This Lent, our inclusive church in Liverpool city centre offered a six-week course to explore the ‘queerness’ of the Christian tradition. Participants read and discussed Queer Virtue: What LGBTQ People Know About Life and Love and How It Can Revitalize Christianity (Beacon Press, 2016), written by the American Episcopal priest Elizabeth Edman. At the launch of the study guide to accompany… Read more »
LAST MONTH, Open Table – an ecumenical Christian worship community which offers a warm welcome to people who are: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer / Questioning, Intersex, Asexual (LGBTQIA) and all who seek an inclusive Church – hosted an event for members of the 11 existing Open Table communities, and those considering whether Open Table is a ministry they wish to offer, to… Read more »
AUSTRALIA HAS VOTED in favour of marriage equality for LGBTI people – the results were announced on Wednesday and greeted with joy and expectation that the law will now change to make it so. As my husband is Australian, I have followed the campaign with interest. We had a civil partnership in May 2012 – the first to be registered… Read more »
TEN YEARS AGO this month, the UK’s longest running LGBT youth group* produced a short film about their experience of being lesbian, gay or bisexual in Liverpool. The 18 minute film aimed at 13-19 year olds uses drama, animation, original music and research to present issues around coming out, bullying at school, harassment at work, love and relationships. The message… Read more »
TODAY, 11th October, is celebrated in many countries as ‘National Coming Out Day’, a campaign to promote a safe world for LGBT+ individuals to live truthfully and openly. This morning I marked the occasion by giving a lecture to around 300 trainee teachers, to raise awareness of issues around gender and sexuality, and to explore these in age-appropriate ways in… Read more »
THESE were the courageous words of the keynote speaker at this year’s annual conference of Quest, which offers pastoral support for LGBT Catholics in the UK. Sister Jeannine Gramick has cared and campaigned for the LGBT community in the USA since 1971, two years before Quest was founded. I first heard about Sister Jeannine in 1999 when, together with her colleague… Read more »
FIVE YEARS AGO today I began this blog – little did I know then that: having ‘come out of the church‘ in 2011, I would return to a different church where my husband and I would be accepted, encouraged and authorised as lay leaders (though still with limitations because we are married) little more than a year after our civil… Read more »
THIS WEEKEND the Bishop of Liverpool, Rt Revd Paul Bayes, will join the celebration of Open Table, an ecumenical Christian worship community which offers a warm welcome to people who are: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, Asexual (LGBTQIA+) and all who seek a more inclusive Church. It’s not his first visit to Open Table. We originally invited him to join us… Read more »
IT’S BEEN almost five years since I started this blog – but in the last five months I have been unusually quiet. It has been an exceptionally busy time with the unprecedented growth of my voluntary work with the Open Table ecumenical Christian community, alongside other commitments. Not only that, but the company which was hosting the website became increasingly unreliable… Read more »
In April each year, many Anglican churches have an annual meeting to review the past year and look forward to the year ahead. St Bride’s Liverpool is host to the Open Table ecumenical worship community for Christians who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersex, and asexual (LGBTQIA) and all who believe in an inclusive church. This post is adapted from the Open Table report at the St Bride’s annual meeting last month.