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Wild Goose Festival Draws Left-Leaning Christians

The USA Today featured an article on this past weekend’s Wild Goose Festival, an event in North Carolina celebrating the idea of a more inclusive Christianity. According to the festival’s website, the event was patterned after the long-offered Greenbelt festival held in the U.K. for decades and “birthed from a desire to see people of faith embody their faith in a more joyful, just and connective way.” Speakers for the four-day event included authors Brian McLaren, Lynne Hybels, Phyllis Tickle, Mark Yaconelli, and Tony Campolo; pastor Jay Bakker; theologian Soong-Chan Rah; and musicians Derek Webb, Jennifer Knapp, T-Bone Burnett, and Beth Neilsen Chapman. Although the festival took no official stance on issues such as homosexuality, several conservative bloggers and authors expressed their displeasure with the event, including Southern Baptist Ken Silva of Apprising Ministries, who commented, “The wise Christian will have nothing to do with these neo-Gnostic fools who’ve unbuckled themselves from the Word of God and have embarked upon their Wild Goose Chase of subjective experience.” “Wild Goose” is a Celtic reference to the Holy Spirit.