Jo Inkpin Blog - Blessed Imp

giving thanks for Uniting Church steps forward

16/7/2024

Giving thanks today both for the Trans & Gender Diverse (TGD) Affirming resolution yesterday at the triennial gathering of the Assembly of the Uniting Church in Australia, and, perhaps as or more important, for the overall spirit of discussion. This represents the first specific positive national affirmation of TGD folks in a mainstream Church in Australia and marks a step in the ever more necessary conversations and relationships between TGD & other queer people and communities of faith, not least those of diverse cultural backgrounds.
See official Uniting Church Assembly report here...

Alleluia for NSW anti-conversion therapy legislation!

22/3/2024

Wonderful to meet up with some of the heroes of the conversion therapy and orientation change struggle last night before the historic passing of NSW legislation. With the particular hard work of Warren Talbot, Pitt Street Uniting Church was able to support the final stages of campaigning by organising a public letter, signed by 36 Uniting Church clergy, to the Premier and members of the NSW Parliament. At last, we have legislation in NSW, which may even be improved in practice over time, to help stop the scandalous spiritual abuse of so many people’s lives (and queer as a whole, despite the lazy headline!). Thankyou to everyone who has fought so long and hard for this - I know how costly it has been for so many. Now, as on child abuse, may religious bodies as a whole start actively cooperate and return to paths of owning deep truths, nurturing healing, and enriching all our lives.

enlarging and enacting oikoumene today

15/4/2023

address to the Eco-Iftar 2023, lead organised by Muslim Collective,
at Pitt Street Uniting Church, Sydney, by the Revd Dr Josephine Inkpin...

Pancake Pride and Faith@WorldPride

19/11/2022

We're delighted to be hosting the Rainbow Christians Together Faith@WorldPride event on ShroveTuesday (aka the original Mardi Gras) at Pitt Street Uniting Church - with food, great music, wonderful speakers, worship and fabulous friends
(and yes, we hope to live-stream the event too for those who can't join us onsite)
#faithfullylgbt
#lovenotexclusion
#rainbowchristian

ecumenical blessings

13/10/2022

Wonderful this afternoon, at Pitt St UC, to host pastors from the Asia-Pacific region of the EKD (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland) - a federation of Lutheran, Reformed and United Protestant churches - talking First Nations recognition, progressive theology, climate change, ecumenical fruitfulness and other good things
A beautiful gift of a scarf made by an Indian women’s project of the ecumenical Bangalore United Theological College was also received - a lovely blessing signifying love and faith across our global connections - not to mention chocolate too!

cats and dogs, Anglican and Uniting

17/9/2022

Not an original reflection I’m sure, but sometimes it becomes apparent that being a hitherto lifelong, if very ecumenical, Anglican (liberal Catholic variety) in the Uniting Church as an institution is like being an Apple using cat in a Microsoft dog world - fortunately I do love dogs (generally so much more outwardly friendlier and more sociable for one thing - except when roused or bemused lol - than many felines ) and I can operate Windows operating systems positively (though I can’t stop thinking occasionally how other creative wonks and wrinkles might offer a few possible ecclesial improvements as well as save time and help creativity ). Handiest of all, I also don’t really believe in binaries. But it can be a wee bit taxing at times.
PS I’m really really not sure about this cartoon as an analogy - certainly mainstream Anglicanism is thankfully both equippped with a clearer, simpler and less fussy system (well, yes, ‘method’ to be more accurate - what kind of a cat wants a ‘system’?!) but, unlike Apple. it is also so very messy (and hence actually freer in some organisational respects, than some of its self-assuming ‘freer’ ‘alternatives’). Meanwhile, within its dog context, Pitt Street UC tends of course to be its own kind of animal with some of its own distinctive operating features! Who said ministry was a journey of continuing education?
#purringnotscratching

extraordinary, gifted, gentle, angry people

12/8/2022

I’m angry again today - and with good reason, especially having just read a particularly heart wrenching cry of anger from an Anglican priest who has expressed so well their own anger at ‘straightsplaining’ so-called allies and the appalling personal cost upon him (I know, I feel and empathise with that pain on every level). As he says, we can usually cope with much of the reactionary stuff but it is what I call (straight and narrow) ‘passive inclusion’, accompanied by the continual injunctions (by those with comfortable privilege) to continuing ‘patience’, ‘calm’, and ‘good (aka cheap) grace’ that really burdens and eats away at souls, lives and ministries.

