A powerful assertion of our right to exist
Jo Clifford performing The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven on Saturday 26th April 2025, at St Bride’s Liverpool, the church where Open Table began in 2008. PHOTO: Kieran Bohan.
“there’s a real need for a powerful assertion of our right to exist; and, among many other things, that’s exactly what The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven is designed to do.”
A MOVING and thought-provoking play in Liverpool last month invited us to imagine Jesus coming back to Earth now as a trans woman.
The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven is a unique and emotive one-woman theatrical performance written and performed by Jo Clifford, one of Scotland’s most renowned playwrights, with more than 100 plays to her name.
The show has had an incredible journey over the last fifteen years since its controversial premiere as part of the 2009 Glasgay festival. Here Jo Clifford reflects on the impact of her return to Liverpool and her Queen Jesus performance.
The first time me and Queen Jesus came to Liverpool in 2011, we were still bruised and battered from all the hatred we inspired during the first performances.
At that time I hadn't really got over my feeling of being unspeakably stupid for writing her Gospel.
Nor the feeling that I was grotesquely ill-equipped to perform it.
Performing extracts of the show to tiny audiences in a bedroom of the city’s Adelphi Hotel helped me heal the wounds; and I was so grateful to Mandy Romero and Homotopia, the annual LGBT+ arts festival, for inviting me.
Something else I did that weekend was perform extracts to a very friendly but slightly scary group of clerical and semi-clerical people in the Quaker Meeting House nearby…
At that time I still saw the piece as pretty much an anti-church thing - which was why it all felt a bit intimidating.
And what I didn't know was that all these years later it would be two of those semi-clerical people who would invite me back.
But that's exactly what happened last weekend when I performed again in St Bride’s Liverpool at the invitation of Kieran and Warren of the Open Table Network.
One of the consequences of the abuse I suffered as a child has been the feeling that I am alone.
One of the lovely things about discovering the Open Table Network is to discover (yet again!) that I am not.
As they say on the OTN website: We all need to belong; we are happiest when we belong to a community. Belonging nourishes us.
But churches often deny LGBTQIA+ people a feeling of belonging. That’s why Open Table Network communities are so significant: they fill a painful gap. And by doing so they measurably improve their members’ mental health and well-being.
And performing Queen Jesus as part of that community last weekend helped me heal. Again.
This time heal the new trauma caused by the UK Supreme Court telling me that all the work I've done to discover and express my identity in spite of a lifetime of ingrained hostility and prejudice.
That all that work and struggle counts for nothing and that legally I am a man and always will be.
That I am a man and always will be in spite of the fact that I know perfectly well, and always have known since I first became aware of myself, that I am not a man and never will be.
And I can't talk myself out of this truth and no one can legislate me out of that truth.
Because matters of identity are far deeper than reason or law.
Arising from the ruling, there’s been a shocking outburst of transphobia; of hatred and prejudice that is causing horrible and unnecessary suffering.
So there's a real need for a powerful assertion of our right to exist; and, among many other things, that's exactly what The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven is designed to do.
And I feel incredibly blessed and fortunate to be able to perform it.
Which is why I’m getting ready to perform again in Rosslyn Hill Chapel in London on Saturday 10th May.
Because in all the hostility and fear and confusion this ruling has caused, I know that for me the most important thing is not to allow myself to be silenced.
The Gospel According to Jesus Queen of Heaven will be here:
10th May 2025, 7pm
Rosslyn Hill Chapel, 3 Pilgrim's Place, NW3 1NG
BOOK HERE.
Originally published on Jo Clifford’s blog, The Light Inside. Republished with permission.
