'Any table of Christ from which you have been excluded was not yet Christ's table'

News & events from the Open Table Network of LGBTQIA+ affirming Christian worship communities - 21st July 2021

My Dear Friends,

Please accept my sincere thanks for the cards and letters sent to me on the occasion of my 90th birthday. I experienced the joy of reliving moments of my life in reading them. They were more than 500 in number and came from every continent of this earth except for the Arctic and Antarctic regions! I read them with joy. I soon realized that I could never respond to them individually, so I hope you can accept this communication.

The Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel suggest some simple actions to take in solidarity with people in Palestine and Israel and to help ensure a lasting peace.

Beloved and world-renowned, John Shelby Spong, whose books have sold more than a million copies, was bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark for 24 years before his retirement in 2001. His admirers acclaim him as a teaching bishop who makes contemporary theology accessible to the ordinary layperson — he’s considered the champion of an inclusive faith by many, both inside and outside the Christian church.

It marks the anniversary of the Stonewall riots, a protests that sparked a movement for equality for LGBTQIA+ people in the USA and across the world. The first event was in New York on 28th June 1970.

Today it is a celebration of the relative freedoms LGBTQIA+ people have won in the last 50+ years, but it also remains a protest against the prejudice which still holds us back, especially for our siblings in countries where they may risk their liberty or event their lives to live authentically and openly as LGBTQIA+.

June is also the anniversary of the start of the first Open Table community in Liverpool, which started on Sunday 15th June 2008, 13 years ago. It's also six years since we became a network - little did we know then that we would become a charity and a growing partnership of Christian worship communities which welcome and affirm LGBTQIA people, our families, friends and all our allies.

Keep in touch with the Open Table Network!

Our communities — Open Table Network

For details of all the current active Open Table communities, visit the Open Table website - if you are in a community and the details are not up to date, please email Kieran: network@opentable.lgbt.

We are also on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, where we aim to help promote each local group and share articles, events and resources of interest on faith, gender and sexuality. We're here to help you raise the profile of what you do locally - we're better together and it's good to share what works well for you so others might learn from your experience.

Keep in touch by email: network@opentable.lgbt or call the Open Table mobile: 07501 753 618 - leave a message and I'll call you back.

If there's anything you'd like to see in these e-newsletters e.g. blog posts, book reviews, related events or reflections please do drop me a line, I'd be delighted to share them!

Deadline: End of the month for inclusion in next month's newsletter. Thank you for your support!

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“We are called, all of us, for a time and for a season and God would have us use it wisely.”

Scott Morrison, Australia’s prime minister and a Pentecostal Christian, flew in on a taxpayer-funded plane to deliver those words to a church on the Gold Coast.

His sermon-like speech was given to the national conference of Australian Christian Churches – the umbrella body for the majority of churches in the country’s only Christian denomination showing growth: Pentecostalism.

As many as 700 mainly young people formally left the Catholic Church in the Diocese of Antwerp in two weeks.

This is following on from the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith’s barring the blessing of same sex unions, Bishop of Antwerp Johan Bonny has revealed. The bishop, interviewed by The Tablet Rome correspondent Christopher Lamb in our latest webinar, spoke about the “dramatic” backlash among “mainly straight people” who saw the Vatican document as “a step too far” during a discussion about the Church’s ministry to LGBT Catholics and same-sex couples. Sarah Mac Donald reports in The Tablet.

From Germany, Christa Pongratz Lippitt reports that more than 10,500 priests have signed a petition put together by a group of German Catholic priests who are against the ruling and many are forging ahead with plans for blessings

In a press release on the 4th May the organisers said:

Dearest Greenbelters,

We’re absolutely heartbroken to tell you that we need to cancel Greenbelt for a second year. We have spent the last few months hoping and praying that the government would step up and provide festivals like ours with the insurance protection we need to go ahead. It is clear now that we have been waiting in vain.

The day after Donald Trump won the presidential election, Mike Boyle decided he was ready to become an Episcopalian.

A practicing Catholic all his life, Boyle was serious enough about his faith that he had spent three years as a member of a Dominican community, in the priestly formation track. But even prior to 2016, he was growing frustrated with the behavior of lay Catholics and clergy. With the initiation of the Fortnight for Freedom during the Obama administration, he began to be uncomfortable with the church leaders' obvious promotion of right-wing political ideologies.

Then Pope Francis was elected. Boyle initially hoped the new pope would bring about much-needed reform, but after a few years started to doubt whether Francis could really change things. He began to be drawn toward an Anglo-Catholic Episcopal parish.

