Reflecting on a weekend of Pride, Hope & Celebrating God at Work

This weekend was Pride in London and there were a Christians at Pride group marching again, just as there have been for a number of years now. Except this year it was different, very different.

This weekend the Church of England synod in York and as has become a regular happening LGBT+ issues were discussed. Except this time it was different, very different.

This weekend I preached at the church which has been home over the last couple of years, just as I have in other churches. I was faced with the dilemma of whether to mention anything about LGBT+ witness and mission in my sermon, just as I have on a couple of other occasions as a local preacher. Except this time it was different, very different.

So what were these differences and what do they have to tell us about what is going on in the churches and the Christian LGBT+ world?

The Christians at Pride Group was bigger than in the past, much bigger. This year it was made up of about 250 people and was the third biggest group after Barclays (the main sponsor) and Stonewall. It was also a much more mixed group culturally, with a far higher number of BAME people involved, (despite what this picture seems to show). It was not just “the usual faces”, many of them were watching in the crowd – being among those who stood next to the “angry Christians” turning their yellow negative placards into a rainbow proclaiming love. There were also some at the church where the annual Pride Service was being held offering hospitality through a tea party in the garden.

The Church of England synod was different because whilst there was the “official discussion” on what to do about LGBT+ issues with the usual prevarication and kicking into the long grass there were compassionate and important motions passed. These were motions bought by synod members and diocese which committed the Church of England to condemn conversion therapy and look to develop an official recognised liturgy for people who wanted to mark their transition and reaffirm their new/ true identity.

The church I was preaching in is a URC/ Methodist church which has in the past year signed up to Inclusive Church and become a recognised One Body One Faith Church. It set up a stall outside the church, which is on the Birmingham Pride route, and gave out water and sweets to those in the Birmingham Pride parade this year. It was also one of the co-ordinating groups involved in getting Christians at Pride in Birmingham off the ground this year. Preaching there I didn’t have the dilemma of whether to mention LGBT+ issues I knew I could do so, encouraging the church in the way in which God had been working in there. I could talk about the impact that their actions have; how they help the LGBT+ community and the way God is obviously working through them. I could talk about the way in which I know that church has not changed their thinking (it all went through Church meeting very quickly and without much debate) and they probably don’t think they’ve done anything much but actually what they’ve done is really important.

The passage I was preaching on yesterday was Matthew 11: 16 -30 (note without the gap which the lectionary suggests) and this talks about some recognising God’s signs and wonders whilst others rejected them. To recognise what God was doing in the world then you had to recognise experience. I think the same is true now…..we need to look at experience as well as using scripture, tradition and reason.

Experience is what is telling me something is happening, God is at work through ordinary people in the church who may or may not belong to the LGBT+ community. Experience is telling me that divisions in the church between different groups are being broken down. Is telling me, through conversations I’ve been having with people and coverage of Christians at Pride in publications like Pink News, that the perception the wider LGBT+ community has of Christians and the gospel message is beginning to change.

Yet, I know all this doesn’t happen without hard work. I know that there are those who have been patiently working towards where we are now for many decades. So I want to thank them for their hard work and faithful witness over the years.

I also know that there is still much to be done if LGBT+ people are to be fully accepted, acknowledged and included in the church. There is still much to be done if our relationships are to be treated on an equal basis. I know that the more the church embraces the LGBT+ community the more vicious some opponents will become, as they realise they have lost the argument (I remember the late Pauline Webb explaining this was the case with the campaign for women’s ordination in the Methodist Church).  

Yet as I have shown God is at work and I have more hope than I have ever had.

Up and Coming in the LGBT world

Recently I listened to a podcast on the Methodist website from a couple who run the Lincolnshire Parents of LGBT children support group. They were speaking about the journey they have gone on and how it has inspired them to support others. Listening to it was encouraging for a variety of reasons. Firstly, it was inspiring to hear their story and how that being faced with personal challenges had led them into being able to support others. Secondly, it was good to hear how the support that Two:23 and the group it runs for parents together with Diverse Church is developing into inspiring regional groups such as this and finally it was great to have another example of the Methodist Church seriously engaging with trans.

The support now being provided for parents through Lincs Parents, Eklektos and Diverse Church Parents - part of the wider Two:23 and Diverse Church family, which, to the observer such as myself, continues to grow in ways which seem to confirm God’s blessing is something I think is incredibly important. It is important to note that these ministries are seen as something positive which are being offered in addition to groups like Fflag not in competition to or in replacement to them.

It also prompted me to think about how it was probably time I did an overview of what’s going on at the moment because as ever the sands have been shifting in the Christian LGBT area.

One of the most significant changes over recent months has been Jayne Ozanne taking over at the helm of Accepting Evangelicals. Jayne is somebody who has previously been part of the Archbishop’s Advisory Council which I understand from those who can translate Anglican structures and processes for me (i.e. Karl) is quite an important group. For those unfamiliar with her the interview she did with Ruth Gledhill in February is worth a watch. Readers in Kent may be interested to know she is speaking at an event in Whitstable on 6th June which was covered in an article in the local newspaper.

