Camp meeting: At the Wild Goose Festival

A group of 20 white folk sat at the feet of African-American storyteller Melvin Bray as he explored "How Now Shall Wild Goosers Live?" It was the last day of the Wild Goose Festival, which brought together nearly 1,700 mainline Christians, emerging-church types and social justice activists for four days of art, music, worship, workshops and conversation at Shakori Hills in North Carolina's Piedmont region.

Bray recited the story of how David attracted the outcasts of Israel to the wilderness, where he was hiding from Saul. Those outcasts, Bray said, were something like the group of "evangelical refugees," gays and lesbians and activists who were attending the festival. "All these men and women who've been exiled . . . these men and women who've been told they don't have any place," said Bray—"I imagine there were a few LGBTQ in the mix, because they didn't have a voice in Israel, they weren't part of the community. They find refuge with him, they find safety with him, they build this egalitarian community with him, with ideals about how we should live with one another."

The wild goose is a Celtic symbol for the Holy Spirit. As some observers see it, the Wild Goose Festival is part of a movement of the Spirit in which doors are being blown off churches so that people mix across races, sexualities, social classes, cultures and even religions—a movement that is arising not in spite of but because of the decline of mainline, predominantly white, churches.