THIS is the reflection I gave for the eighth birthday of Open Table @ St Bride’s Liverpool on 17th July 2016, a celebration of what we have achieved in the past year, and looking forward to Liverpool Pride on 30th July with the theme: ‘Liverpool Icons’. I will follow this post with a report on our presence at this year’s… Read more »
THIS is an extract from a newly published book, Journeys in Grace and Truth, which asks: Is it possible to hold a positive view of same-sex relationships while being a biblically rooted Evangelical? It features essays from twelve senior Anglican Evangelicals who believe so, and share how they came to new insights. These include the current and former Bishops of Liverpool, the… Read more »
SUCH a sad few days since news of the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub broke on Sunday. The worst terror attack on US soil since 9/11, the worst gun crime in US history, and perhaps the largest murder of LGBT people since the Holocaust. How do we respond in the face of such horror? I have struggled to find my own… Read more »
In Interfaith Week, November 2015, the LGBT Foundation in Manchester held an event called ‘Believing In LGBT Young People‘, which was the inspiration for the Divine Love event I facilitated in Liverpool in LGBT History Month this February. At this event I met a young playwright and director who was promoting her new play, One Flesh, about an evangelical Christian woman… Read more »
One of the few LGBT History Month events in February which tackled the controversial theme of Religion, Belief and Philosophy head on was a performance of a play written and performed by Jo Clifford, a trans Christian actor portraying Jesus as a trans woman. I first became aware of the one-person show called The Gospel According To Jesus Queen of… Read more »
WHEN I LEARNED that the theme of LGBT History Month in February was ‘Religion, Belief & Philosophy‘, I knew it was a great opportunity for the LGBT affirming faith groups I support – and what better way to raise awareness than through the power of story? One of the events I facilitated last month did exactly that – Divine Love: LGBTQIA*… Read more »
Last time I wrote I set myself the challenge of a series of posts detailing my participation in, and reflection on, LGBT History Month in February. Since then I have been involved in more events and have been recovering from what our local paper called the ‘Liverpool lurgy’ so this has taken longer than planned. Hope it’s worth the wait.
LGBT History Month has taken place in the UK every February since 2004, organised by Schools Out UK, a campaigning group for LGBT people in education, and taking inspiration from the annual commemoration in October each year in the USA.
‘It’s a sad, sad situation, and it’s getting more and more absurd.’ So sang Elton John 40 years ago – his lament for a lost relationship could have been written for the Church of England this past month. At the first full meeting of its governing body this year, the General Synod met this week to respond, among other things, to… Read more »
IT’S TEN YEARS this month since the first civil partnerships for same-sex couples in the UK. The first couple to benefit from the new legal recognition for their relationship were Chris Cramp and Matthew Roche from West Sussex, on 5th December 2005. Yet when images from the first UK civil partnerships appear in the media to accompany stories about same-sex… Read more »