PRIDE flags and other symbols of LGBTQ-inclusivity have been damaged or stolen at several churches across the UK in recent weeks, during “Pride Month”. It comes amid a broader pattern of vandalism reported by churches related to such symbols, and elicited defiant responses from parishes.
A number churches which have displayed a Pride flag or associated symbols which have been subject to vandalism have reported the damage to the police.
St Alfege’s, Greenwich, in south London, has put up rainbow bunting and tape outside the church during June — the month by which Pride marches took place in 1970 — for the past three years. Each time it has been ripped down, and this yr was no different.
“It’s necessary to us that we’re allies to LGBTQ people,” the Vicar, the Revd Simon Winn, said last week. He felt that the Pride symbolism had emboldened people to attend church services. The day after talking to the Church Times, Mr Winn reported that the bunting had again been vandalised overnight.
Elsewhere in south London, a Progress Pride flag was ripped from the flagpole of St Andrew’s, Earlsfield, earlier this month. The Vicar, the Revd Jonathan Brown, said that it had been flown for everything of June last yr, after the PCC had decided to be “more intentional about our promoting our being an inclusive church”.
Last yr, the Pride flag was flown in Earlsfield without incident, but this yr it “didn’t last 4 days”, Mr Brown said. Someone went into the church garden, he explained, lowered the flag, and ripped it off. It was later present in a bin, but a latest one was ordered and it has been flying, up to now without incident, since.
The Metropolitan Police recorded the incident as a hate crime, Mr Brown said, and suggested that the vandalism got here amid an increasingly “hostile environment” for LGBTQ+ people.
Simon WinnTape which had been a part of the Pride display outside St Alfrege’s, Greenwich
The Revd Helen Burnett has “lost count” of how again and again the Pride flag outside St Peter and St Paul, Chaldon, has been replaced, but thinks that the parish is now on its twelfth or thirteenth iteration. One was found burnt in a hedgerow, but most had simply been removed, she said, despite an indication asking that or not it’s respected as an emblem of inclusivity.
The churchwarden of St Nicholas’, Leicester, the poet Jay Hulme, has also lost count of the variety of times a Pride flag image on the church sign had been defaced, but estimated that it had happened well over 100 times since they were first displayed in 2021.
In May, a latest sticker needed to be put up nine times, he said, after repeated defacement. While members of the congregation had been upset in regards to the vandalism, they now treated it as a “fact of life”, he said. “It’s the fact of being queer in Britain.”
The national coordinator for Inclusive Church, the Revd Chantal Noppen, said that she had heard of quite a few other churches that had reported damage to their Pride symbols.
A heartening aspect of the stories she had heard, Ms Noppen said, was how the congregation had rallied around and replaced a damaged or stolen flag.
Displaying such symbols was necessary due to what it could communicate to churchgoers and wider society, she said. “For lots of us who’re inclusively minded, it is straightforward to assume that it is clear that we’re inclusive. But you might have to make it explicit.”
A youth employee and General Synod member, Sam Wilson, didn’t used to wear a rainbow lanyard, but began doing so after a youngster left a goodbye note after a youth club meeting. The person was transitioning gender, and had assumed that they’d not be welcome anymore.
“I had just assumed the young individuals who attended our youth groups knew we were welcoming of anyone LGBTQ+, which was clearly fallacious,” Mr Wilson said. His rainbow lanyard had encouraged quite a few LGBTQ+ young people to affix, he believed.
While stressing the necessity for symbols of inclusivity, a few of those in Inclusive Church networks have expressed hesitancy about flying a Pride flag from a church flagpole. They suggest that it ought to be reserved for an emblem related to the gospel.
In 2022, a lay member of the Synod, Sam Margrave, submitted a personal member’s motion calling for a ban on Pride flags on church buildings (News, 10 June 2022). It didn’t attract the 100 signatures needed to be considered for debate.
