Pride, Riots and Glitter

On Saturday I went to church. I was filled with joy, felt the love of God so much that it made me cry, blessed people, we sung together with hearts filled with passion, and had tea & chat afterwards. Where was this church? well, actually it was Brighton Pride, and honestly it was one of the most spiritual experiences I’ve had in a while. I thought I was going there to be an ally, to show people that the church isn’t all anti and angry, and to share God’s love; actually I ended up being massively blessed.

I started the day plastering my face in glitter, and donning a brightly coloured flower garland and my dog collar, but unsure how people would respond to me as a vicar at Pride. I know some clergy go but I am also so aware of the pain the church has caused to the LGBTQIA+ community. Marching in the parade with ‘Christians at Pride’ was a new experience for me and I am sure some might have found it hard seeing the church represented there, but no one shared that, not one person was negative. In fact it was the opposite, on the way people smiled or wished me a ‘Happy Pride’ like it was Christmas; at the station fellow brightly clad travellers chatted to one another, having never met before, sharing hopes for the day and tales of years past; arriving at the meet point for ‘Christians at Pride’ I was met with smiles, hugs and a lot of excitement for the day; and in the parade itself regularly when people saw our banner they cheered, waved, or said ‘thank you’.

The float in front of us blared out a fabulous array of tunes from Abba to Erasure, Beyoncé to Soft Cell’s Tainted Love – being an 80s kid has never felt so good! and then all of a sudden Steve Winwood’s ‘Higher Love’ cranked up, and instantly became the soundtrack to my day. 

Think about it, there must be higher love

Down in the heart or hidden in the stars above

Without it, life is wasted time

Look inside your heart. I’ll look inside mine…

Higher Love, Steve Winwood

As I sang to my heart’s content I was suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of God’s love and tears sprang to my eyes. So many people singing in unison, about a higher love. It was a hymn, a prayer, a longing for love, a love that overcomes hate, that is stronger than what life throws at us. I looked around at the crowd, everyone smiling, celebrating, cheering, a mutual cause in our hearts, and yet all so different. Gender, age, race, religion, none of it seemed to matter here. Is this what heaven is like? I wondered.

Recently someone highlighted to me this quote from Very Rev Dr Mark Oakley:

God gives us diversity, the tragedy is we make division of it

Very Rev Dr Mark Oakley

On this same day where thousands (300,000 actually) came together in our city, in unity, in love and in celebration, in other cities around the country thousands were coming together to sow hate, to make division out of diversity. Here we were assaulted by a riot on the senses, of colour and sound and joy, elsewhere literal riots took on a more sinister form. Where we sang ‘bring me your higher love’, others attacked places of worship.

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I am struck that today is the Feast of the Transfiguration in the CofE. We remember when Jesus took some of the disciples up a mountain and there he was transfigured – he shone before them – in God’s presence. They were told not to tell anyone what had happened, the time was not right. Moses who was also there, had had a similar experience years earlier, his face shining having been in God’s presence, so much so that people were afraid when they saw him, so he covered it up. If ever there was a time for us to smother ourselves in celestial glitter as Christians, and not to be afraid, it is now. The racist Islamophobic thugs causing riots and inciting murder are spreading hate, we need to stand up and spread love. In some cases they are citing defending Christianity or the church as if this is a 21^st C crusade. It’s laughable really (except it’s not), the church is not a white institution, Jesus was a middle eastern man from Palestine for goodness sake, the first Christians were people of colour. The Church in this country is not a banner for Britishness (whatever that even is) the Bible says God’s banner over us is love (Song of Solomon 2:4).

Jesus was not a mercenary, a vigilante, he called out the hypocrisy and hatred of the Jewish leadership. He showed people a new way and wherever he went people were enthralled. Some however were enraged, some threatened to kill him. They had a choice and we have a choice too. How do we want to be, as people of faith? How do we want to represent the God we believe in?

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Being at Pride felt like a spiritual experience, it was like a huge church! What I felt there was overwhelming love and joy, and I found myself thinking wow what if church was like this! How easy it would be to share the love of God. Because it isn’t always easy is it? The church has a bad reputation in many people’s eyes. Someone I know put a meme on Facebook this week which said: ‘Sometimes the nicest people you meet are covered in tattoos and the most judgmental people you meet go to church on Sundays.’ The rise of far right thought is not new, it’s been growing for while and the church has often been part of sharing that hatred. The church has ostracised the LGBTQIA+ community. The church has excluded people of colour. You know when the first people came in on the Windrush from the Carribbean they came thinking the place they could go to be made to feel at home was church – they found the opposite. These were people who had been invited here to help rebuild the county after WW2 and they couldn’t even worship with us. 

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Not easy being a Christian? well I went to a parade on Saturday for a group of people who have been marginalised, suffered prejudice and violence, had (have) hatred thrown at them and yet thousands of people showed up in support and in love. If only you could bottle that sense of love at Pride and share it with those who so desperately need it across our country. Well, in a way we can because we are all carriers of that love. Edmund Burke is famously misquoted as saying all it takes for evil to thrive is for good people to do nothing. It may not have been him but it’s a helpful quote nonetheless. Moses covered his face when it was shining because people were afraid but we need to let God’s love shine through us, now more than ever. We all know what glitter is like – even a tiny dose spreads like wildfire so that you’re finding it in your pants weeks later. We need to be a people who share love like that. Who love, who welcome, who give hospitality, who are generous, who are kind and who stand up for those who are being isolated, marginalised and attacked. Our job as Christians is to shine the love of God, in word and in deed wherever we go. Or in the medium of Pride: let’s be the glitter in the grit *

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Words from a prayer by Rev Sam Lundquist