Greenbelt Festival
21 – 24 August, Boughton House, Northamptonshire
Green Christian had a stall again at this summer’s Greenbelt Festival.
Situated next to The Hot House, which housed all the environmental talks during the day and the DJ at night, we were right in the centre of the action, our stall always busy with conversation and meeting old friends.
Our main activity was our Bee a Climate and Nature Champion! craftivism – drawing thumbprint bees on postcards asking our MPs to support the Climate and Nature Bill.
Green Christian was chosen to host a panel event called Be The Change at the youth venue, Dengine, on the Saturday. Jo Compton, a volunteer group leader of the Lifelines programme, said, “Young people know we must tackle the climate crisis, but often feel hopeless and that there is little they can do about it. We did this Be The Change workshop so we could share with other young people how they could start taking action for the climate, and some of the many ways that can look like.” After their session, the speakers repeated their talks to adults and led a discussion at the Green Christian stall.
Mike Berners-Lee, talking about his latest book, A Climate of Truth, said that the values of kindness, compassion and equality that we need to respond to the polycrisis are exactly what the church should be modelling and promoting anyway. And that this must be universal compassion, including everybody, even the psychopaths running companies and countries. And the church needs to be much braver in standing up against dishonesty. We need to challenge lies and be bolder at calling out the deception that is so endemic and so dangerous.
Green Christian member, Rev Sue Parfitt, led the mass communion service on the Sunday morning, entitled Hope in our Hands. She said, “Former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks observed that ‘optimism is the belief that the world is changing for the better; whereas hope is the belief that, together, we can make the world better’. In our Act of Communion, we will share bread and wine as an act of resistance to despair. We will sing and shout our belief Christ is Lord…which means Caesar is not. We will turn our hands toward making the world better. We will choose to live in the light of the freedom that we choose to believe is coming tomorrow.”
We had a “Question of the Day” to draw people to our stall, to which there was “no right answer”, and people voted with haricot beans (now soaking ready for cooking). The questions and results were as follows:
Would Jesus eat meat today?
- Yes – 12
- Maybe – 17
- No – 22
Would Jesus fly today?
- Yes – 2
- Maybe – 9
- No – 40
Climate! Does it matter how I live?
- Yes – 32
- Maybe – 2
- No – 1
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