On 13 July we met at St Savour’s Church Guildford to hear Jeremy Marks speak about the Bible and Same Sex Relationships. St Saviour’s is the leading evangelical church in Guildford; last year Changing Attitude was not permitted to use their premises and we appreciate this particular change of attitude by the vicar.

We were encouraged by the presence of about a dozen members of the church plus a dozen ‘regulars’ at our meeting on an excessively hot summer evening. Jeremy outlined an approach to the Bible that was evangelical without being literalist and there was a good exchange of views in the following question time.

Two days later Jeremy and I were delivering a workshop at the Diocesan Summer School, entitled ‘Really Gay, Really Christian’. The summer school is a two week series of workshops on all manner of current issues. Again there were about two dozen people present, many from an evangelical background. We told our personal stories and Jeremy explained how he moved from running an ‘ex-gay’ ministry to his present gay affirming ministry, with particular outreach to married gay men and their wives.

Discussion time was lively with a range of views represented, and many asked that we run a similar event next year to take the issue further. I was heartened by the level of engagement in the discussions – the Changing Attitude way of ‘making space for conversation’ really is at the core of what we are about.

Brenda Harrison