Martin Knight on sexuality, disabilty and neurodiversity

I wonder what feeling genuinely welcome means to you. This month, I am honoured to share the words of a URC minister, the Revd Martin Knight (he/him) with you. Martin writes about his experiences of being gay, disabled and neurodiverse in church.

Here are 3 top tips from this month’s article:

1. Ask what you can do to help.
2. Don’t compare.
3. Speak out.

If there were such an inappropriate game as ‘Legally Protected Characteristics Bingo’, I would stand a good chance! I’m gay, disabled and neurodiverse – I’m also a white cis man and a minister. This is a trite way of saying that all of us have characteristics that cross and interact. Some carry more privilege or discrimination than others. Ultimately, they make us who we are: complex human beings.

Stereotyping and normative judgements divide us in to ‘them’ and ‘us’, which is the point of this column asking whether we are all welcome in church. Our faith makes it clear, ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave or free’, but living that out is evidently more difficult. These are glimpses of my story…

Martin Knight is a United Reformed Church minister in Croydon

___

This is an extract from an article published in the June 2023 edition of Reform

Subscribe to Reform