Know your place
Knowing your place is a difficult business. If you stand out, or seem to be adopting to high an impression of yourself people will feel the need to put you down. If you aren’t sure of your place then it can be difficult to accept praise that is intended to build you up.
If you identify with a group of people who have been despised, persecuted, criminalised and misrepresented for generations then actively having pride is necessary just to hold yourself in a place others would consider normal.
In Dumfries and beyond, the month of June is used to celebrate the presence of LGBTQ+ people within the community. While there are still people pushing anonymous hate mail through LGBTQ + office doors, and claiming to be doing so in Jesus name, the Church has work to do. Until the balance of “normal” in our community has shifted and it becomes clear that any such hate message sent in Jesus name is unrepresentative of the Church then we have work to do.
This post aims to help redress the balance. To help anyone reading this engage with this work, what follows is a collection of links to resources to help you explore, reflect on, and express your beliefs positively. Love will find a way.
This section is intended as a work in process, please comment and e-mail us to help it develop.
Links to webpages on various Church sites
Scottish Episcopal
Methodist
https://www.methodist.org.uk/about-us/the-methodist-church/the-inclusive-methodist-church/lgbtplus/
Roman Catholic
Baptist Union Scotland (Theological resources)
Baptists in England and Wales https://www.baptist.org.uk/Groups/357131/Links_to_resources.aspx
Ecumenical grassroots
https://www.christiansatpride.com/
Resources to download
Love is Love, a guide to becoming involved with pride (pdf)
https://www.methodist.org.uk/media/28406/love-is-love-pride-guide-feb2023.pdf
The Iona Community shop page
Historical news articles,
Stories and moments as the theology gets worked out in practice. (We will post more as the month progresses)
National Records of Scotland Archive
https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/learning/features/hidden-lgbt-histories
A rainbow is flying over Kirk (2016): https://www.stonewall.org.uk/node/28593
Church votes to allow equal marriage (2017)
https://www.scotland.anglican.org/church-votes-allow-equal-marriage/
A church leaves the SEC over equal marriage issue (2018)
The SEC primus on LGBTQ+ inclusion (2022)
https://www.gaytimes.co.uk/originals/the-primus-of-the-scottish-episcopal-church-on-lgbtq-inclusion/
One reply on “Pride”
I had a chat with a rector a few years ago and the subject of gay marriage within the church came up. On being asked if he would be willing to conduct the ceremony his reply was ‘ Love is love, of course I would ‘ I also know a gay couple who was denied this and they left their church and now travel much further to a church who welcome them.