, a movement I will discuss below. One of the three
members is not wearing any shoes and much of this workshop focused on
walking or running barefooted as a spiritual practice, by “being close to
and aware of the Earth.” In both images the informal postures, in the case
of both speakers and audiences, are clearly apparent, particularly in Figure
3, where the speakers appear almost uncomfortable to be sat at the front.
Attitudes towards leadership in the church are spatially represented and
embodied.
There appears to be mutual support between Greenbelt and other fringe
and “outdoorsy movements” inside the Christian tradition, such as the
Iona Community and the Forest Church, also known as the Communities
of the Mystic Christ. The Forest Church draws on a variety of sources,
including some Pagan and Druid practices, yet some of its central spiritual
practices are old Christian ones, suggesting a nostalgic identification with
the past, much like Pagans and Druids. Thus one spiritual practice used by
the Forest Church and other Green Christians is “Lectio Divina” or divine
lesson, originally a Benedictine exercise or method of reading the scrip-
tures, and “Sensio Divina” or divine sensing, which adapts this traditional
practice, wishing to connect participants to the divine through nature. The
Church stresses in its online materials that it is not just a church that is
happening outside but a church that aims to involve the natural environ-
ment in rituals, meditative and spiritual practices:
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Christian Discourses and Cultural Change 61
F
or
est
Chur
c
h
isn
’
t
just
nor
mal
c
hur
c
h
happening outside,
instea
d
it
at
-
tempts
to
participate with
creatio
n. A
nd
it
isn
’
t
just
a
fel
lowship
gr
oup do
-
ing an outside activity, we aim to learn, worship, meditate, pray and prac-
tice with the trees, at the spring, along the shore. (Forest 2017)
Figure 2: Franciscan worship in the Grove, Greenbelt 2016
Figure 3: The Forest Church at Greenbelt 2016
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62 Maria Nita
This might suggest that when we look at festival practices, the “outdoors”
should not be viewed only as a different “setting,” but possibly a space
that is understood by participants as a participatory, powerful presence.
Many practices involve walking around the site, again being outside. One
informant, Holy, told me she went on a “spiritual direction talk and walk”
around the Greenbelt grounds and was about to go on an inner Pilgrimage,
also around the grounds. The spiritual walk and talk was an opportunity
to contemplate with nature being present, whilst walking. Holy told me:
“You just talk and walk and they (the facilitator) just listen. Just walking
around the grounds for forty-five minutes […] but just having somebody
fully listening, it’s so powerful.” This inner Greenbelt pilgrimage was
similarly an opportunity to walk around the grounds, pausing at a number
of stops on this itinerary, which were opportunities for self-reflection.
This is reminiscent perhaps of the Stations of the Cross,16 as it was
suggested to me by Dr. Marion Bowman in a conversation about the
festival—only in contrast to this traditional reflective practice, at
Greenbelt the emphasis appears to be on the landscape and the self.
A discourse of vulnerability and openness
Alongside the use of space that pointed towards a changed relation
between participants, such as between leaders and audiences, the use of
language and modalities of expressing emotions were some notable,
distinguishable features of the Greenbelt discourse. During workshops
and talks, speakers were vulnerable, told personal stories, such as stories
about family conflicts, struggles with (and acceptance of ) one’s sexuality,
emotional outbursts and so on, and did not assume leadership roles, with
the use of panels creating an interview style of communication and a
space for dialogue between speakers and audiences.
My analysis of fifty talks at Greenbelt 2016 suggests that speakers dis-
closed emotional content very often in a diary style of reporting. They
often addressed the audience as one would a close friend or family mem-
ber, such as: “I spent a long time feeling like a fraud” or “what do you do
when you feel terrified?” When interviewed on stage at Greenbelt even
the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, used a similar informal tone,
suggesting that participants were well aware of this expectation to be open
and vulnerable. People noticed this attitude in such evaluations as: “This is
what I love about Greenbelt, it’s so friendly, it’s not one way traffic”(empha-
sis mine), it is implied here, as opposed to what communication would be
like in a church.
Traditionally a series of fourteen images representing Jesus’s journey from condemnation to crucifixion.
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Christian Discourses and Cultural Change 63
One speaker talked about being raised in a rigid Christian home, with
bible stories as the only stories he read. He went on to say that his parents
wanted to be caring and introduce him to a kind representation of the
world, “but it was not, it was brutal.” The talks often appeared extremely
honest, reminiscent of our psychologised culture, whilst providing a plat-
form to other than clergy, such as poets, artists, activists, writers and jour-
nalists alongside people who wished to discuss a particular experience, such
as struggling with mental health issues. Speakers used personal voices in
an impromptu style and were often vulnerable, exposing their own uncer-
tainties or insecurities, saying things like: “By the way I am making that
connection now, looking back, it’s been a long journey” or “I have abso-
lutely no idea what you should do.”
However some examples of communication at Greenbelt from my data
show an interesting syncretic interplay between the sort of reverence and
solemnity common to worship occasions in the Christian tradition and a
carnivalesque register characterised by use of jargon, self-irony, cynicism
and humour, which are common features of protest and countercultural
discourses. For example one speaker, who is also a woman vicar and was
interviewing the Archbishop of Canterbury in front of an audience at
Greenbelt, commented on his hat by saying: “I think you are rocking that
look girlfriend, it might not look great on me, but I think it looks great on
you.” This shows an acceptance of youth talk and being at ease with the
modern culture, pointing to a revisionist tendency, of updating and
modernising the tradition.
