LAST MONTH the UK government published proposals for ‘ending the coercive and abhorrent practice of conversion therapy’, which attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, ‘while also protecting the vital values that underpin our democratic society, such as freedom of speech, freedom of belief and privacy.’ OTN trustee Augustine Tanner-Ihm invites us to respond.

ON SATURDAY 6th November 2021, around 50 people gathered from across Wales and England to celebrate five years of the LGBTQIA+ Chaplaincy in St Asaph Diocese - the first of its kind in the UK, and six years since first Open Table community in North Wales, which came under the care of the Chaplaincy in January 2017. OTN Patron Cherry Vann, Bishop of Monmouth, offered this reflection:

AT OPEN TABLE LIVERPOOL last month, visitors from churches preparing to host an Open Table community came to hear OTN Patron John Bell. Revd Chris Dowd, who came with a group from Birmingham, reflects on his first Open Table experience.

AT THE FIRST Open Table community in Liverpool this month, Revd John Bell, a Patron of the Open Table Network, offered this reflection on the reading from the book of Acts 10: 1-16, in which the apsotle Peter hears God say: ‘Do not call anything impure that God has made clean’.

YESTERDAY was International Pronouns Day, which has really got me thinking about how to better explain my pronouns to other people, writes OTN Co-Chair Alex Clare-Young.

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.