“Sexuality and faith are complimentary parts of our humanity”
For Pride Month, Barts Health is celebrating LGBTQ+ role models within the Trust who are helping to break down barriers for patients and staff, effecting change through personal example, leadership or day to day excellence. Chaplain Jonathan Livingstone explores how his faith helped him promote equality for the LGBTQ+ community.
“My name is Jonathan Livingstone (he/him/his) and since August 2020 I have been the part-time Christian chaplain at St Bartholomew’s Hospital.
“When I heard the hospital had a LGBTQ+ Network I was eager to join as I believe it is so valuable for members of the LGBTQ+ community, and their allies, to have a safe space and a platform to promote inclusion and diversity in our workplace.
“As it was for many, growing up in the 1990s and 2000s knowing I was gay was a confusing and challenging time. I was at school during the years of Section 28 – a law that prohibited the promotion of homosexuality – which meant there was very little support, or even at times acknowledgment, that some people identified as LGBTQ+.
“For many young people navigating the twists and turns of growing up and exploring their sexual or gender identity, it was a lonely and frightening existence not knowing what the future would hold – questioning whether to stay in the closet and live a lie, or come out and risk being subject to prejudice, discrimination and hatred.
“Such experiences in my formative years gave me the determination and passion not only to be proud of who I am, but to do my best to encourage others to be proud, happy and at peace with who they are – not in spite of their sexuality or gender identity but embracing and celebrating it.
“My spiritual beliefs have always been important to me but when I came out as gay whilst at university I perceived my faith and my sexual identity to be incompatible.
“I felt that the Christian church was an unwelcoming place towards LGBTQ+ people, that I didn’t fit in, and to be involved in the church would require me to deny who I was.
“These perceptions were not unfounded as the church does not have a good track record at affirming members of the LGBTQ+ community – in some places and at times quite the opposite! So, like many, I left the church believing it to be a place I did not belong.
“That was all to change in my mid-20s, however. Living in Edinburgh at the time, I stumbled across the Scottish Episcopal Church and discovered it to be a church that affirms the LGBTQ+ community and celebrates same-sex marriage.
“Here was a church where sexuality and faith need not be mutually exclusive but are seen as integrated and complimentary parts of our humanity.
“In England, the church still has some way to go to be an entirely safe place that fully affirms members of the LGBTQ+ community although some congregations are inclusive and welcoming.
“Although this is something that grieves me, along with numerous other priests I see part of my role as an Anglican priest to campaign for equal human rights for all, and as a gay man, especially in the area of human sexuality.
“It is my hope that as an openly gay priest in the church and in the hospital, I can be a role model as someone who promotes and celebrates the human qualities of kindness, compassion, care, authenticity, forgiveness, reconciliation and above all else love. Love for all.
“Love as the most basic and fundamental human right that cannot and should not be denied to anyone.
“As a chaplain who offers emotional, psychological, spiritual, and religious support to patients, visitors, and staff this includes helping those who are wrestling with their sexual or gender identity, and those who face difficulties reconciling those elements of life with their faith, whatever faith that may be.
“I am delighted to be a part of St Bartholomew’s LGBTQ+ Network and I hope we, like other similar groups, can help each other navigate our way through life, in and outside the workplace, with PRIDE.”
Jonathan Livingstone is the Hospitaller (Anglican Chaplain) at St Bartholomew’s Hospital.
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