Jo Inkpin Blog

God Forbid - queer Christians and Mardi Gras

17/3/2025

It was a pleasure recently to share with others in the Sydney Mardi Gras 2025 version of ABC;'s God Forbid program - see/listen here

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sharing life's colours

17/3/2025

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It was a huge delight to share in this year’s multifaith, multicultural Holi event arranged by Hindus for Human Rights yesterday. Here is a prayer of colours I shared, which may be of use elsewhere at other times:

Rainbow God,
Womb of all life
and of every colour,
You birth us in red, in our life’s energy, strengthening our passion.
Where this turns destructive,
meet us in our weakness and refresh our hope.
You surprise us in orange,
as in the fiery ball of sunset.
Assist us to express our gratitude, that we may energise others.
You cheer us in yellow,
in the welcome of sunshine and showers.
Help us have joy in this world,
marvelling at the bounty of creation.
You resurrect us in green,
in fresh signs of growth.
Enable us to delight in our planet,
and nurture it more responsibly.
You tend us in blue,
when we feel submerged
by suffering and loss.
Ease those who grieve,
and accompany us in acknowledging our own sadness as well as that of others.
You warm us in indigo,
in the loving relationships
of family and friends.
Strengthen us
to nourish each other,
that we may love as we are loved, without reserve.
You bathe us at in violet,
in mystery, grace and vision.
As we seek the fullness of life,
help us to be healed and to heal,
to hold to what is good
and to place our trust in you.
So, today and every day,
may we honour all the colours of our lives, voices and cultures:
in the diverse kaleidoscope of your creative and unifying love. Amen.

(prayer adapted by Josephine Inkpin,
from an original prayer by Harriet Davidson, from St Augustine Church Edinburgh)

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an invitation to celebrate TDoV 2025

17/3/2025

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Further to worship resources (see links below) for churches and schools for Sunday 30 March and the upcoming Trans Day of Visibility (Mon 31 March), Equal Voices is delighted to share two short videos encouraging active participation. Produced respectively by trans & gender diverse ecumenical Christians and Christian allies in Sydney, these were filmed at Pancake Pride this year, as an expression of Rainbow Christians Together commitment and a call to all to celebrate TGD lives and gifts. These can be used in the run up to the Trans Day of Visibility, in worship or other gatherings, and provide an opportunity to support transgender people, particularly in the light of current backlash. Please feel free to share these widely with others. With thanks to everyone involved, especially Orange Kao, Pitt Street and St Stephen’s Uniting Churches.

Celebrating Transgender Visibility liturgical resources

An invitation from Trans & Gender Diverse Christians to celebrate the Trans Day of Visibility

A message from Christian allies for the Trans Day of Visibility

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queer Sydney Christians still growing

7/3/2025

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Rainbow Christians Together came together, with the prompting of Equal Voices, for Sydney WorldPride 2023 and Pancake Pride was one of our events. We are not only still together and celebrating; we are growing. On the 4th of March 2025, we had another Pancake Pride, our third, and this time at St Stephen's Uniting Church in Macquarie Street Sydney.

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speaking out on concerns about restricting protests near places of worship

17/2/2025

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My address to the rally next to Sydney Town Hall tonight, on behalf of the Australian Religious Response to Climate Change (ARRCC), protesting the proposed NSW legislation on restricting protests near places of worship...

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letting go with Pitt Street Uniting Church

3/2/2025

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Yesterday was a special day as I stood down from ministry with Pitt Street Uniting Church to rewire for next steps ahead. I am so thankful for the wonderful love and greetings I have received and the terrific people who shared this time with me. My concluding address is to be found here, on the very appropriate feast of Candlemas, and below are some beautiful words written by a member of PSUC about the occasion...

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towards expansiveness: receiving the gifts of gender diversity

29/1/2025

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My keynote address to the Future Church Conference 2025 in Sydney focused on the invitation to expansive life and faith, through the joyful reception of the gifts of gender diversity in the face of the rising anti-gender 'confessional' movement and its desire for patriarchal, 're-colonising' repression across the world. See further here.

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towards a more flourishing church and world

29/1/2025

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It was a great delight to share in the second 'Future Church Conference' in Sydney this week, with other wonderful contributors and over 100 participants from various denominational backgrounds and none. Speakers included: Mikenzie Ling (Wiradjuri woman from the Uniting Church NSW/ACT's Walking Together team); Gershon Nimbalker (from Common Grace), speaking about remembering the poor; Radhika Sukumar-White (Leichhardt Uniting Church), on anti-racism; Dr Shane Clifton (a leading disability advocate and former Pentecostal college lecturer), reflecting on barriers to church participation; Jarrod McKenna on nonviolence; and myself, on the challenges and gifts of gender diversity. In the evening session, I also shared in a panel discussion around the so-called 'culture wars'.

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trans faith resisting Trump

24/1/2025

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Prior to Bishop Budde’s excellent sermon calling in on President Trump to practice the cardinal Christian virtue of mercy to the vulnerable, much work has been being done in Episcopalian circles to build solidarity for trans, immigrant and other groups now under attack in the USA. Here is a good recent article outlining some of these developments and wonderful key trans leaders - the kinds of work which could be done here and elsewhere before attacks come and to enable true flourishing. Among other things, I commend my fellow trans priest the Revd Carla Robinson’s work and words:

"it takes me back to my spiritual roots in the Black church (in the 1960s and 1970s). In those days, it was not unusual for someone to ask you in church, ‘How goes the struggle?’ It was asked in church because the church was actively engaged in the fight for civil rights and justice."
As Episcopalians,,“We’ve been called to something much different than ‘Nice.’ [A fighting church] acknowledges that there is a real struggle. …It acknowledges the reality of who is being hurt – how they are being hurt – and it calls upon the church to not be shy about facing those realities. … A fighting church acts and speaks from its place as followers of Jesus.”

May all those seeking to practise and nurture mercy gain strength at this time.

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vale Don Cupitt

21/1/2025

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I am moved to reflect on the death of Don Cupitt. For whilst I’ve never quite been a thoroughgoing non-realist, as a contemporary English ‘enfant terrible’ cleric, Don Cupitt had a huge influence on me in my formative years, and - maybe as I’m also perhaps a wee bit of an English spiritual maverick and theological gadfly (?!) - I delighted in his wonderful love of life, language and philosophy, his profound intellectual depth, spiritual honesty and good humour, and his delightful expressiveness, nuance and playfulness. We met three times in person, all very memorable - first, at Emmanuel College, when I was a young teenager, and Don almost persuaded me to theology at Cambridge; secondly, as an older teenager, by coincidence enjoyably sharing table for a few days in a retreat house on Lindisfarne (Holy Island); and thirdly when I invited him to speak one time in Newcastle upon Tyne. Most of all, I always loved the sparkle in his eyes and the warmth of his connection and interests

As it happens I was re-reading one of his books the other day - enchanted again by his encouragement to ‘poetical theology’, ‘blissful unknowing’, ‘ecstatic immanence’ and ‘solar living’ - and I realised that, despite all the books that have gone in our massive downsizing (albeit hundreds still left on the Pitt St UC shelves), I still have as many as 13 of his I’m currently keeping! Vale the long legged fly

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God Forbid - queer Christians and Mardi Gras

sharing life's colours

an invitation to celebrate TDoV 2025

queer Sydney Christians still growing

speaking out on concerns about restricting protests near places of worship

letting go with Pitt Street Uniting Church

towards expansiveness: receiving the gifts of gender diversity

towards a more flourishing church and world

trans faith resisting Trump

vale Don Cupitt

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