Faith after doubt - Reflections on my first Greenbelt festival
Brian McLaren, US public theologian and author of Do I Stay Christian? A Guide For The Doubters, The Disappointed And The Disillusioned, speaking at the Greenbelt Festival, August 2022. PHOTO: Mark Kensett, Greenbelt Festival Official Pictures
BILLED AS ‘the nice people’s pop festival’ when it began in 1974, Greenbelt is more subversive than it first appeared nearly 50 years ago.
The annual celebration of art, activism and belief describes itself as ‘a festival that’s inclusive, open-minded, participatory and generous in spirit’. Moon from Open Table Liverpool reflects on their first visit last month:
As a trans non-binary person, I find my existence called into question by a multitude. A section emanates from religion: One of the most common statements is ‘God doesn’t make mistakes’ - meaning that God made me whatever gender/sex I was assigned at birth and therefore I’m not really the gender/sex I believe I am.
Revds Alex and Jo Clare-Young leading the Greenbelt Quiet Communion - Alex on harp, Jo leading the communion service. PHOTO: Kieran Bohan
A counter argument is that God didn’t decide what gender/sex I was assigned at birth. A doctor did and, being human, doctors are not infallible. However, at Quaker worship during the Greenbelt festival, another thought occurred to me: Humans are meant to be made in the image of God. So, if humans make mistakes, it follows that God does too… which might explain why Boris Johnson and Donald Trump exist! Is God all too human or are humans all too Godly?
If you’re unfamiliar with Quaker worship, the concept is fairly simple: Being made in the image of God, humans contain God within them and thus need no intermediary (priest, Church, Pope, etc) and can minister themselves whenever and wherever they feel the need. To assist with this, worshippers wait in silence to ‘hear God’s voice’ and, if they hear it and feel able, impart what they have heard to the others assembled (‘give ministry’). I have been a Quaker on and off (I ‘lapsed’ during the pandemic) for the last four or five years and have found it sits closest to how I have experienced God as an omnipresent spirit/life giver. I try as often as I can to give ministry when I ‘hear God’s voice’ but I didn’t at Quaker worship during the festival and I find myself asking why does God give me wisdom to impart when I hate being the centre of attention!
“I found the experience so emotional, I spent much of the service in tears.”
As a person who finds myself overwhelmed by noise and commotion, the typical church service is not an experience I enjoy. Thus I was intrigued enough to attend Quiet Communion on Sunday morning lead by the Revs Alex and Jo Clare-Young. I found the experience so emotional, I spent much of the service in tears. Part of the service involved waiting in silence to ‘hear God’s voice’ (Sound familiar?!), during which I found myself asking myself ‘When you are blessed with such qualities, why are you so reticent to share them?’.
I started my Greenbelt experience (after setting up camp) by attending a lecture by Brian McLaren entitled ‘Faith After Doubt: Why Your Beliefs Stopped Working and What to Do About It’. As a lapsed Quaker, the title of the lecture pulled me in. The details of what Brian McLaren said during the talk have largely faded now, but what has stayed with me is the power of doubt.
Let me be upfront and say, I hate doubt. I suffer with anxiety and so doubt is kinda my enemy. I need to know what’s going on - and what’s going to go on - so I know how to respond. But Friday’s lecture began me on the process of appreciating doubt. After all, doubt is what prompts me to think and provokes me to find out more so that I can eradicate it. Consequently, I become more knowledgeable. Because doubt makes me uncertain, it also makes me cautious and I rarely, if ever, jump into action. However, because of the anxiety caused by doubt, I am prone to snap judgement and have become incredibly judgmental. So it’s apparent to me that my relationship with doubt is out of balance.
In praise of certainty, though, it is undoubtedly useful in a fight or flight situation but that doesn’t mean that the response is correct. So it seems foolish to use certainty as a basis on which to attack others. You might well be certain it is correct to run from a fire and so remove yourself from danger, for instance, but it would be foolish to use that certainty as a basis on which to attack the firefighters who arrive to put out the fire! So why let prejudice get in the way of the potential for doing good in the world?
Consequently, it seems to me that even certainty is open to doubt. Maybe it doesn’t even really exist? I can’t be certain(!). But, when I look around me, I see politicians and activists, and those representing religions, and pretty much anyone in or pursuing power, enticing us with certainties: ‘Believe in this/me. It/I will sort your problems’. So maybe it’s not just me that hates uncertainty? Maybe I’m part of the majority after all?
But where has it got us but to a world facing extinction? Maybe instead we ought to embrace doubt and start thinking and questioning more and being more cautious? And instead of repeatedly falling for the snake oil offered to us, maybe the following can be our philosophy instead:
Become a ditherer. Wonder what, when, where, why and how. Let curiosity fill your mind. Fill your head with knowledge to the extent of knowing knowledge is a prison of itself and freedom can only be found outside its walls.
Be certain then that there are no certainties - that the binary of right and wrong cannot be right or wrong - from which you can be certain it is best not to snap to judgement but to proceed with caution.
