PRIDE flags and other symbols of LGBTQ-inclusivity have been damaged or stolen at several churches around the UK in recent weeks, during “Pride Month”. It comes amid a broader pattern of vandalism reported by churches related to such symbols, and elicited defiant responses from parishes.
A number churches that have displayed a Pride flag or associated symbols which have been subject to vandalism have reported the damage to the police.
St Alfege’s, Greenwich, in south London, has put up rainbow bunting and tape outside the church during June — the month in which Pride marches took place in 1970 — for the past three years. Each time it has been ripped down, and this year was no different.
“It’s important to us that we’re allies to LGBTQ people,” the Vicar, the Revd Simon Winn, said last week. He felt that the Pride symbolism had emboldened people to attend church services. The day after speaking to the Church Times, Mr Winn reported that the bunting had again been vandalised overnight.
Elsewhere in south London, a Progress Pride flag was ripped from the flagpole of St Andrew’s, Earlsfield, earlier this month. The Vicar, the Revd Jonathan Brown, said that it had been flown for the entirety of June last year, after the PCC had decided to be “more intentional about our advertising our being an inclusive church”.
Last year, the Pride flag was flown in Earlsfield without incident, but this year it “didn’t last four days”, Mr Brown said. Someone went into the church garden, he explained, lowered the flag, and ripped it off. It was later found in a bin, but a new one was ordered and it has been flying, so far without incident, since.
The Metropolitan Police recorded the incident as a hate crime, Mr Brown said, and suggested that the vandalism came amid an increasingly “hostile environment” for LGBTQ+ people.
Simon WinnTape which had been part of the Pride display outside St Alfrege’s, Greenwich
The Revd Helen Burnett has “lost count” of how many times the Pride flag outside St Peter and St Paul, Chaldon, has been replaced, but thinks that the parish is now on its twelfth or thirteenth iteration. One was found burnt in a hedgerow, but most had simply been removed, she said, despite a sign asking that it be respected as a symbol of inclusivity.
The churchwarden of St Nicholas’, Leicester, the poet Jay Hulme, has also lost count of the number of times a Pride flag image on the church sign had been defaced, but estimated that it had happened well over one hundred times since they were first displayed in 2021.
In May, a new sticker had to be put up nine times, he said, after repeated defacement. While members of the congregation had been upset about the vandalism, they now treated it as a “fact of life”, he said. “It’s the reality of being queer in Britain.”
The national coordinator for Inclusive Church, the Revd Chantal Noppen, said that she had heard of a number of other churches that had reported damage to their Pride symbols.
A heartening aspect of the stories she had heard, Ms Noppen said, was how the congregation had rallied around and replaced a damaged or stolen flag.
Displaying such symbols was important because of what it could communicate to churchgoers and wider society, she said. “For many of us who are inclusively minded, it is easy to assume that it is obvious that we are inclusive. But you have to make it explicit.”
A youth worker and General Synod member, Sam Wilson, did not used to wear a rainbow lanyard, but started doing so after a young person left a goodbye note after a youth club meeting. The person was transitioning gender, and had assumed that they would not be welcome anymore.
“I had just assumed the young people who attended our youth groups knew we were welcoming of anyone LGBTQ+, which was clearly wrong,” Mr Wilson said. His rainbow lanyard had encouraged a number of LGBTQ+ young people to join, he believed.
While stressing the need for symbols of inclusivity, some of those in Inclusive Church networks have expressed hesitancy about flying a Pride flag from a church flagpole. They suggest that it should be reserved for a symbol related to the gospel.
In 2022, a lay member of the Synod, Sam Margrave, submitted a private member’s motion calling for a ban on Pride flags on church buildings (News, 10 June 2022). It did not attract the 100 signatures needed to be considered for debate.
