The Church Cannot Claim to Be Safe While LGBT+ People Are Still at Risk

Father Jarel Robinson-Brown writes:

Recently in October, I had the honour of being one of two Keynote Speakers at the recent conference Safeguarding LGBT+ People in the Church. The Conference, which was co-sponsored by St Columba’s United Reformed Church and Exeter College and held in Oxford, was much more than another ecclesial talking shop. Convened by the inimitable Chrissie Chevassut and held in memory of the late Bishop Alan Wilson, himself a beacon of solidarity and courage, the Conference was a mirror, held up gently but unmistakably, to a Church still struggling to face the harm experienced by many of its own people at its own hands. The Conference was also, however, a bearing witness – one to the other of the pain and suffering we ourselves had borne in the struggle for justice and safety which is often so denied and unseen.

the Conference was a mirror, held up gently but unmistakably, to a Church still struggling to face the harm experienced by many of its own people at its own hands.

Jarel

For decades, LGBT+ Christians have been asked to sacrifice authenticity for belonging, to trade silence for safety. Our stories of exclusion, coercive “pastoral care,” and, in some cases, outright spiritual abuse are not relics of a bygone era. They remain painfully present, and continue largely to be unacknowledged. The fact that this age still requires a whole conference on how to safeguard LGBT+ people speaks volumes about the distance still to be travelled.

What set this gathering apart was its refusal to treat safeguarding as a narrow, bureaucratic function. Speakers and attendees insisted that genuine safeguarding must include spiritual and psychological safety, careful attention to the law of the land and the Church, not merely the prevention of physical harm. Churches have often been quick to promote themselves as “welcoming,” but welcome without protection is an empty and deceptive gesture. Warm words cannot patch over the wounds caused by theology wielded as a weapon or pastoral care that crosses into control, abuse and violent harm.

A striking theme throughout the conference was the legal and moral responsibility churches now bear. Safeguarding cannot be an optional virtue; it is a duty. And when churches fail to recognise the vulnerability of LGBT+ congregants, especially young people, they risk not only moral failure but legal consequences. No amount of doctrinal nuance should obscure the simple fact that harm is harm.

Yet the event also offered hope. Many leaders present were eager to continue to build churches where identity is not merely tolerated but affirmed, where pastoral care honours dignity rather than undermines it, and where a serious theology underpins the institutional response to safeguarding. The commitment of a mixed group of attendees signals a slow but significant cultural shift: a recognition that safeguarding LGBT+ people is not a “special interest,” but a Christian obligation rooted in compassion, justice, and truth.

The wider Church must now decide whether it is prepared to move beyond conferences (organised in this case by the marginalised and oppressed themselves!) and towards action. Policies must be rewritten. Training must change. Leaders must be accountable – this is perhaps the most important of all. However, more fundamental to all of this: LGBT+ Christians must be heard, believed, supported, and protected.

If the Church wants to be taken seriously when it speaks of love and safety, then safeguarding LGBT+ people cannot remain a side conversation. It must become central to its mission, and this Conference served quite simply to set the record clear: harm is being done, you are aware of this, do something to stop it.

Further details of the Conference can be found here: https://www.canva.com/design/DAGqJ4RrdXs/eu3iGIB75RRP8gH_VXuc_Q/view?utm_content=DAGqJ4RrdXs&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=viewer