The Northern Ireland Assembly passed a motion calling for a ban on conversion therapy. In this article, Andrew Cunning and Lindsay Robinson of Left Side Up explain why they support the ban from a Christian perspective.

There is a popular belief, held by many, that religion and politics shouldn’t mix. Where you stand on a question like this is, in many ways, immaterial, given that religion and political positions are permanently intertwined. In a place like Northern Ireland, where politicians can be regularly found quoting the Bible, the overlaps and interconnections between Christianity (in this case) and policy making are absolutely insoluble. We simply cannot draw a line separating the political from the theological. And so it has been in the past few weeks with the campaign and motion to ban conversion therapy here in NI. 

On Tuesday 20th April, Doug Beattie, UUP MLA for Upper Bann and John Stewart, UUP MLA for East Antrim, had their motion calling for a ban on conversion therapy “in all its forms” passed in the Assembly by 59 votes to 24. This is a terrific result for the Ban Conversion Therapy NI campaign group, made up of The Rainbow Project, Stonewall, Here NI, TansgenderNI, Cara Friend and Left Side Up. And while the vote is non-binding, it does have the remarkable result that Northern Ireland is now leading on an issue of LGBTQ+ rights in these islands. Gone, hopefully, are the days of this place being the last to move on issues of equality. The passing of the motion gives the Minister for Communities, Deirdre Hargey, a mandate to get on with legislation to ensure a ban is now made legally enforceable. 

As a progressive faith organisation, it is an absolute privilege to be part of the official campaign to ban conversion therapy. For far too long here in NI, people of faith have been represented as social conservatives by prominent faith leaders. In our experience, this is not the whole story. In fact, it’s not even close to being the whole story. Through our work at Left Side Up we have engaged with hundreds of people here in NI who identify as Christian and who are deeply frustrated with the assumptions surrounding what it means to be a person of faith. 

In many ways, the leadership of mainline churches is increasingly out of step with the people in the pews. We know this from the Faith and Mental Health Project which we established in December 2020 to explore the intersections between mental wellbeing and faith communities. And though we didn’t ask any questions around LGBTQ+ inclusion, we found that well over a third of respondents wanted to talk about their church’s negative responses to LGBTQ+ people. This is becoming a hugely important issue for Christians. And increasingly, people of faith are stepping forward to voice their concerns with religiously justified homophobia, and most interestingly of all is that they are doing so for deeply Christian reasons. 

At Left Side Up we have encountered people who have underwent the insidious practice of conversion therapy. Ranging from exorcisms to recommended celibacy, conversion therapy is any attempt to change, erase or suppress a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, and it is still happening in NI. Quite often it is young people of faith who fall prey to these practices. The theological atmosphere in many NI churches is either explicitly hostile for LGBTQ+ persons or it is subtly exclusionary. 

Many folks we have engaged through our Project have lamented the ‘Everyone Welcome’ type banner displayed at the entrance of some churches. It is no wonder, then, that when a young person discovers they might be LGBT, they either experience a deep shame or feel forced to leave their faith community. For those who stay, conversion therapy is a very real danger, for the very same leaders who created the conditions for deep shame are often the very people offering a fix or cure.

Mercifully, many Christians are coming out against not only conversion therapy, but also the pernicious theology at the root of its supposed legitimacy. And while the Minister will bring the legal dimension to this, there is a huge job of work to be done by progressive Christians here in terms of the theological landscape of the place we call home. The worship of the Bible in evangelical Christianity must be called out. Not only because it leads to terrible damage done to vulnerable people, it is also profoundly anti-Christian. 

The word of God, as the Bible itself says, is Jesus, not the text. At Left Side Up we have a tremendous amount of respect for the Bible, enough respect, in fact, to set about the work of reading it well. But the Bible is not the only source of all good theology. It is crucial that we reinstate experience, story and genuine human encounter as some of our most important theological resources. 

What we have in many churches is wilful blindness. When the Presbyterian Church in Ireland decided that ‘practicing’ LGBTQ+ folks could not be full members of the Church, they effectively cut themselves off from meeting the very people whose lives make a mockery of their small, closed ‘values.’ Churches here run the risk of living in a self-created silo, one in which ‘traditional Christian values’ are perpetuated in a deliberately homogenous environment. 

The good news is that so many Christians here are increasingly alive to the move to the right by some church leaderships. And they are ready to speak, they are ready to have their voices heard. We challenge our religious leaders to listen. Change is coming. And we want to empower Christians here to oppose conversion therapy and the theology that permits it not in spite of their faith, but because of it.

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