Pride is about being unashamed of who you are, and that means being unashamed of your beliefs as well as being unashamed of your sexual orientation. Faith and Pride is a positive look at religion and being gay.

Faith and Pride 2013

Every evening during Belfast Pride Week (Friday 28 June to Saturday 6 July) we will be holding our short reflective services, 15 mins with Christ, at 6 p.m. in St George’s Church in High Street. We will also be going, as a group, to the launch of Belfast Pride on Friday 28 June, meeting at 7 p.m. in Costa Coffee in Victoria Square.

Supporting the Parade

Rather than walking in the parade, we will be standing on High Street, behind a Faith and Pride banner, holding pro-gay signs and cheering the parade on. The participants in the parade will then see our message of accepting, inclusive Christianity where love is love, regardless of  gender. The parade starts at 12 noon on Saturday 6 July. Our group will be assembling from 10.30 at St George’s Church on High Street.

Faith and Pride 2012

The theme for our Belfast Pride events in 2012 was Fear Not. Events were organised by Faith and Pride in conjunction with with Changing Attitude Ireland and Accepting Sexuality. Read our summary of the week.

15 minutes with Christ (Sunday 29 July to Saturday 4 August)

Each evening there was a short service of Christian prayer and reflection. Lasting for just 15 minutes, the services started at 6 p.m. in St George’s Parish Church, High Street, Belfast. Each evening, a different speaker lead the meditation.

Date	Speaker	Subject
Sunday 29 July	Pádraig O’Tuama	Fear Not
Monday 30 July	John O’Neill	Pied Beauty
Tuesday 31 July	Simon Henning	Can we remember our lines?
Wednesday 1 August	Michael Carchrie Campbell	We must be content to go on like pilgrims.
Thursday 2 August	Andrew McFarland Campbell	All One in Christ
Friday 3 August	Harriet Long	Can we make space for God revealing himself?
Saturday 4 August	Michael Carchrie Campbell	The noble task of man, to pray and to love

The music before and after the service came mainly from Songs of Taizé – O Lord, Hear My Prayer & My Soul Is At Rest (Volume One).

Film: Love Free or Die (Sunday 29 July)

At 7 p.m. on Sunday 29 July in St George’s Parish Church, High Street, Belfast, we showed the film Love Free or Die.

The film is about a man whose two defining passions are in direct conflict: his love for God and for his partner Mark. Gene Robinson is the first openly gay person to become a bishop in the historic traditions of Christendom. His consecration in 2003 caused an international stir, and he has lived with death threats every day since.

He steps onto the world stage as he travels from small-town churches to the Lincoln Memorial to Lambeth Palace calling for all to stand for equality — inspiring clergy and ordinary folk to come out from the shadows and change history.

Parade Day: 4 August

On the day of the parade, we stood next to our friends from Changing Attitude Ireland in High Street to support the parade.

Faith and Pride 2011

Faith and Pride’s inaugural event was part of the 2011 Belfast Pride Festival. It was an evening of two talks at All Souls’ Church in Elmwood Avenue, Belfast.

• In Jonathan Loved David, Andrew McFarland looked at the compelling reasons to believe that David (who became the greatest King of Israel, and wrote many of the Psalms) and Jonathan (the son of the first King) were in a same-sex relationship.
• In Oy Vay I’m Gay, Paula Rita Tabakin explored homosexuality from a Jewish reform perspective, using texts and traditions.