Gay priest says there’s a lot of people who would like him ‘to get lost’ – Cambridgeshire Live

The relationship between LGBTQ+ people and faith has long been a tricky one. As just one example, same-sex couples are still unable to get married in the Church of England, despite same-sex marriage being legal in the UK for nearly 10 years.

But what if there could be a more positive and constructive relationship, one of mutual trust and acceptance between LGBTQ+ people and people of faith? Charlie Bell’s book, Queer Holiness: The Gift of LGBTQI People to the Church , which came out at the end of May 2022, suggests that this is not only possible, but essential.

Charlie was ordained as a priest in the Church of England in 2022, and has seen the ways that LGBTQ+ people are treated within the church. He says: “Behind that is actually a deep degradation and devaluing of their relationships – I should say, our relationships.”

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For Charlie, spending time within the church made him want to point out where it was “failing” LGBTQ+ people, as well as where it could do better. He wrote the book as a way to challenge people’s assumptions, and to show how both communities hold value for each other.

“I think there’s a lot of people who would like me to get lost really,” he says, “but I think that the message that the Church of England has and the story of Christianity is true. I think it’s worth staying in and trying to effect change, because it’s full of good people.”

Some of the problems that Charlie has seen include the way that LGBTQ+ people are talked about in religious spaces. He says: “For years, LGBTQ+ people have been seen through this kind of lens of suspicion, and people have bought into stereotyped understandings of what queer people get up to in their day-to-day.”

From the other side of the aisle, Charlie says: “I can see why queer people feel that the church has been for those people that kind of fit the mould [of straight, white men], rather than LGBTQ+ people.” But he wants to challenge “some of the lazy thinking” around the church and around sexuality.

As well as being an ordained priest, Charlie is a psychiatrist who spent 10 years studying in Cambridge. In his late 20s, he says he had a “nagging feeling” that he should explore “a call to priesthood”, and so began training.

“It’s not been an easy journey, partly because of the institutional homophobia that the Church of England holds,” Charlie says. “There’s a lot of sort of wink-wink, nudge-nudge stuff, intrusive questioning about your own relationship and sexual life, which is never asked of straight people.”

Charlie says that his work as a psychiatrist and his work as a priest are both very time-consuming and require a lot of “careful diary management”. He jokes: “I sometimes say that I work 100 per cent for the NHS and 50 per cent for the church, which doesn’t quite add up to 100.”

“My day job helps me remain grounded as a priest,” he says, on a more serious note. “If my theology, my Christian practice, cannot speak to those real-life situations, which many of us never get exposed to – a psychotic patient or a patient in the midst of a mental breakdown – then it cannot speak to anybody.”

For Charlie, the response to Queer Holiness has been divided between those who find the book very “affirming”, and those who completely disagree with it. But he says that there is a third group “in the middle”, who have previously “thought that it’s value-neutral, not to have an opinion on same-sex relationships or on LGBTQ+ people”.

That third group, Charlie says, have to “realise that it’s not morally neutral to not have an opinion”, and he has found that some are beginning to think “actually, this is relevant to my life”. He adds that “it’s important for me to engage in trying to make things better, so that for me has been encouraging.”

A spokesperson for the Church of England said: “The Church of England believes that all people are made in the image of God and must be cherished for who they are. The Church is committed to doing all we can to make everyone feel as welcome and safe as possible.

“Since November 2020 the Church has been carrying out a process of learning and listening about questions of identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage which, it is hoped, will help the bishops to discern a way forward for the Church on these vitally important questions. A report of the gathered responses from across the church will be published this autumn and will feed into the bishops’ discussions.

“It is expected they will then publish recommendations in time for the February meeting of General Synod in 2023. Although there are deep and painful divisions within the Church of England over questions of identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage, the bishops hope that by listening prayerfully to this church-wide learning and engagement, a way forward for the Church of England will emerge in the coming year.”

In August, Charlie will be speaking at Ely Cathedral about his book as part of the Pride in Ely Fringe Festival. “For a cathedral to not only host the pride flag, but also to host a lecture which engages with these really heavily contested issues of sexuality and religion, shows that it’s taking its responsibility as a place of learning and public good seriously,” Charlie says.

Looking towards the future, Charlie says that he is “hopeful” that the tide will start to turn to improve the relationship between LGBTQ+ people and religion. “If there’s going to be change,” he says, “this is the moment that change will happen.”

Charlie Bell will give a lecture about his book, Queer Holiness, The Gift of LGBTQI People to the Church , at Ely Cathedral on Friday August 5 at 6:30pm. Pride in Ely will return with a physical festival on Saturday August 6.

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