By a Staff Reporter
A Festival of Christian Art, run as a combined effort by Catholics, Anglicans and Free Churchmen, is planned by the Reading Christian Council, a united body which has organised joint public meeting k in recent years.
The Festival will be held from November 22 to December 3.
Its purpose will be to demonstrate the contribution which Christianity has made and is continuing to make to the arts. Literature, sculpture, architecture, music will all be included in the programme. There will be recitals in local churches of Christian poetry from Langland to the present day; plays, including Dorothy Sayer's The Zeal of Thy House, will be performed at St. Mary's Anglican Church. It is expected that a cinema will show religious films, among which will probably be Monsieur Vincent.
Music will include Bach's Mass in B Minor and Flanders Messiah. There will be a separate exhibition of religious art for school children and the spirit and programme of the Festival will be taken into the schools by teachers who arc cooperating in the arrangements.
The Council has been in existence since 1943; on it are represented some 50 local congregations. Under its constitution the Council takes action only when unanimity is achieved. Its present president is Fr, W. G. Ford, of Our Lady and St. Anne, Caversham.