Greenbelt makes key decision in favour of its faith and the planet with its new ‘Choose Loaf’ initiative, only Gospel-verified food and drink will be available at the festival
We’re always looking for ways to make our annual gathering more sustainable. One of the main ways we can do that is through the food and drink choices we offer at the festival.
We’ve pondered long and hard about whether we should go meat-free or even vegan this year, to mark our 50th. But we’re not just any festival. We’re Greenbelt. And we want to live our values so we’ve made a braver call, asking ourselves: ‘What Would Jesus Eat?’
That’s why this year at the festival all our caterers will only be offering food and drink that the gospel accounts indicate Jesus ate – and, having held a three-month theological consultation, we’re able to declare that that’s basically bread, wine, fish, figs and olives.
We’re really excited about the difference that our ‘Choose Loaf’ initiative will make to our environmental impact and also to how truly committed we are to an authentically biblical outworking of our faith.
We hope you’ll be excited, too, and we look forward to eating a wide variety of different breads onsite and grilling, poaching or frying our fish (or even going raw-dog with sushi).
(We will, of course, be making every effort to source all our suppliers and food vans from the occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank, should the new Israeli government – if it’s still there in early summer – be good enough to grant the visas.)
Our festival pub, The Jesus Arms, will still be open though, although refitted for grape-only drinking, of course. Water will obviously also be available, and we will be encouraging those who identify as miracle-adjacent to try their luck*, should wine supplies start to run low.
It’s going to be a whole heap of fun. And we’re pretty sure it’s what Jesus would have wanted.
*”Luck” isn’t really the right word here. But “exercise their God-given powers” just didn’t sound very Greenbelt to us.