Keeping on the Anglican theme the facilitated conversations are underway now and there seemed to be mixed responses to them emerging from participants. Rose Grigg talked of her experience in quite positive terms on her blog. Thinking Anglicans have posted Erika Baker’s reflections which have also been positive talking of “hope”. Canon JeremyPemberton however has not been so positive in his reflection. Whilst he recognises how well the sessions have been organised and led he writes a piece which highlights the reality of the situation when some from the conservative evangelical position refuse to attend and how he found the experience to be “demeaning and infuriating”. The Changing Attitude website is a good place to look to keep informed on what is coming out of these meetings from a LGBT perspective.

Of course it is not just the Anglicans who are having important conversations at the moment in one form or another they are taking place in most of the Protestant denominations at the moment.

This week the Church of Scotland meets in Edinburgh and their General Assembly will be making important decisions regarding ministers in Civil Partnerships and in marriages which are between two people of the same sex as reported in this BBC article.

The URC has been seeking to come to a consensus and has been facilitating discussions within local congregations and more widely within the organisation about congregations being able to decide whether to conduct same sex marriage. The results of these discussions show the the division on the matter in that congregation is split between roughly two thirds being in favour of congregations being able to choose for themselves and one third against. The denomination’s council met this month and has voted to pass a resolution from a working party recognising the ongoing division on this matter and taking the discussions on at local synod level for a final decision to be made at the General Assembly in 2016 rather than recalling an emergency meeting on this issue in June according to the papers which the denomination publishes on line.

The Methodists are continuing their discussions on the matter and their discussions are due to go to conference in 2016 also. Within the denomination Outcome is the group who campaign on behalf of LGBTQI people and they continue to positively move forward in their work. They are holding their annual general meeting on 30^th May in Manchester and amongst the speakers on that day entitled ““An Inclusive Church: This year, Next year, Sometime, Never” will be Vice President of Conference Mrs. Gill Dascombe. They are also holding a fringe meeting at Methodist Conference in Southport on Monday 29^th July. The meeting on 30^th May will be important because they are also announcing their strategy and a resource to explain it to others.

The Baptists Fresh Streams Network has put up a range of resources on their website. Also within this denomination Affirming Baptists, the group working to support LGBT Baptists and their allies, is continuing to grow and develop their work. They have a bright updated website which is advertising an event on 18^th July Continuing the Conversation which is aimed primarily at those within the denomination and is “an opportunity to hear and share about engaging pastorally and in gospel mission with those in same-sex partnerships”.

Many of the groups mentioned above together with others will be part of the Christians at Pride group who are aiming to provide a positive Christian witness as part of the Pride in London celebrations next month, which will include more groups than ever. (This does provide some issues personally because Karl will be there with Santander who have been proactively developing their LGBT network and along with Facebook and others are amongst the new groups have registered to be on the parade this year and so I have to decide whether to go along with him or be part of this group). There has also been a call via face book for supportive clergy to come along wearing their clerical collars in order to counter the view many of the public, particularly within the LGBT community that the church and clergy are all anti-LGBT. If you are coming along on June 27^th to that event please try and wear purple.

On the subject of clergy who can legitimately wear purple lots of the time Bishop Alan Wilson recently spoke at the LGBT Fellowship Hulland East Riding. The Bishop of Buckingham was also one of the speakers at the recent Oasis Open Church event on Sexuality which Ekklesia reports was a positive event. Another one of the speakers at that event was Vicky Beeching who was also a speaker at the GCN conference in the USA earlier this year and her talk is available online. She has also been appointed as an advisor on LGBT issues and religion to the United Nations. It is important, though, as we think about these speakers and praise their efforts not to question where we think issues of integrity may exist and a good place to find some of these questions is on the God Loves Women website where the writer has raised some important and interesting questions.

Bishop Alan is also due to be the speaker at Two:23’s next meeting on 13^th June. Podcasts from recent speakers at Two:23 including youth worker Jo Dolby who spoke movingly and Greenbelt Festival regular Dave Tomlinson are also available on their website.

 

The LGBT Fellowship have also had LGCM’s Tracey Byrne and Stonewall’s Ruth Hunt as speakers at an event previously. Ruth Hunt is the keynote speaker at this years LGCM annual general meeting and national gathering which is happening in Nottingham on 6^th June. Stonewall is also moving forward in the development of incorporating the T into their work and is currently appointing a trans advisory group in order to help them do this. The Quaker LGBT+ group QLGF are also taking on board the T and their website advises on October 31^st they will be holding an event which will be focused around listening to the experience of trans and gender variant people.

The work of Catholic LGBT group Quest continues to grow and is encouraging to see that in the past week they have celebrated mass with Cardinal Vincent Nichols. Apparently this is not the first time that Cardinal Nichols will have met with LGBT Catholics but it is the first time that it will have been publically announced and so that is encouraging.

A final interesting developments, more generally to note, are that Inclusive Church has published two more books in their series on inclusion and by definition exclusion. Today in Guildford they are launching their Ethnicity and Gender books which go with those already published on sexuality, poverty, disability and mental health. All are published by Darton, Longman and Todd.