Meet our Patrons: Barbara Glasson in conversation with Kieran Bohan
THE OPEN TABLE NETWORK (OTN) is now a charity. So we have asked several notable Christians who identify as LGBTQIA+, or as allies, to become our patrons.
They will be advocates for OTN, speaking about us and supporting us in the public eye. We are proud that these individuals believe in what we’re doing and want to have their names associated with us.
In the seventh of our Q&A webinars with our new Patrons, Barbara Glasson, former President of the Methodist Conference in Britain, was in conversation with our Co-ordinator, Kieran Bohan.
If you missed our Q&A webinar with Barbara Glasson on Thursday 20th May 2021, or want to watch it again, now you can catch up below or on our YouTube channel (60 mins). This Q&A video includes British Sign Language interpretation, thanks to Janet Guest from Fylde Coast BSL Centre.
Barbara is a pastoral theologian who has worked among people of many different faiths and experiences. In 2000, she founded Somewhere Else, an inclusive faith community in Liverpool where people gather to bake bread and worship God. There she met LGBT Christians and other groups she calls ‘prophetic communities’.
Her book The Exuberant Church: Listening to the prophetic people of God reflects on ‘coming out’ as a spiritual experience, and how the church too must ‘come out’. Barbara sees the coming out process as both profoundly human and deeply of God.
In 2010 Barbara became Leader of Touchstone in Bradford, a listening community enabling safe spaces for dialogue with diverse communities including people of different faiths.
In 2019 she received the Archbishop of Canterbury’s award for her work in Peace and Reconciliation.
As she became President of the Methodist Conference in June 2019, The Methodist Church approved a report called God in Love Unites Us which proposed to allow churches to hold same-sex weddings. Covid restrictions delayed local churches debating and voting on this report so she was unable to see a final vote before she stepped down in June 2020 from this one-year appointment.
Barbara now teaches Pastoral Theology at The Queen’s Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education in Birmingham.
Barbara was in conversation with Kieran Bohan, Open Table Network Co-ordinator. WATCH his intro video here [3 mins].
Barbara answered a wide range of questions, including:
As you grew up, your church was like a loving, safe, extended family, which challenged you to ask big questions. What did you learn from that?
You felt called to Church leadership when you were 16, when women couldn’t be ordained in Methodism. How did you experience that?
You studied read Agricultural Sciences with a view to working for the Church overseas. How did your studies influence your later ministry?
How did training for ordination on an ecumenical course inform your ministry?
Five years after ordination you became the minister in Liverpool city centre, at Somewhere Else, aka the Bread Church, which also hosted an LGBT+ Christian group. You wrote that this group, and others, ‘taught me so much about what it means to be a prophetic community.’ What does a ‘prophetic community’ look like?
Towards the end of your time in Liverpool, you wrote The Exuberant Church: Listening to the prophetic people of God, which describes ‘coming out’ as a spiritual experience, and how the church too must ‘come out’. What do you think the Church needs to learn from the experience of 'coming out'?
From Liverpool you moved to Bradford, another city-centre project in a Muslim-Pakistani-heritage area. What did you learn from working with people of different faiths and cultures?
As you became President of the Methodist Conference in 2019, The Methodist Church approved a report called God in Love Unites Us which proposed to allow churches to hold same-sex weddings. Covid restrictions delayed local churches voting on this so you were unable to see a final vote before you stepped down in July 2020. How did you experience that process?
Why do you feel God calls so many LGBT+ people to ministry?
How can LGBT+ people have confidence in the institutional Church?
Can you share some aids to help people with contradictory convictions to really hear and accept our stories, or for us to accept that they won’t or can’t?
As Anglican discuss their Living In Love And Faith report, how would you guide us to counter Biblical opposition to marriage for same-sex attracted people?
In what ways do you think that churches can 'come out'?
What does Open Table mean to you?
How can we allow our sexuality to enrich our spiritual growth, and how can we enable our spiritual development enrich our sexual relationships?
How can we sit together at an open table with people who would disagree with or exclude us?
If you could choose to sit around a table with anyone, who would it be?