‘Our Beating Heart’ is an art installation from Studio Vertigo that is part of Bristol’s Light Festival. It features a large mirror ball heart outside St Stephen’s, an ancient church in the heart of the Old City.
Inspired by the idea of shared love and the ability of disco balls to joyfully bring people together. The light plays on the mirrors, transforming and blurring boundaries between areas.
Thanks to Rev’d Kat Campion-Spall for sending in this picture from outside her church. Kat is a member of General Synod and her church are on the journey towards joining Inclusive Church officially.
St Mary’s Todmorden is a parish that seeks to live out its inclusion in practical terms. The congregation includes members who reflect the history of LGBT acceptance over the decades, with older members who got together when homosexuality was still criminalised, some who were in straight marriages before they were able to come out and others who have been together throughout, with varying degrees of acceptance or recognition in society.
Some have chosen to get married; others, including a member who is our local Calderdale councillor, have chosen civil partnerships, for feminist reasons. Several are also single including the gay Town Crier and the lesbian vicar. The congregation is also full of allies. Whilst one churchwarden is married to his husband, a wedding that happened at the Unitarian Church where same-sex weddings are possible, the other churchwarden has been the best woman at the marriage of her gay best friends. And the churchwarden at the other parish in the Benefice has recently been the proud dad at his son’s wedding to a husband, in the Methodist church in Chester.
Yet 2024 saw two firsts. In September, for the first time a lesbian couple brought their daughter for baptism, a thoroughly joyous occasion. And in December the parish saw its first celebration before God of a same-sex commitment, a service crafted using the Prayers of Love and Faith to celebrate the love and commitment of a couple from the congregation, after their legal wedding had been held at the Registry office. It was all the more special because Gerry and Jazz are regular members of St Mary’s congregation.
Jazz and Gerry will provide their own reflection on what that celebration meant for them but from the point of view of the vicar taking the service, it was a joy. It was a joy not only to celebrate, proclaim and hold before God Gerry and Jazz’s love, but also to welcome their family and friends to celebrate with them, including many members of St Mary’s congregation.
It was, of course, not the first time that I had prepared and conducted a service with a couple celebrating their love and their commitment to one another. I have taken many weddings over the course of my ministry, conducted wedding blessings and special celebrations for couples getting married abroad. Always adapting and tailoring the services to the couples themselves.
One example, in my last parish, was for a couple celebrating their engagement as they were getting married in Brazil, where the bride’s family lived. Yet their London friends wanted to be able to celebrate with them. Initially they asked for a wedding, at less than a month’s notice. To marry them would have been possible if we had sought a Common Licence but would have created legally interesting questions for the Brazilian marriage. So, instead we crafted a blessing for their engagement and prayers for their wedding and married life. It was one of the most joyous celebrations ever held at St Edward’s and the couple waltzed out of church to Ravel’s Bolero, followed by a waltzing congregation.
I have also conducted ceremonies that celebrate same-sex couples in other parts of the country. At the parish where I finished curacy two lesbian couples – also members of the congregation involved in the choir and Sunday School – had a celebration of their civil partnerships, in the days before same sex marriage was possible.
As chaplain to Birmingham University, I led a service for a gay couple who were members at the local parish church, celebrating the 25th anniversary of their relationship. They took it very seriously, one got confirmed prior to their celebration, to confirm his commitment to the church. It fell to me to take the service as the parish was in vacancy. The churchwarden refused to allow the celebration in church, so we held it in the Golf Club next door. Had the request been put to the congregation I have no doubt that it would have been in church. Several members of the congregation attended the golf club service and were disappointed that they could not celebrate with the couple in their church.
Another celebration was at the home of one of the couple, who were academics at the university. It was the coming together of two women with Quaker, Catholic and Jewish heritage, so the service incorporated elements of all three traditions. This was well before Prayers of Love and Faith, in the grey area left by the church’s official disapproval.
The Prayers of Love and Faith provide a bit more official recognition but the uncertainty and restrictions around them mean that things still feel in a bit of a grey area. This has meant that there are some members of St Mary’s Congregation who do not accept them, because they do not go far enough. Choosing instead to go to churches in denominations where they are unambiguously welcomed. It is sad when our own faithful congregation members feel they must go elsewhere.
However, Gerry and Jazz very clearly chose St Mary’s for their celebration, as it is their church, even though it meant having to go to the Registry Office in Halifax for the legal bits. We were able to incorporate a personally meaningful service using the PLF into the gathered worship of their church community, which their family and friends could also attend.
As an expression of their love for one another they each chose a piece of music for the other, along with a reading from the Song of Songs. The lighting of a rainbow candle together was a wonderful way to symbolise their unity. The prayers also celebrated the love and support of their family and friends.
Gerry is an actor – with a history of playing local hero, Anne Lister and the Bronte sisters at Haworth. Many guests were also from the theatrical world – so the ceremony also featured dramatic features and family and local traditions, such as the wedding chimney sweep, a role that Gerry’s late father used to play. Friends were also involved in the celebration, with one playing the harp and music from Anne Lister’s time, and another, from local rainbow faith services, playing the organ.
The whole event and the preparations for it were truly blessed, joyful and the best celebration of love in its many forms.
Rev Dr Catherine Shelley, Vicar of St Mary’s Todmorden
Catherine is secretary of NADAWM (the National Association for Diocesan Advisors in Women’s Ministry) and has just been elected to General Synod.