[A talk given via Zoom at the LGBTQIA+ Experiences of Faith event organised by the Lincoln College, Oxford JCR]
I wish to start with a brief plug. As part of my ministerial training, I need to conduct a rights of passage service. So, if any of you here this afternoon wish to get married, you are especially welcome to contact me! You might laugh at this but one of my other options is conducting a funeral and I’m sure I will get even fewer willing volunteers for that!
Why can I make the offer of being able to marry people in this queer space so confidently? Because the chapel of Harris Manchester College is the only Oxbridge college chapel registered to preform both opposite and same-sex marriages. But why, in this age, is it the case that HMC is the only college chapel to offer marriage equally to all who want it to the full extent that the law allows? In part it is because of the college’s Unitarian heritage.
Unitarianism is a liberal denomination that is greatly influenced by the Christian tradition as well as Enlightenment thought. It also isn’t afraid to take insights from other faith traditions seriously, is democratically run, and offers membership with no test of faith and without forcing members to sign up to creeds or doctrines. But most importantly for the purposes of my talk today, its General Assembly resolved that Ministry of the Denomination “be open to all regardless of sex, race, colour or sexual orientation” – and it resolved this in 1977 – that is over 10 years before the notorious Section 28 was introduced – and 17 years before I was born!
I’ll talk more about that resolution later, but Unitarianism has never been a top-down institution, and LGBTQIA+ Liberation is never granted from on high by benevolent cishets – it is (I believe – with God on our side) always hard thought for and won. While my denomination has a lot of worthy stuff to celebrate in this area we shouldn’t forget those individuals who dared to stand together and fight for change. Those are the people I want to honour here tonight. Many of those ministers were gay men, some were great allies at a time when being so came at some personal coast. Despite Unitarians being able to boast of have the first woman to train for ministry in England – Gertrude von Petzold – who trained at HMC from 1901 – 1904, Unitarian Ministry was, unfortunately, undisputedly male dominated until more recent decades. Now we are a little more diverse!
Of course, we LGBTQIA+ people are always around regardless whether our presence is official accepted or not. I know of one very well-respected minister who was even President of the General Assembly (highest position a Minister can hold nationally in Unitarianism) during the 50s. He’s long since deceased but, as I do not know for certain whether he ether came out in his life time, I won’t name him here, who upon realising he was not straight, simply moved his bloke into the Manse. He, his new bloke, and his wife, lived very comfortably together for many years – it was no secret locally and apparently not an issue with the congregation!
Much of what happened in the 50s shares this slightly clandestine and undercover character. I know though Unitarian oral history that blessings of same-sex couples were performed in some Unitarian chapels as far back as the 1950s but, of course, there is little ‘on the record’ evidence of this that I have been able to find. This is hardly surprising, the Wolfenden Report, the first official government commissioned report that recommended the decriminalisation of homosexuality, was only published in 1957. A report that, incidentally, was overseen by a committee that included V. A. Demant, an Anglo-Catholic Priest who originally trained for Unitarian ministry (and was thus a fellow HMC alum).
Things do not really become much clearer until the early 1970s. By then the Quakers had made considerable strides, publishing Towards a Quaker View of Sex in 1963. This was a very influential report that took a groundbreakingly liberal view on the “homosexuality issue” while still coming from a faith prospective. 1970 saw the creation of “intergroup” an initiative of the Lewisham Unitarian congregation. A similar group was launched at the Golders Green Unitarian congregation and was pioneered by the Rev. Keith Gilley, who, you guessed it, was another HMC alum! Although, what you might not know, is that he is also one of yours having completed his first degree at Lincoln College! Intergroup, and its Golders Green equivalent, were primarily discussion groups that aimed to encourage dialogue and develop positive relationships between (to use the language of the time) gay and straight people. This group was short lived, but it did launch a couple of more well-known organisations, the Lesbian and Gay Bereavement Project, and the very influential, Switchboard – both of these organisations benefited from the involvement of Dudley Cave, who was Keith’s assistant at Golders Green.
At the 1973 General Assembly Meetings the official process started in the national denomination to produce a report on the “homosexuality issue”. This report entitled, ‘Suggested Remedies for Community Strife and Personal Destress Arising from Attitudes Towards Homosexuals’ was put to the 1975 GA Meetings and, by the standards of today, reads even more quaint and dated than its title, but, despite how cold and clinical it was, and the many valid critiques that have been made of it since, it was quite radical for the time it was produced. The General Assembly established a committee (in time honoured tradition) to look at how to implement the report’s conclusions.
Barely a peep was heard from this committee until in 1977 when, it presented the motion, “That this General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches declares its abhorrence of discrimination solely on the basis of sexual orientation and directs Council to implement the fourth recommendation of the Study Group report presented to the Assembly at Liverpool in 1975, which was: ‘to bring liberalising pressures to bear on those public bodies where discrimination against the homosexual still persists’.”
At the same Meetings, Keith Gilley moved a motion stating, “’That this General Assembly etc., resolves that the Ministry of this Denomination be open to all regardless of sex, race, colour or sexual orientation.’”
Both these motions were passed but not unanimously. It took several prominent Unitarian ministers to publicly come out as gay during the debate, as well as several prominent members of the Woman’s League (a Unitarian group that, at the time, was seen as a conservative force within the movement) to surprisingly speak in favour of the motion, for these motions to get over the line. But the votes were won!
Where next for LGBT people in Unitarian Ministry? The Rev. Dr. Ann Peart, a Unitarian feminist theologian and Lesbian, and activist who oversaw many of these developments I’ve described, owns a badge that reads “Homosexuals make batter ministers”. In her work, and in the work of other ministers and theologians from many different denominational backgrounds, the case is made that LGBTQIA+ people have unique contributions to make to the Ministry. These qualities are going to be vital to the Church going forward. Toleration and inclusion doesn’t necessarily equal affirmation. Our communities have found different ways of doing things compared to our cishet friends. These things take time to be integrated into institutions that have been decidedly straight for decades, the current sexual ethics debate in my denomination, over the question of polyamory, is evidence of this. Yet the debate thus far has been focused on us and our existence. Yet I believe there are several things that the LGBTQIA+ community can teach the Church. If the Church is to survive, we need to rescue it from heteronormativity. We need to queer the Church!
