THIS MONTH, two supporters of the Open Table Network have featured in My Faithful Ally, the podcast that shares the stories and testimonies from queer people of faith.

One is Peter Jones, whose PhD research into how LGBTQ+ Christians create spaces to explore faith and identity through creativity includes Open Table communities as a case study. The other is Augustine Tanner-Ihm, an African-American priest and theologian who is also a trustee of the Open Table Network.

In the first interview, Peter identifies as:

‘a queer, trans masculine person, sometimes a trans man. It's a journey, and I would say I kind of employ different terms depending on the space I'm in.’

The concept of space is important for Peter’s research project, entitled: Queerly beloved: Bridging spaces of Christian faith and LGBTQ+ identity through creativity.

Peter describes the process of ‘deconstructing’ faith, balancing identity and relationship with God, while recovering from an abusive experience of church:

‘where I'm at now is this really weird, and sometimes intense and sometimes very annoying, but also joyful process of discovering new realities of God that I kind of had seen before but never properly grappled with until now’

As an undergraduate student, new to Christianity, Peter was surrounded by well-meaning voices who suggested that you could not be queer and Christian, so Peter was encouraged to explore ‘changing my sexuality’.

‘I'm not in that space anymore. Now I have, through failed attempts, just really unfruitful years in my life realised that nothing good was coming from that, and if anything recently God has been teaching me that that was a route that needed to be cleared away.’

Peter describes the journey toward reconciling faith and sexuality as

‘not in terms of dealing with theology and working out whether it's okay to be queer, but in relearning the goodness of my queerness… we have this innate creative goodness in us. And it's not just enough to reconcile that it's acceptable for us to be queer, God wants us to reconcile and celebrate that we're queer, and so that's the space that I'm in.

Peter’s PhD is not in theology but in human geography - the importance of spaces and spatial relationships in how we form our culture, how we form physical space, and also our identities. Peter explains the motivation for the research:

‘our stories of surviving trauma and overcoming and negotiating church are really important, but at the same time because of the way in which that’s platformed and because we so rarely get spaces to properly engage with it, it stays at a surface level, and I think there's so much to be said about the holy spaces that queer people craft and inhabit that don't get engaged with.’

Peter has used Open Table communities as a case study by discussing with members of our communities what makes space important to them and their own identities to unpick those deeper meanings that don't usually have space for exploration. This research has highlighted the common assumption, even among LGBTQIA+ Christians, ourselves, that ‘somehow queerness isn't religious and that somehow religiousness isn't queer’. Peter explains:

‘people talk about the religious experience of being with queer friends in a gay bar and talking about the relationship between experiencing that music and that freedom in a religious way and at the same time, people talk about intensely religious experiences in terms of queer affection and queer love, and I think the more we reckon with the intertwined nature of those things, the more we'll find wholeness…. we discuss ourselves as queer and Christian, but in the reality of our spaces, it's queer-and-Christian together.’

A key finding from Mel’s research is about the importance of claiming ownership of the spaces in which we gather as queer Christians:

‘when you start to claim ownership on your sacred space, you become more comfortable in your environment. It becomes more like home, which means you can do more with it. You see people standing up and taking leadership roles that they didn't know they had before - you see them taking pride in their own spaces and wanting to engage with it, and you see people grow in faith, which brings more fruits of the Spirit, which existed before, it's just so difficult when you don't have a space to claim ownership of’

Peter concludes by advising people who may want to reflect on how they can claim ownership of the sacred space where they worship, by asking:

‘do you have freedom to lead and serve and be safe in your space? Because if the answer is no to that, then my serious suggestion is you need to consider leaving and finding somewhere where you have that, because you're never going to be able to take ownership of a space where: a) you don't feel safe and b) you can't practically do anything in’

Learning how to claim sacred space as a queer Christian has been life-changing for Mel:

‘I've spent too much time not doing that. I have no intention of ever, ever stopping now.’

LISTEN HERE to Peter’s interview [25.5mins].

In the second interview, Open Table Network trustee Augustine shares his journey:

• from the Jehovah’s Witness tradition to becoming a Christian at 14,

• through conversion therapy and accepting his sexuality,

• from leaving abusive church environments to ordained ministry in an inclusive Evangelical Anglican church in Manchester,

• and from poverty through faith in God’s providence to the privilege of the best home he has ever had.

Augustine shares some powerful images of his faith and sense of calling to ministry. He says:

‘I feel like my faith right now is pretty strong. I feel like Jesus is my best friend, who is sometimes hitting me on head to say ‘What are you doing now?’ and also embracing me to show his love for me.’

His sense of identity in faith and in sexuality have been linked since he was 14, and as an adult, there have also been challenges around his identity as a Black person. He explains:

‘It was 2004 and that same summer that I decided to follow Jesus was the same summer that I realised, oh, I'm gay, and that was really, really hard. I always think that my understanding of sexuality and my understanding of faith coincide with each other because there was a new birth in both of them… Now my journey as a black queer Christian is so complicated. But I would say that lots of people of colour who are also Christian and queer has a very complicated dynamic in life’.

While at university in the USA, Augustine felt called to cross-cultural ministry., which led him to an internship at a big independent charismatic Evangelical church in Liverpool. Here he experienced conversion therapy - when he told the pastor he didn’t believe it would work for him, the pastor said ‘Conversion therapy is the pill to cure your cancer and you’re saying you’d rather die.’ Augustine reflects that although he was an adult, he was 4,000 miles from home, with no money, reliant on these spiritual leaders, so he felt like he didn’t have a choice. During this time, Augustine visited the first Open Table community in Liverpool - you can read about that here.

What kept Augustine going was his strong sense that was calling him to ministry despite the multiple obstacles he’s faced:

‘sometimes God open doors and sometimes He closes them. And I do believe that. But I also believe that sometime God opens doors and sometimes he closes them, and sometimes he gives you a sledgehammer to destroy the door because the door is closed not because God is closing it but because people put doors in the way, and walls in a way that could be torn down in Jesus name…. God continued to give me sledgehammers to destroy those doors, to open opportunities for more people, especially queer people, to hear the good news of Jesus Christ.’

Augustine credits his African-American prophetic religious tradition and his reading of liberation theology, which attempts to address the problems of poverty and social injustice as well as spiritual matters, for these insights. Despite hearing the way the church treated him over race, sexuality, and immigration being described as ‘like a battered woman who continues to go back to her abuser’, Augustine reflected that he takes inspiration from the Old Testament book of Hosea:

‘The church will be unfaithful all the time, but God still calls me to be in it, to be able to renew it and change it. And that's what I'm called to do. Even when it hurts me, and that sledgehammer, you're opening those doors and guess what happens, when you're going really hard with those doors, sometimes the sledgehammer comes back really quick, with a lot of force, and you're like, OK, how do you ground yourself? and you ground yourself with experience, with lovely people. You ground yourself with, I believe, with the Bible. You ground yourself with therapy, you ground yourself with having a drink with a friend. You ground yourself in those things so you can continue with the battle.’

Barney Miles, the host of the My Faithful Ally podcast, sums up the key messages from Augustine’s journey as:

• Remember where you’ve come from,

• Remember God's value for you,

• Go and show that to the world.

LISTEN HERE to Augustine’s interview [25.5mins].

IN APRIL 2022 the My Faithful Ally podcast will include an interview with OTN Coordinator Kieran Bohan. Watch this space.