Better - A queer Christian lament
THIS SONG was recorded recently by PhD researcher Peter Jones, whose research features stories of Open Table members.
Peter is a Postgraduate Researcher whose PhD research is on how LGBTQIA+ Christians create spaces to explore faith and identity through creativity. READ MORE.
Peter explains:
I am a queer, trans person within the discernment process for ministry in the Church of England. I wrote this song a few months ago as I was utterly frustrated, feeling called to ordination yet feeling feeling conflicted about staying in the Church of England because of their approach to gender and sexuality.
The reason why I wrote the line:
'Welcome to the table but don't you dare break bread'
was inspired by the audacious behaviour of the church to say I could take communion but not administer it, unless I signed Issues In Human Sexuality (A statement by the House of Bishops of the General Synod of the Church of England in December 1991, which said that clergy ‘cannot claim the liberty to enter into sexually active homophile relationships’). So I could only be ordained if I agreed to suppress, strip down and injure myself as a queer person. But at the same time, my strong sense of faith was still there and I started to feel trapped, because I do believe in Jesus and the church.
It's a song of pure frustration. It's a little like Psalm 88 in that way:
Why do you reject my very being, Lord? Why do you hide your face from me? [Psalm 88:14]
I hope that by sharing it, it will give my fellow LGBTQIA+ Christians the permission they need to lament. You're not crazy or wrong for being hurt and angry, what the church is continuing to do is wrong, and it's okay to hurt, and to walk away. Noone walks away lightly.
This song offers no resolutions, just an honest experience. Writing it and singing it gave me the lament I needed to experience the pain I felt the church had been asking me to suppress or hide.
Better
The furrow in my brow is only getting deeper,
Tried to bend my shape to fit a little easier.
Maybe by now I should've known better,
at least I guess it's only forever.Maybe they're right, I should just up and leave here.
But I'm still soul bound to this faith, this place, this saviour.
Welcome to the table but don't you dare break bread,
take what your given and be thankful instead.You won't bend you'll break,
not just your life but your soul at stake.Maybe by now I should've known better,
well at least I guess it's only forever.It's only forever.
NOTE: On 18th January 2023 the Church of England College of Bishops announced that:
There will be a commitment to produce new pastoral guidance in relation to the discernment of vocation, replacing the 1991 statement Issues In Human Sexuality, to which all clergy currently are asked to assent.
Details of this new pastoral guidance are not yet known.
