Our friends at Sensible Reason brought something extremely disturbing to our attention this past weekend. The “Evolvefest,” which initially sounds anything but evolved, is a supposed:
“primary annual fundraiser for a non-profit, non-denominational organization, Fellowship of the Beloved. The specific purposes for which this Fellowship is organized is to provide a safe, healing and spiritually-informed gathering place for individuals of like-mind to assemble for the purpose of fellowship, learning, healing, sharing and outreach to the needs of our community.Fellowship of the Beloved exists to help co-create a global culture marked by kindness, nurture, respectfulness, co-creation and life-affirming actions. The primary spiritual teaching of the Fellowship of the Beloved is that The Beloved manifests in our midst through the Practice and Power of Love.”
However, upon further investigation, disturbing trends of homophobic and antisemitic language used on the festival’s website and social media pages began to catch some people’s eyes, especially recent posts made by festival founder Andrew David Bryson. Â
While the festival boasts of being a place where all people can come together in peace and unity for spiritual alignment, it is rather clear that there are ulterior motives here and a massive underlying agenda. They even take a stab at transgender people (using Bruce Jenner as an example), and how it is a mental illness, narcissistic and self-obsessed. Oh, and topic of gays having children? Well, that’s an “artificial, socially-engineered family unit….a ‘lifestyle accessory’ from the hands of a desperate third world mother choosing between selling a kidney or the fruit of her womb.” Holy Moly! Basically, let’s preach love and acceptance as long as you are not gay, lesbian, transgender, Jewish, work for a corporation, or anything that we deem unacceptable.
While Bryson may argue that he and the other administrators of the page are bringing to light their distaste for pedophilia (which is is completely unacceptable in all cases) and certain radical agendas, no one is saying that they can’t state an opinion and aren’t entitled to it, but to do so in such a careless way is very dangerous. If they are promoting love and light, isn’t there a better way to go about it all? Seems like a lot of negativity from people on a quest for true enlightenment.Â
The truly scary part about this festival is that it is in its 9th year, and has close to 217,000 followers. How did it get this far? Is this the first year in which this type of negative social commentary was used? We have a feeling there is more to this than meets the eye, and to not bring this matter to light would be a huge disservice. Seems like a classic case of foot-in-mouth syndrome.