Every year, Hot Springs, North Carolina hosts the Wild Goose Festival, a four-day musical and spiritual festival marketed towards Progressive Christians. This year, I made the trip to catalogue the more outrageous presentations, speeches, and goings-on. There was the usual contingent of liberal heroes such as Sojourner’s Jim Wallis, “Moral Mondays” leader Dr. William Barber, and Frank Schaeffer, a self-described “Christian atheist.” There were all the overwrought panels on topics such as “Post Traumatic Church Syndrome” and “First Decolonize Your Mind.” But easily, the most bizarre highlight of the trip was the Carnival de Resistance.
According to a promotional email, the Carnival de Resistance is an “art intervention” experiment determined to “[throw] off the yoke of social niceties, restless sanitation, and religious piety to provide a raucous expression of grief and longing and hope for Creation.” Besides their performances, the Carnival also promised to transform “shape-shifting-trickster-style” into a village touting “energy alternatives and attempt various sustainable practices in regard to food, waste, and transportation.”
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