I occasionally tend towards hyprer-criticism. I realize my posts on the Wild Goose Festival might make it sound like I didn't enjoy the updated camp meetin'. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Or perhaps it sounds as if I'm tired of progressive Christianity and its insistence on social justice and hospitality. Again, that's not the case.
I came back from Hot Springs excited to shower, sleep in my bed, see my wife, and eat something not cooked outside, but also excited for the future of the Church.
I came home excited to go back to the Goose in coming years.
Why am I so critical of Wild Goose, then? Because the festival, its organizers, and its presenters can handle the criticism. More than that, they appreciate, listen to, and incorporate the criticism. There is a shared hope that the festival can and will improve.
But I have to say, the festival is in a pretty good place already.
It's a place where people live into a economic of God's abundant provision - where a group shares meals - three of them a day - with strangers and asks only for donations, trusting that they'll receive what they need to do it all again next year.
It's a place where Catholics celebrate the Mass with an open table.
It's a place where liberation of the oppressed is proclaimed.
It's a place where critical self-examination is not just about individuals but about entire systems - including the featival itself.
It's a place where children, adults, and the elderly talk and think together as teach each other.
It's a place where care for creation is the norm.
It's a place where, in Christ, ALL welcome each other regardless of gender identity, sexually orientation, political affiliation, or race. All are unique but also one in Christ.
It's a place that looks a lot like what the Church should be, where we come together in all of our brokenness, in all of our healing, with all of our ideas, and listen to the Holy Spirit.
"What are we doing, and how well are we doing it?"
This question should probably run through everybody's mind at some point -- constantly.
To put it in theological terms, it's Luther's first and second uses of the Law. What should society look like? (Use #1) Are we living up to that standard? (Use #2; The answer, of course, is no.)
It's this question that sends us to our knees at the beginning of every single Mass. We know that we have sinned against God and neighbor in "thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone."
Critical self-awareness is one of the great gifts to humanity. We know that we are, but we also know that we are not perfect. Whether or not someone is willing to term this lack of perfection "sin," there is no denying that we as a species and as individuals do not always behave the way we are meant to.
We are capable of seeing our own faults, and we can strive to do better.
As Frank Schaeffer fielded questions from the literal field he was addressing, someone asked about the role of Latino/a voices at Wild Goose. And it hit me: Oh. Yeah. I guess I really haven't seen or heard many Hispanic voices in this conversation. A few, to be sure, and a Native American presenter. But not many people from Global South at all.
And, come to think of it, there aren't many non-white people here as attendees. A few, but not many.
This year, Wild Goose gave a platform for many black and queer voices to address white listeners. Instead of coming with answers for the marginalized, the privileged sat and listened.
To be sure, Wild Goose is a unique place. Progressive Christians come together and listen more than they speak. They question more than they declare. These are good qualities to bring to a conversation. And in doing so, the festival is a place where people acknowledge their own faults and failings. It's a place where someone is not afraid to ask a keynote speaker if the festival itself -- much beloved by attendees -- is a little too "bobo" (bourgeois-bohemian -- think hipsters wearing their $200 consignment store pants and typing on their MacBooks while drinking PBR and living in a yet-to-be gentrified part of town).
The sad fact, though, is that Wild Goose is still mostly white, middle class people taking a long weekend to camp in the woods. A fun time, and a productive time -- I dare not suggest that thinking is bad. Nor am I so cynical as to believe that people will leave the campground behind and return to their parishes with little more than warmed hearts. But I do have to wonder what is next for many of the people I lived next to for the weekend. What will they do when they get back home? How will their parishes be changed?
I suspect that one of the great indicators of how successful Wild Goose has been is how Wild Goose will change in the future. If our four days of thought actually produce the change we want to see in the world, what voices will we invite to the Goose next year? What speakers from the developing world will be invited? What speakers will come and bring a challenging world? Voices from Africa, the Caribbean, Asia, and South America?
But more importantly, what will we do if these voices bring a word that challenges our middle class white theology? We've learned to charitably disagree with ourselves, but can we bring that same love and understanding when we disagree with those not like us?
So apparently I missed this (or click here for a more reasoned summary of the situation). I didn't even hear about this non-event until I had been home a week.
And I wasn't alone. Not many people mentioned the punny condom wrappers. Actually, I didn't hear anyone mention them. Not even in a "Ha ha, did you year about the Chicago Seminary handouts?" Nobody mentioned it in any of the talks I attended. None of the musicians mentioned it in the sets I heard. Nobody mentioned it during the Catholic Mass. Nobody came up to the ELCA hospitality tent and said, "Well, the UCC is giving out condoms. You have anything better than water?"
I did not hear a single reference to the "souvenirs."
And to tell the truth, I'm not especially offended by it.
