Mark Russ leads BBC Daily Service
'We don’t see one united tradition… we see multiple Christianities, often in conflict. This disunity has always been clear to me as a gay Christian.'
Quaker Mark Russ led the BBC Radio 4 Daily Service last week, exploring grace and Christian unity.
The theologian talked about being a gay Christian when many church communities did not make him feel welcome.
When we look at the history of Christianity, he said, ‘we don’t see one united tradition… we see multiple Christianities, often in conflict. This disunity has always been clear to me as a gay Christian, as I don’t feel welcomed as a fellow believer by most Christian groups’.
Perhaps it was more ‘hopeful’ though, to see a united church as ‘an unfulfilled hope’, he added, ‘a vision that, with God’s help, we can start to anticipate today.’
After Christian music, hymns and readings, the Woodbrooke teacher offered more reflections on the theme of Christian unity. ‘While I don’t want to give up on the hope of a unified church, as a queer person, I get tired of forgiving Christians who are unable to unite around the truth of my existence, my love and my experience of God.’
Perhaps it’s enough to find a church where he can feel accepted, he said, in places where it is possible to learn both forgiveness and self-worth.
Mark Russ then led a prayer for ‘all those who are shut out by fellow Christians’, asking God to ‘restore all those communities that meet in your name, that they may be spaces of compassion’.
The programme on 7 December can be heard on https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001fw4s.
Mark Russ’s book Quaker Shaped Christianity: How the Jesus story and the Quaker way fit together was also published last month.
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