Emily Snowden, reverend at the Congregational United Church of Christ in Arlington Heights, used the term “spiritual trauma” as a means of describing the experience of many queer individuals hurt by religion. This faith can, however, yield damaging results.
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Reconciliation, and the wrestling it requires, is the purest form of faith.
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“That’s what queer people do and have been doing for a long time, is figuring out how to adapt ourselves to the world or how to adapt the world to us.” According to Lizzi Heydemann, rabbi and founder of Mishkan Chicago, the word “Israel” itself means “to wrestle,” after the Biblical figure who wrestled with an angel. “A queer perspective of the world is exactly what the world needs to improve,” McGlynn said. The new Chair of the Foundation is the Very Revd Joe Hawes, Dean of St Edmundsbury and the most senior out LGBT+ cleric on General Synod.Mandie McGlynn, right, with rabbis Jeffrey Stombaugh and Lizzi Heydemann at Mishkan Chicago, a Jewish synagogue, on July 18, 2019. He has stepped down ahead of his retirement in March 2022. Rt Revd Paul Bayes is the Bishop of Liverpool and was Chair of the Ozanne Foundation from its inauguration in 2017 through to its AGM on January 19th 2022. She was Senior Fellow in Mental Health Policy at the University of Birmingham and an Associate Professor of Mental Health Research at Middlesex University. The research was overseen by Dr Sarah Carr, who has formerly worked in research and policy analysis in the academic and charity sectors and has a MA in Theology. The nine LGBT+ Christian organisations involved in the research are:Ĭampaign for Equal Marriage in the Church of Englandĭignity & Worth (Methodist LGBT+ Network)
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The full research report can be downloaded here, the full set of survey findings here and the questionnaire here. It was open to all LGBT+ Christians over 18 in the UK. The survey ran on SurveyMonkey for two weeks from Nov 10th 2021, which is Safeguarding Sunday in the Church of England. The most significant factor that is currently helping LGBT+ people feel safe in their churches is being ‘aware that there are other LGBT+ people in our congregation’ (52%).Ĭommenting on the findings, Rt Revd Paul Bayes, the Bishop of Liverpool, and a Patron of the Open Table Network, said: When asked what can be done to help them feel safer, nearly half (46%) said ‘knowing that our leaders affirm same-sex relationships’ alongside ‘putting an inclusive statement on the website’ (41%) and ‘positively recognising LGBT+ people in sermons’ (36%). However, trans and non-binary people were notably more pessimistic. A quarter (26%) agree that things are ‘a little safer’ than five years ago and nearly a fifth (18%) said things are ‘much safer’. Many respondents felt that whilst their churches take their ‘physical safety’ seriously they indicated that their ‘spiritual’, ‘sexual’ and ‘emotional’ safety was taken far less so. When asked what it meant to feel ‘safe to be yourself in your church’, three quarters of LGBT+ Christians chose ‘I’m not worried about what might be said in the sermon’ and ‘I can be open with the clergy about my sexuality and/or gender identity’, factors rarely considered by non-LGBT+ people. A fifth of respondents said they feel ‘apprehensive’ when attending their local church, with less than a third (31%) saying they could “be themselves”.
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Whilst gay men are more likely to ‘feel safe to be out to everyone in their local church’ than lesbians (45% vs 35%), trans and non-binary people feel far less ‘safe to be out’ (28%). The survey findings shine a spotlight on just how unsafe many LGBT+ Christians feel to be themselves in their regular places of worship. The survey showed their sense of safety could be improved by church leaders making clear that they affirm same-sex relationships and helping them meet other LGBT+ people in their local church. A 2021 safeguarding survey of more than 750 UK LGBT+ Christians shows that only a third ‘feel safe to be out’ in their local churches, and just one in five feel ‘safe to be out to the wider Christian community’.