Granted, the pun is not in particularly good taste, but several news articles get the story wrong -- that is, they intentionally misrepresent what happened.
Bethany Blankley (the first link in this post) writes:
At last week’s 2015 Wild Goose Festival attendees received condom packages designed with a colored image of a rainbow flame, an LGBT variation of the UCC’s logo.
As an attendee, I did not receive a condom. It was not distributed with the wristbands, at the beer tent, with the parking passes, or the festival programs. The seminary distributed them at their information booth set up at one of the festival tents. The seminary was a festival sponsor, but their actions do not represent the convictions of the Wild Goose Festival, its attendees, or its advisory board. So did any attendees receive condoms? Most likely. But it was not as wide-spread as this reporter makes it seem.
Or this:
In other words, a “Christian” seminary is likening the Second Coming of Christ to gay sex.
No, in other words, a Christian seminary is making a lame pun on the word "coming." The only thing tying this stunt to "gay" is the use of the rainbow coloration for the school's logo. Given that the UCC, with whom Chicago Theological is affiliated, is known for its open and affirming stance, it makes sense.
And, worst of all, there's this:
Only an apostate Christian and apostate church could celebrate or encourage gay sex or orgies. Only an apostate Christian and apostate church could advocate being “LGBTQ friendly.” Apostasy is inherently anti-God.
Besides the myriad problems of claiming that LGBT and ally Christians are "apostate," there is the underlying assumption that promoting safe sex is on par with promoting orgies. It is this same sort of hyperbolic mentality which leads to failed abstinence-only programs in schools. It is this same sort of vitriol that leads to victim-blaming when a person is sexually assaulted.
Distributing condoms does not mean, "Go hook up with anyone." Using birth control does not mean, "Be promiscuous." Advocating the use of prophylactics is equivalent to only one thing: believing that sex has a function outside of procreation and child-rearing.
I apologize if this offends you. It ought to offend you. But you also ought to know what progressive Christianity finds acceptable. I would love to hear that the organizers at Wild Goose put a stop to distributing these things at the festival. But I doubt that they did.
We orthodox Christians have nothing in common with these people, and ought to get it clear in our heads who the enemies are, and what they stand for. One hardly needs to worry about the UCC; it is declining so rapidly that they will cease to exist in the next 15 to 20 years. Good riddance. Rather pay more attention to those who see no particular problem with their blasphemous radicalism, and who seek to mainstream it into the churches. Church leaders who make room for this garbage under the guise of “relevance” and “inclusiveness” are signing their own death warrant, and the rest of us should give no quarter to this contagion.
This is not about what "progressive Christianity finds acceptable." It's about a bad marketing ploy by one seminary. This is not the best we have to offer; it's the laziest.
But to deny that progressive Christians are orthodox? To flame that we are the enemies, that we stand for something other than the Gospel of our Risen Lord, to call us blasphemous, to call us a contagions? I will not and cannot stand for such vile attacks against me, against my friends, and against how we understand what Christ is calling us to in the world.
Is this promotion in bad taste? Yeah, it is. Am I a little surprised that somebody didn't have second thoughts on it? Yeah, of course.
But what does this mean, really?
I am just as offended by how certain sisters and brothers are reacting as I am by the condoms themselves.
I was at Wild Goose. The air was not filled with the moans of orgiastic hedonism. A haze of marijuana smoke did not hover over the campground. The toilets did not overflow with the vomit of drunkenness.
Instead, kids and families wandered around and played in the river. Songs of praise ascended to the Lord, as did the scent of frankincense from the Episcopal tent's thuribles. People drank a few beers and some whiskey while singing hymns. Bread was broken and wine was shared.
Christians welcomed in those hurt by the Church and those who may never come to share in our baptismal identity, and we discussed what it meant to strive for justice and walk humbly with our God. We examined the problem of violence, racism, and sexism. We wept and laughed together. We considered what it means to seek reconciliation among the Church and among the nations.
So please, for the love of God, let's not focus on one poorly thought out publicity stunt. Let's not concede the day to scandal over "pelvic issues." Let's rejoice that a place like Wild Goose exists, and that it is a brief in-breaking of the Kingdom of God in the Appalachians.
This ballad of troubled love told through religious symbolism captures the impassioned anguish and loss felt by so many progressive Christians who have left the conservative side of the Church. Strained and broken friendships and family relationship, the crisis of faith which so frequent precedes the move, the questions of what might have been, the tension, and the freedom.
Maybe there's a God above
But all I've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya
And it's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
And at the end, all you can do is whisper, "Hallelujah."
Back in my high school days, I only listened to "Christian" music, and I had a Christian-themed parody shirt for every day of the week. I firmly believed that the faithful copycats of the Christian rock industry were every bit as good as the acts they were imitating. Why listen to bands that cuss when there are Christian bands playing nearly-identical songs?