One of the things Churches really struggle with is anger - not least Anglicans (born of ‘moderating’ control and English upper/middle class ‘restraint’) and (in my experience) often worse still, the Uniting Church (born of the bureaucracy and functionality that contains its own particular restricted range of Christian diversity). Yet too much of even the best of mainstream Church life has stoked, and continues to stoke, anger which needs to be properly acknowledged, heard and engaged with (not least by empowering, not silencing or sidelining, the huge gifts queer people are to every space, not least the spiritual). Sometimes I just wonder what Jesus it is that Churches read - but then personally I’ve never yet called those who hurt me ‘broods of vipers’ and the like, so perhaps I’m also failing on that score?!

I don’t expect Australian Anglican avoidance and maintenance of the straight, still largely boys, club to change quickly - nor the UCA’s complacency and irritating self-satisfaction about its often pleasant but limited ‘inclusivity’. They are both changing slowly - and this week’s announcement of a queerphobic breakaway ‘Anglican’ body is partly a sign of that change and an admission of that viperous tendency’s failure to win over others. Queer people of faith (especially local Anglicans this week) will continue to do it tough in many ways, but we won’t be crushed, because we are not only essentially gentle in spirit as well as vitally angry, but we are also extraordinarily fabulous and incredible gifts to our struggling world and to any Church that will not simply ‘include’ us but celebrate with us and learn from us. As the old Judaean said, ‘those who have eyes to see, and ears to hear’…

Meanwhile, some of us will keep on singing - and will also sing for those who are denied their voices, and for those who can sing no longer - for why wouldn’t we sing into being such wonderful gentle, angry, gifted, loving lives? 🏳️‍⚧️🌈

With huge ❤️ and 🙏 for all those doing it really tough right now. You are loved and more precious than you can ever know 😻

on Church 'Apologies'

13/5/2022

I continue to be flabbergasted (that’s the polite way of putting it) by the attempts of Churches to ‘apologise’ to LGBTIQ+ people whilst continuing to ignore our voices, maintaining shame, and hurting us afresh. The latest astonishing ‘apology’ is by the General Synod of the Anglican Church in Australia - actually ’deploring’ activity which it had itself just demonstrated.
NO - this kind of ‘apology’ is not acceptable and represents a mockery of the deep understanding of costly repentance and reconciliation in the Christian tradition.
Meanwhile, the Uniting Church - with more credibility but with significant holes in its LGBTIQ+ ‘inclusion’, including a current low level of trans awareness and engagement - has also been pursuing an apology process. This is a much better concept but one in which no transgender people have been included in the ‘apology’ group! (so there’s a first apology to make)
A few obvious starters therefore for such ventures:
* ‘Nothing about us without us’
* Cheap grace betrays the Gospel
* Reparations matter

celebrating equal marriage in Sydney

13/3/2022

Such a great joy to preside at this wedding today (with communion too), in such a beautiful special setting - and, in this case, finally beating the pandemic (restrictions, postponements, and one of the grooms getting COVID-19 just a couple of weeks ago!) plus the wettest start to a Sydney year on record.
#lovetriumphs #loveislove #reasonstolovetheunitingchurch

Pitt Street creativity

13/3/2022

A beautiful time at Pitt Street this morning, thanks to the contemplative creativity of our wonderful team today - a lovely and much needed oasis of refreshment in these times during this season of Lent. We do love the very best of our Reformed heritage - but I guess we rarely do plain ‘plain’ at Pitt Street