Yesterday Monica and I spent a day at the Greenbelt Christian Arts festival, our first visit for some 20 years. It was interesting and challenging, but all for the wrong reasons. For me it vindicated my choice of subjects to write about, but for the 20,000 or so Christians - particularly the young and vulnerable - I fear for them, for the teaching and propaganda they received over the 4 day event. Firstly, propaganda. Greenbelt has decided to target Israel, a decision made around 3 years ago, and to highlight the plight of the Palestinians living in Gaza. That's fair enough, if a balanced view is given and their views are presented sensitively in Christian love. They decided instead to go all-out, all-guns-blazing, with a sustained attack on Israel through every way possible - talks, exhibition displays, visual aids even drama. The following little drama greeted everyone entering the field on Sunday morning for a communion service ...

The person protesting was Monica. We saw no evidence of any other protests during our time there. Incidently, the communion service itself featured a short film - without any spiritual content - of testimonies inside Gaza. Politics in a communion service! We could have been at a New Age peace camp, honestly. Do any of you remember Greenham Common? As for the THEOLOGY - don't get me started. The key speaker - drawing the largest crowds - was a Franciscan from the USA, who teached on a "cosmic Christ", universalism and encouraging us into relativism and minimising what our messiah Jesus did for us on the cross. His name is Richard Rohr. Do your own homework. The sad thing is that 20,000+ people (many of them seekers or new Christians) will come away thinking that Israel is the most evil nation on Earth and that that there are many roads for God, Jesus only came to show us how to protest and care for our environment. This is all muddled, but I'm still quite upset ...