Two caveats: 1) I'm mostly tone-deaf and so any difference in ability was largely lost on me. 2) I'm eternally thankful for bands like Thrice and mewithoutYou who were out there making interesting and thought-provoking music which explored the deeper implications of the Christian faith without sacrificing artistic integrity in the name of mimicking successful mainstream bands.
Like many people who don't go on to be youth pastors, I eventually grew out of that stage. I went to college and realized that maybe Christians actually can engage with the larger cultures around us while contributing to the arts and music without resorting to large-scale pseudo-plagiarism. And maybe, just maybe, Christians could listen to Blink 182 without "backsliding."
I sat in my "Religion and Literature" class with a practicing Catholic professor, and we devoured the works of Toni Morrison, Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Oliver, and many more besides. We discussed the intersection of baptismal and Middle Passage imagery at the beginning of Tar Baby. We debated the importance of food to religious identity and memory in Mirriam's Kitchen. We read about a Baptist-Buddhist and discussed what, exactly, that meant in Dreaming Me.
That class came to define my undergraduate, and the lessons it proved have followed me through the past five years of academic work. Throughout seminary, I became more engaged in the conversation between theology and art, especially insofar as it applies to the liturgy.
Oh how joyous! To find a place of genuine cultural engagement without resulting to imitation. To find a place where faith and creativity met.
This brings me to Wild Goose. How do you describe a weekend-long festival of music, art, and lectures?
"Oh, it's like the Christian Bonnaroo."
"It's like adult Vacation Bible School."
"It's kind of like a merger of church camp meets Woodstock for progressive Christians."
These descriptors, in their own right, did not bother me -- and they still don't, really. Wild Goose is sui generis within American culture. Sure, it's an attempt to replicate the Greenbelt Festival in the UK, but there isn't really a place like it in the US.
What does bother me though, is the way that we -- progressive Christians -- talk about ourselves.
For many of us, we have a background within conservative evangelical culture. Many of us were raised within fundamentalist households and parishes (I hasten to add that I am not in that number). And so, when we try to explain where we are now, the first words out of our mouths usually have to do with where we've been. It makes sense; our identity is bound up in our history. Who we are now depends on who we've been in the past.
Unfortunately, the conversation tends to remain anchored in the past in very unhealthy ways.
One of the biggest complaints progressives have about conservative evangelicals is the evangelical's tendency to define themselves as normative and turn any opposition into the "Other." It's "us" -- the normal, good, God-fearing Christians -- versus "them" -- the atheistic communists, the pagans, and the sodomites. We complain about how conservative evangelicals reduce relationships with their opponents to an "I/it" relationship rather than an "I/Thou" relationship. (Five minutes on Fox News or the comments on a conservative blog will convince you that this is fairly accurate.)
But here's the big confession: we do the same thing. One presenter at Wild Goose, in a presentation of St. Francis of Assisi and the life of the Church, smugly commented, "Conservatives are great at history. They dominate the field. We need to get better at writing history." One speaker, the son of a prominent conservative theologian, lamented about the presidency of an "EVANGELICAL FOOL!" (emphasis and tone are all his) and about this speaker's days as a harsh, patriarchal Calvinist.
One of the closing bands, by the name of Gungor, performed to a packed main stage. All in all, I liked this band. I really did. But they performed their satirical hit "God is Not a White Man." At the line, "God is not a Republican," the crowd cheered. Fair enough, but this song left me wondering: is this symptomatic of progressive Christianity as a whole? Is this really all that we can say about who we are? It reminded me of the bumper sticker which proclaims, "God is Not a Republican," followed (in much smaller print) by an after thought: "...or a Democrat." (This, of course, is the tame version; others leave off the after thought.)
What is wrong with us? Why must we continuously define ourselves against others? Why do we insist on building an identity by what we are not?
The Church must be built upon or relationship to God and to our neighbors rather than on our relationship to our intellectual opponents. Some might say, "Aren't our intellectual opponents also our neighbors?" To them, I say, yes. Exactly. Let's start treating them as neighbors.
Now certainly our relationship with God informs our relationship to our opponents, and we must be prepared to engage those with whom we disagree. But it is a relationship of love, not enmity.
I firmly believe that we will not make progress until we stop defining ourselves over and against conservatives and secular culture, and until we give up any pretense of being "cool" by copying other cultures. (Sorry, we shouldn't have a "Christian" Bonnaroo or Burning Man.) We must -- MUST -- be holy fools who engage with culture rather than poseurs who mimic that which we don't understand.
Our identity can neither be apophatic nor stolen from somebody else. Our theology cannot be based on negation and claims of what God is not, what the Church is not, and who we are not. We MUST construct an identity based around God's self-revelation.
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The post title is taken from Doomtree collaborator Dessa's song by the same name:
If you're not listening to any of the Doomtree artists, you should be.