My name is Jonathan Abernethy-Barkley I am a PhD student at Lancaster University and an ordained minister recognised by the Congregational Federation within the United Kingdom researching sexual abuse and its effects on faith.

Climate Justice for All is a campaign run by workers in Britain, Uruguay, Italy, Zambia and Fiji and together we have built a campaign designed to encourage every Methodist community around the world to take action for climate justice, in the lead up to COP26.

We’d love for you to be part of spreading the word about the campaign with your church community.

THIS SUNDAY our online service will mark Palm Sunday in preparation for Easter with a modern reflection on the Stations of the Cross.

To illustrate our Stations of the Cross reflections, we will use a series of striking images from artist and pastor Mary Button, who has created many versions of this popular devotion, and reflections by lesbian Christian author, minister and historian Kittredge Cherry.

The “post-Christian era” in the UK will be cemented by data emerging from Sunday’s census which is expected to show further generational disengagement from organised religion, according to a leading academic.

The once-a-decade snapshot of the country has included a voluntary question about religion since 2001. In 2011, returns across England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland showed 59.3% ticking Christianity, a fall from 71.6% a decade earlier.

On-going abuse of process against Dean Percy, Oxford

Averting a catastrophe in… | Progressive Christianity Network Britain (pcnbritain.org.uk)

Calls for a cull of Church bureaucracy -

The Church of England's… | Progressive Christianity Network Britain (pcnbritain.org.uk)

CofE Synod preparations - vital for an inclusive Church

General Synod Elections -… | Progressive Christianity Network Britain (pcnbritain.org.uk)

Science engaging with religion??? See resources from The Faraday Institute

Overview | Faraday (cam.ac.uk)

As the Church of England debates its future read the Bishop of Blackburn's take on it:

The Primacy of the Parish | Progressive Christianity Network Britain (pcnbritain.org.uk)

As the U.K. develops a harsher treatment for refugees a postwar refugee remembers in this Christian Aid video

Around the world, growing numbers of people are rejecting traditional faiths and choosing their own spiritual path. Eight atheists and agnostics open up...

https://www.theguardian.com/gl...

A Church of Ireland priest blogs on religion in Ireland today

https://www.pcnbritain.org.uk/...

News of Conservative Polish Church in crisis

https://www.pcnbritain.org.uk/...

We have a political and economic system that continues to put profit before people and 2020 exposed this reality again

Justice around the world:… | Progressive Christianity Network Britain (pcnbritain.org.uk)

Christian Aid highlights effects of Covid on already vulnerable communities

Christmas Appeal - Christian Aid

PCN is no exception. Conferences have been cancelled, groups have not met, trustees have not travelled to their meetings. However new forms of networking have emerged and, in some measure, thrived. At the present time ( March 2021) many of our PCN groups are holding regular Zoom meetings and some groups report large attendances, with some groups inviting speakers from across the globe to address their members. There are concerns that some PCN members are excluded from such meetings because of technological and other reasons. And obviously there is a desire for real meetings once again when restrictions are lifted and it is safe to meet. Each PCN group will, of course , have to resolve these issues as best as it can.

PCN as an organisation has embarked on staging our own webinars, with the first ,with Brian McLaren, attracting over 250 participants. PCN trustees have been meeting on Zoom. Our website is now advertising a range of online events being hosted by different organisations. PCN members have asked which progressive churches are offering on line worship services, which they might ‘attend’.

In so many ways, as this pandemic has closed down so much ( tragically businesses etc) a new world of interconnected events and meetings etc has opened up and this is clearly so for PCN.

What then of the future?

In a letter to the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Justice they say, “This is a huge Bill, both in length and in potential consequences - for young people calling for social change facing greater criminalisation by the state, for Gypsy and Traveller communities facing threats to their way of life, and for anyone who values freedom of expression and the right to make yourself heard against the powerful."

With elections to the Church of England's General Synod are just six months away a new website supporting inclusive Anglicans wanting has been launched. www.inclusive-synod.org brings together information for anyone wanting to know more about the elections, whether it's how to vote or what to do if you want to stand for election. It has been produced by the Inclusive Synod project, a collaboration between several inclusive Christian organisations, including the Progressive Christianity Network, Inclusive Church, OneBodyOneFaith and Modern Church.

Several letters requesting a meeting with Archbishop Claudio Gugerotti have been sent by 18 survivors. They joined forces to speak out following publication by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) in November. The report highlights failures of the Catholic Church to deal with abuse by priests and singled out Cardinal Vincent Nichols for criticism over his response to victims.

In their letter, the survivors wrote: “We have fought for years to have our voice heard by the Church – more often than not, that voice has been dismissed, ignored or treated with contempt. We write to you with the hope that our voice will be heard now.”