ON National Coming Out Day, Open Table Liverpool co-facilitator Warren Hartley reflects on what ‘coming out’ might mean for us as LGBTQIA+ Christians.

ON Saturday 25th September 2021, Open Table South London held a study day to introduce people to Open Table, and to their host church as a liberal and progressive space for theological discussion and inclusive worship. Fiona Thomas shares her reflection on the day.

Following the Pride Eucharist at Manchester Cathedral, we caught up with Cathedral Curate, Revd Steve Hilton to find out why having this celebration as part of the city’s LGBT+ festival is important.

THIS MONTH the Open Table Chester community celebrated three years of meeting. A supporter created this beautiful floral arrangement for the occasion, inspired by God's words to the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah about God’s chosen people.

LAST MONTH, members of Open Table Chester met for an afternoon of fellowship at the former home of the Ladies of Llangollen, two upper-class Irish women whose relationship scandalised and fascinated their contemporaries during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Joy Kendall was the group’s guide.

ON SATURDAY 28th August 2021, the Right Revd Cherry Vann, Bishop of Monmouth and OTN Patron, shared this reflection at St John’s Church, Cardiff, for the Pride Cymru Eucharist hosted by the Faith Tent, which celebrates and gives thanks for our rich, diverse and inclusive faith communities by organising talks and a faith presence at Cardiff's Pride Cymru.

On Saturday 21st August, a special vigil was held under the Peace Doves art installation at Liverpool Cathedral. OTN Coordinator Kieran Bohan was one of the speakers, praying for justice and peace for people with minority gender identities and sexual orientations around the world, and especially for respectful dialogue in the Church of England’s Living In Love And Faith conversations on Identity, Sexuality, Relationships and Marriage.

OCCASIONALLY a seminal work appears that becomes a defining piece, a turning point or breakthrough in a particular area. For the religious LGBTQ conversion movement, the documentary Pray Away, released on Netflix on 3rd August, could be that work.

IN POLAND, dozens of small towns have declared themselves free of ‘LGBT ideology’. Politicians' hostility to LGBT+ rights has become a flashpoint, pitting the religious right against more liberal-minded Poles. And LGBT+ people living in these areas are faced with a choice: emigrate, keep their heads down - or fight back. Andi from Open Table Warrington shares a Polish film-maker’s response.

LAST MONTH Methodist Conference, the governing body of the Methodist Church in Britain, passed a vote to allow same sex marriages conducted on Methodist premises or by Methodist office-holders, making it the largest denomination in the UK to make this change. Former President of the Methodist Conference, Barbara Glasson shares a personal response.

Prompted by a friend's question about her experience as a gay Christian who instantly felt excluded from her (then conservative evangelical) church community and large parts of her (also evangelical) family when she revealed her sexual orientation to them at the age of twenty, Dr Anneke Schmidt writes: For LBGTQIA+ Christians, the line between active exclusion and passive withdrawal from Church can be thin.

PRIDE MONTH is over, but the struggle for equity and justice for all LGBTQIA+ people everywhere continues, particularly in faith communities. This powerful testimony from an Open Table member who experienced threats from a member of another church based on beliefs about sexuality shows that we still have much to do to make our faith communities safer spaces for all of us, without exception.

AS Pride Month, dedicated to celebrating LGBTQIA+ communities around the world, comes to an end, our last reflection from OTN Co-ordinator Kieran Bohan looks beyond the ‘rainbow capitalism’ of companies cashing in, to a deeper meaning of far greater value.

OTN Trustee Lucy Berry was born in 1957, the year that the UK Government published a report which led to the partial decriminalization of sexual expression between men over 21 in England and Wales ten years later. 1957 was also the year that her grandmother’s cousin, actor Esmé Percy, died. Here is his story.

I wish that Pride was all year round: that every day LGBTQIA+ people could feel safe enough, free enough, and affirmed fully enough to lift up our lives and our voices to proclaim our authentic God-given truths, to protest the injustice that we experience every day, and to pray for justice and peace.

THIS MORNING, BBC local radio’s Sunday faith programmes were talking about the upcoming vote at the Methodist conference about whether they’ll agree to allow same sex weddings to be held on Methodist premises. We heard from Rev Sonia Hicks, the new President of the Methodist conference, then our Coordinator gave a response.

IN the seventh of a series of reflections for Pride Month, Jen from Open Table Sefton reflects on concerning homophobic incidents in the city where the first Open Table community began, and a march against hate crime which reflects the spirit of Pride as a protest.

IN the sixth of a series of reflections for Pride Month, our trustee Neil Rees reflects on his journey from feeling threatened by the movement for LGBTQIA+ equality to standing in solidarity and celebrating diversity.

IN the fifth of a series of reflections for Pride Month, Suzanne from Open Table Chester shares a poem which ‘describes my struggle with finding identity’

IN the fourth of a series of reflections for Pride Month, our Co-Chair Sarah Hobbs reflects on her changing relationship with the annual festival, and with herself as a trans woman.