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Honest Church
We launched the Honest Church campaign to encourage greater honesty about the true welcome that LGBTQ+ people receive in a church, as well as about women’s opportunities or limits in churches.
The aim is to prompt and enable churches to be more specific in their communication about LGBTQ+ welcome and women’s roles, both in their publicity and when students, graduates and others come and ask questions about the inclusiveness of the welcome.
“So important. I’ve still not found a church where I’m living now because church hunting as a queer [individual] is an absolute minefield, and I just don’t have the time or energy”.
To find out more and get involved you can request to join the Honest Church working group by e-mailing scm@movement.org.uk, or head to honestchurch.org.uk to download resources.
LGBTQIA+ Equality in the Church of England
The struggle for LGBTQIA+ equality in the Church of England is ongoing, and as a movement we have led, and been involved in, various projects to push the campaign forward over the past 50+ years.
In 2020 we released a series of videos called “A More Beautiful Story”, in response to a video from the CEEC promoting a conservative view of marriage and sexuality as “God’s Beautiful Story”. The response to our series was incredible – so many people shared their stories of queerness with us for these videos, to show that there is a more beautiful story to be told than just the narrow view of conservatism.
A lot of our campaigning around LGBTQIA+ equality in the Church of England over the past five years has been focused around Synod meetings, in order to have the most impact on discussions and voting. Our “Look for the Fruit” campaign in 2023, in which we encouraged lay and ordained alike to see the blessings that are already upon so many queer relationships, was run alongside an historic vote at the November synod on the issue of stand-alone services of blessing for same-sex couples.
Most recently we partnered with Together for the Church of England, a group dedicated to campaigning for LGBTQIA+ equality in the church, to write an open letter to the House of Bishops signed by 300+ young adult Christians aged 18-30 to express our hurt as the Living in Love and Faith process was once again deferred to an unknown time in the future.
If you’re a student at a UK university or have graduated in the past three years from a UK university and would like to get involved with future campaigning for equality in the Church of England, get in touch to join our WhatsApp chat by e-mailing scm@movement.org.uk.
How to be a Good Christian Ally
We joined with OneBodyOneFaith to publish the How to be a Good Christian Ally resource for churches who want to take a step further along the journey of LGBTQIA+ allyship, and who want to grow not only as allies to LGBTQ+ people but also in their own faith too.
How to be a Good Christian Ally was the first in the Affirming Christianity series, in which we seek to offer ways to explore the idea of allyship in the bible, and as a church, as well as to learn from LGBTQ+ stories, rather than debate Biblical verses that cause disagreement. The courses start from a place of assumed allyship, which was important, because so often these courses don’t.
Find out more about our Affirming Christianity series.