Nov 27
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 …
Permanent link to this article: https://abravefaith.com/2017/11/27/the-tide-of-gracious-inclusion-a-message-for-open-table-from-steve-chalke/
Nov 18
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 – …
Permanent link to this article: https://abravefaith.com/2017/11/18/marriage-equality-why-is-it-important-for-faith-communities/
Nov 13
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 – has been a richly rewarding ministry at St Bride’s Liverpool since June 2008. St Bride’s relaunched in November 2007 with a …
Permanent link to this article: https://abravefaith.com/2017/11/13/will-it-be-open-table-our-history-mission-vision-values/
Nov 05
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 – began at St Bride’s Liverpool in June 2008, meeting once a month for a communion service. At the first planning meeting, someone said: ‘Will …
Permanent link to this article: https://abravefaith.com/2017/11/05/subversive-scandalous-dangerous-take-over-a-reflection-on-the-growth-of-open-table/
Nov 01
On September 11, 2017, sixteen years after the devastating terrorist attack on New York’s World Trade Center, an article appeared online about its first recorded victim, which asked: ‘Could Father Mychal Judge Be the First Gay Saint?’ Father Mychal Judge was a little-known Franciscan friar ministering humbly to the disenfranchised and unloved on the streets of …
Permanent link to this article: https://abravefaith.com/2017/11/01/writing-the-icon-of-911-remembering-father-mychal-judge/
Oct 11
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 …
Permanent link to this article: https://abravefaith.com/2017/10/11/coming-out-in-the-classroom-the-power-of-education-ncod/
Sep 14
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 …
Permanent link to this article: https://abravefaith.com/2017/09/14/i-choose-not-to-collaborate-in-my-own-oppression-sister-jeannine-gramick-on-40-years-of-ministry-among-lgbt-catholics/
Aug 31
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 …
Permanent link to this article: https://abravefaith.com/2017/08/31/how-little-did-i-know-blogging-five-years-on/
Aug 19
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 …
Permanent link to this article: https://abravefaith.com/2017/08/19/we-should-extend-the-table-bishop-of-liverpool-to-lgbti-christians/
Apr 30
LAST MONTH I gave a reflection at St John’s United Reformed Church in Warrington, the home of the first gathering of Open Table outside Liverpool, which began in July 2015, seven years after the Liverpool community first met. My reflection, adapted here, was inspired by a blog post I wrote in September 2013 on the …
Permanent link to this article: https://abravefaith.com/2017/04/30/an-outpouring-of-the-spirit-searching-for-a-more-inclusive-church/
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