Blah...

Last night's blah seemed to go well, basically i went through some of the changes that are going on within wider culture re. re-enchantment, then looked at 'occulture'. Occulture is a word that has been used by Prof. Chris Partridge at University college Chester in his book "The Re-enchantment of the West'. He takes the word Occult and broadens it out to include all things new age and then looks at the way that this has influenced contemporary culture. I used a couple of examples - A Prayer for England by Sinead O'Conner and Massive Attack, within which sinead prays to 'Jah' - God within Rastafarianism. Also looked at some of Paulo Cohelo's writing.

Then we looked at revised cultural correlation theory before specifically looking at the MBS festival in Manchester city centre. Particularly exploring at The Jesus Deck, Everyday Angels, Healing and prophecy...All fascinating stuff.

I think that it is excellent that Sanctus1 have a stand at MBS but also think that the smaller festivals that are far more local and probably a better way to go in regard to mission. Also had a interesting conversation with Paul Thaxter for CMS regarding how we discern where the spirit of God is working in this context, and i guess what is not of God...There is a danger that we sacralize the new age movement and say that it is a movement of God and fail to discern the negative trends that are within this culture too.