Rhythm

“Rhythm is a space for the LGBT+ Christian community, to come together for connection and prayer.”
I saw this phrase on the onebodyonefaith website a few years ago. It looked like the answer to one of my prayers; a gap that I had sensed in my own spiritual life and was seeking to fill.
My husband and I are openly welcomed into the network of small Wiltshire village churches where we live. We also have many LGBT+ friends. But our church worship rarely includes LGBT+ themes, whilst many of our gay friendships exist in the secular world. These two worlds can exist in isolation unless we consciously bring them together. So I was looking for various ways to integrate these two important parts of my life, my sexuality and my faith. I decided to give Rhythm a go.
One part of Rhythm is a weekly liturgy on Zoom from 6.30 until 7 PM every Thursday. These services soon became part of my own rhythm of prayer. It wasn’t just the contemplative style of the liturgy that worked for me, but more the subjects of that contemplation. It’s amazing how often themes and people in the Christian calendar can have a queer connection if you know where to look, and Father Lee Taylor, who leads these Rhythm services, seems to be an endless resource.
Whilst these queer narratives had a real resonance for me, it was also good to feel connected to an LGBT community, to recognise familiar faces returning week by week, and to have a chance to chat briefly before and after the worship.
Those online connections then developed into face-to-face conversations at a weekend long Rhythm retreat, held at the Othona community in November 2024. The published programme was a series of reflections on “spiritual autumn” led by Barbara Hume. We looked at ideas like pruning our lives, or the benefits of lying fallow for a season to find energy for regrowth in the spring. I found value in those sessions. But what really worked for me was what happened between the programmed talks and worship. The chance to connect with other people. The chance to talk and share ideas and experiences over meals, or on walks together, or when sitting round a huge log fire in the evening. Many of us said that they found a real sense of connection with each other over the weekend. A sense of being at home.
I think it’s interesting to ask what makes that sense of connection when we LGBT+ Christians come together. Is it that we share many experiences in our lives, so we have much in common to talk about? Is it because we are in a safe space, and can be our full authentic selves without the need to hide a part of what we are? Or is there something deeper going on? Some writers argue that we LGBT+ people relate to each other, and to God, in a different way from our straight friends. So there is an added power when we come together to create a worshipping community with people very much like ourselves.
I suspect all these reasons are valid to some extent, and in different ways for different people.
It is often said that you cannot be a Christian by yourself. You need to be integrated into a community to live a Christian life. And for me Rhythm has provided one way to integrate into a Queer Christian community. It may only be for half-an-hour a week, and for two weekends a year. But it is there. It has been good for me to reach out of my Wiltshire home and to be part of this real but distant queer Christian community, which I know I will meet with again in the weeks and months ahead
Simon Dawson is a retired Anglican Licensed Lay Minister who now researches the history of LGBT+ spirituality, and how that relates to the Christian church. Some of that work can be found on his YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@simon.switchingview