Last year's festival drew criticism, with the accusation that it was taking part in the 'gay-ification of the Church'. Mouse thought that this criticism didn't merit much serious attention, and was undoubtedly primarily based on the fact that Gene Robinson was speaking. Well, Mouse is prepared to make a prediction about this year's line-up. Peter Tatchell will be a rather more controversial speaker.
Here's what the Greenbelt website says about the event:
Peter Tatchell
at Greenbelt 2010: The art of looking sideways
Born in Australia in 1952, Peter is best known as a controversial campaigner on issues of sexual freedom and human rights.
Interviewed by Martin Wroe, Peter talks candidly about his life, his Christian upbringing, the Bermondsey bi-election, the pulpit incident in Canterbury Cathedral, his as-yet failed attempts to make a citizen's arrest on Robert Mugabe and his relentless commitment to fight for justice on all fronts. Engaging, inspiring and intriguing, this interview provides much food for thought, especially if you have Peter down as just a militant queer rights campaigner. He is that, and impressivley so. But he's so much more, too.
The problem with Peter Tatchell is that he is not a Christian. Well actually the problem is that he's a pretty assertive atheist, who attacks the church pretty regularly. He is currently leading a campaign against this year's Papal visit to the UK. Here's how he described himself in the New Humanist:
Religion is the world’s single greatest fount of obscurantism, prejudice, superstition and oppression. It has caused misery to billions of people worldwide for millennia, and continues to do so in many parts of the world. As a human rights campaigner motivated by love and compassion for other people, I would be betraying my humanitarian values to embrace religious beliefs.
...
By the time I turned 20, rationality finally triumphed over superstition and dogma. I didn’t need God any more. I was intelligent, confident and mature enough to live without the security blanket of religion and its theological account of the universe. Accordingly, I renounced religion and embraced reason, science and an ethics based on love and compassion. I don’t need God to tell me what is right and wrong. We humans are quite capable of figuring it out for ourselves.
Quite why someone who "would be betraying my humanitarian values to embrace religious beliefs" would want to come to a Christian arts festival is a bit of a mystery to Mouse. That he does want to come doesn't really bother Mouse, and no doubt he will have something interesting to say. However, some will be pretty upset.
Mouse's advice to anyone who is thinking of attempting to kick up a fuss about this - don't. Mouse's advice to Greenbelt - stick to what you're brilliant at, and organise a Christian arts festival.
Clare Short is also an atheist, I believe. Should she be disinvited too or is it just gay atheists Greenbelt should avoid?
ReplyDeleteSimon
ReplyDeleteJust to be clear, I said in the post that I don't have a problem with Peter Tatchell attending, and that people shouldn't kick up a fuss about it, although I can't see why he would want to. I am not suggesting Greenbelt should 'disinvite' him.
Plainly Peter's unbelief is founded profoundly in his teenage years and experience. And before I knock that I have to remember that, I came from a home the was decent but not, like his, Evangelical Christian. So I crossed the same Bridge, but in exactly the opposite direction and came to fith... An interesting thought on which I may try and blog. Certainly if there are fewer people these days being given the kind of conventional upbringing he was these days, maybe more people will rebel against their parents by becoming believers, not unbelievers? And that would produce a more interesting kind of believer?
ReplyDeleteI greatly admire Peter Tatchell as someone who stands up for human rights against considerable odds.
ReplyDeleteHe also comes across as someone who feels very rejected by the Christian faith. I don't know enough about him to know if this is based on experience but it seems all too likely to be true.
He was very unfairly treated when he stood in the Greenwich by-election when the fact he was 'out' as gay was turned against him and Simon Hughes won the seat for the Lib Dems - ironically Simon Hughes later turned out to be a bit of a 'grey area' in the sexual orientation department.
Bring it on! :D
Debate is good Jesus did it :)
ReplyDelete"Mouse's advice to Greenbelt - stick to what you're brilliant at, and organise a Christian arts festival."
ReplyDeleteMaybe that IS what they're doing? Maybe it's a brilliant idea to invite Peter Tatchell to speak?
Just sayin'. ;)
I see the Greenbelt publicity refers to "the Bermondsey bi-election" [sic]. Is this a Freudian slip, or a naughty comment about the candidates?
ReplyDeleteFrom memory, last time Peter Tatchell was a Greenbelt he said he'd come at Open Space's invitation to see what the festival was like, and he was pleasantly surprised at how welcome (mainly) he was made to feel. I imagine that there aren't many openly religious spaces where he can feel welcome! Surely enabling some kind of positive dialogue is a perfectly good reason to invite him - and for him to accept?
ReplyDeleteI heard Peter at Greenbelt. His style grates with me a little (being one for more creative forms of resistance myself) but I do admire him. I love the fact that Greenbelt invites all sorts. There were undoubtably speakers at the festival who were conservative about sexuality and it is great to have the spectrum. To have an inclusive festival where everyone can find something that resonates with them almost by definition means that everyone can find something that offends them. Yet on Sunday morning we can all gather together and share one Communion. And that's great!
ReplyDelete