Special series to mark Pride Month (June 2024)
Introduction by Dr Michael Hahn
Pride month is a chance to celebrate the contributions LGBTQIA+ people make to the world. Through a variety of learning offerings, Sarum College highlights the often-underrepresented voices of queer people in the theological disciplines. During Pride month in 2024, we hear from LGBTQIA+ theologians who are making major contributions both to the study of theology and to the Church.
Our first blog post comes from Dr Charlie Bell who is a priest and doctor. A practising forensic psychiatrist, lecturer in medicine, assistant curate, and theologian, Charlie brings his wide ranging skills and expertise to bear in his theological work. As well as his book Light to Those in Darkness: ‘Total Pain’ and the Body of Christ (SCM, 2023), Charlie has published two books about LGBTQIA+ people: Queer Holiness: the gift of LGBTQI People to the Church (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2022), and the recently published Queer Redemption: How Queerness Changes Everything We Thought We Knew About Christianity (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2024).
Charlie has spoken in a range of contexts for Sarum College, and is a Visiting Scholar at Sarum.
Time for the Church to Listen and Learn
by Dr Charlie Bell
It’s fair to say that institutional Christianity’s relationship with queerness and queer people has been a mixed bag, at best. In my own church, the Church of England, we are still arguing about whether we can – or rather, may – bless same sex, same gender couples. Yet in the wider church, even where there is an increasing affirmation and inclusion of LGBTQIA people, the debate and discussion remain often in the abstract, or revolve around whether queer people can be admitted to previously exclusionary spaces like marriage or ministry.
It’s for this reason that Pride is so important for the church. For a long time, those of us who are queer or who have been standing in solidarity with queer Christians have had to make our arguments on others’ terms. We have engaged in apologetics, in historical debates, in digging through established norms and trying to find new ways of imagining old ideas. This is no bad thing in itself, but it has meant that we remain guests at another’s table, the benchmark and yardstick of whether we are truly Christian being a cis-heteronormative paradigm that has never quite allowed us equal honour or dignity.
I think the time for that kind of engagement is over. The fact is that queer Christians exist – our lives, and our loves are real, as is our faith. We really don’t need to spend our time convincing people that we are Christians – instead, those who deny it need to see the reality in front of their eyes. The church would learn so much, if only it would listen, and not only learn but grow, too.
I’m proud to be a queer Christian, and I delight in the gifts that queer Christians bring to our church. Queer people and queer thinking can re-enliven and re-invigorate the church, if only we were willing to see them already in our midst. Pride is the time to do just that – time to listen, to learn, and to be enriched by those who God has already invited to God’s table.
Find out more about postgraduate studies in Christian Spirituality
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