A discourse of secret meanings and misunderstandings
Another important feature and also, I posit here, an operationalized dis-
course and a strategy for cultural change, is represented by what I would
like to call a discourse of “secret meanings and misunderstandings.” This
is more difficult to qualify because it is used “cryptically” and it may be
connected with other cultural references. This subtle discourse could be,
crudely, summed up as: “We know that we have a secret or inside knowl-
edge, but we have been misunderstood and, furthermore, some of us mis-
understand the true meaning of what we stand for or know.”
Although I came across many examples in speech and even writing, of
this “secret meaning” of what it means to be a Christian today or what
are some real Christian hopes and aspirations, these references were often
disguised by a humorous, half serious, half ironic tone, somewhat like in
the example below, from the festival’s website:
Greenbelters have translated debate about political engagement and inter-
national injustice into vigorous campaigning, re-imagining the Christian
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64 Maria Nita
community as an infectious global conspiracy. (Greenbelt 2017b, emphasis
mine)
“Secrecy” is recognised by scholars as a key strategy in the construction
of power relations in ritual practices (Stewart and Strathern 2014, 76),
therefore a discourse of secret meanings might be understood as a means
to (re)claim power. A discourse of secret meanings might be one with a
long history in the tradition. Hence biblical scholars point out that Jesus is
misunderstood by both his opponents as well as his own disciples (Dinkler
2016; Keener 2003), which is a theological issue but also a trope in the
text. This seems like an useful mechanism for revisions, since
misunderstandings allow for the recognition of the loyalty of the
disciples despite their confusion, a fact that enables future apologetic
rectifications. Thus an original discourse of “secret meanings and
misunderstanding,” this time referring to the messianic secret coupled
with the misunderstanding of the disciples, is contained in the biblical
text, which suggests that this dis- course could be traced back to the
biblical text and the early church. This might have served as a crucial
device that enabled change and innovation within the tradition.
This discourse of “secret meanings” was often used in connection to the
participants’ identity, it is what Norman Fairclough defines as a style or
mode of being (Fairclough 2013, 182). In my ongoing research with Green
Christians, many of whom were Greenbelt festival-goers, my informants
often used subtle clues to take part in this discourse, sometimes
displaying an attitude of humility when referring to themselves as
Christians or when identifying with Jesus on an emotional level. For
example during a round table discussion one informant told the others
with implied self- irony that his (emotional) struggles had to do with
“this guy riding an ass,” which invited laughter from the group. Here he
was jokingly concealing his own identity as a Christian, as well as that of
Jesus. Therefore this may also be a model of emulation and empathy with
Jesus and his secret (powerful) identity, despite his apparent
vulnerability. A few participants stipulated that they did not like to be
identified as Christian although they understood themselves as
Christian—which I have noted in my previous research as an example for
the marginalisation Christians may be subjected to in some cases (Nita
2014). This discourse included a self-deprecating quality, which often
humorously concealed the speaker’s Christian identity. This last can also
be interpreted in relation to the challenges Christians face when
functioning in an increasingly secular society, in which one’s true
aspirations or nature may be misunderstood. A quasi-secret Christian
identity may be helping progressive Christians navigate divisions and
prejudices in our modern culture.
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Christian Discourses and Cultural Change 65
Conclusions
I aimed to show here that the Greenbelt festival represents a community of
choice that can bring together progressive Christians on issues that matter
to them, such as the environment or LGBTQ rights. I also showed that
these communal experiences are experimental and “alternative” to church-
going, but for many just as relevant as any communal religious experience,
if not much more relevant—since the festival time is spent with friends
and family and “it’s like Christmas,” a once a year, much anticipated event.
I also suggested here that the multiplicity of festival spaces can better serve
plural Christian identities on a wider belonging and believing spectrum.
At Greenbelt participants experiment with new discourses, practices,
power relationships and constructions of sacred and communal spaces.
Festival themes and attitudes point to a nostalgic reimagining of the early
church and pastoral Christianity, which is set in opposition to the
institution of the church. This can be interpreted as a neo-Romanticism,
with themes of celticity, the primacy of emotion and suspicion of
authority, further confirming this connection. I showed here that
Greenbelt provides alter- native spaces for issues that were neglected or
controversial inside main- stream Christian traditions, such as interfaith
dialogue or women’s leadership. The lines of division in the Christian
tradition are no longer framed in a theological context, but marked by
differences of politics, class and values.
The organisation of sacred and communal space and the relationship
between speakers and audiences at Greenbelt suggest that traditional
models of engagement between religious leaders and congregations were
challenged by experiments with new models of relating: having panels and
groups of children and young people leading worship occasions, sitting
in a circle, maintaining horizontal (rather than vertical) angles between
participants. I identified a discourse of ‘openness and vulnerability’ which
creates a family atmosphere and is in itself a critique of the more ‘rigid’
institution of the church, a critique often expressed in art, worship and
communication practices.
At Greenbelt, one’s Christian identity was often humorously concealed
via a “discourse of secret meanings and misunderstandings.” This could
act as a strategy for revisionism, since it allowed speakers to distance
themselves from certain elements that had been “misunderstood” in the
tradition. Furthermore I proposed that a quasi-secret Christian identity
among Liberal and Green Christians, was not only a model for emulating
Jesus’ secret messianic identity, but it might also make it easier for this
group to navigate the religious vs. secular divide in modern culture. The
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66 Maria Nita
modern festival model may be deeply familiar to Christians since, I
proposed here, the early church itself may be understood as an important,
original countercultural model.
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