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Jeni Leggat-Green had been on the committee of another church before she left and joined Cotham Parish Church. She left after a hostile response to a motion she put forward to join an inclusivity initiative. It exposed ruptures within her then-parish community she hadn\u2019t realised were there.\u00a0<\/p>\n Reporting on the stories that matter to you. Only with your support.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople who I had considered to be friends started saying some really horrible things, like welcoming gay people was like welcoming pedophiles into your church,\u201d Leggat-Green tells the Cable. \u201cIt still hurts,\u201d she says, even though two decades have passed since she and her wife left her former parish.<\/p>\n As Convenor of Open Table Bristol<\/a>, hosted at Cotham Parish, Leggat-Green now offers support to those who have felt rejected or isolated from church. Open Table is a monthly service that\u2019s part of a UK-wide network offering an affirming and welcoming spiritual home for LGBTQ+ people.\u00a0<\/p>\n Leggat-Green joins me on a Zoom call along with Cotham Parish\u2019s vicar, Revd David Stephenson, and Andy Thornton, who is the minister of Foundation<\/a>, a weekly inclusive community that also meets at Cotham Parish. \u201cI think it\u2019s one thing to accommodate, which feels very conditional,\u201d Stephenson says. \u201cIt\u2019s a very different thing to create a safe space.\u201d<\/p>\n We talk about the division between liberal and conservative factions of the Church in Bristol, the Ephesian Fund \u2013 a fund set up to direct giving towards orthodox ministries \u2013 and whether a split within the Church feels inevitable.<\/p>\n A different type of worship\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Thornton stumbled upon Foundation after leaving multiple churches, and immediately knew it was the place for him. Foundation offers a space where people can contemplate their faith, but with no prescriptive idea of what church or worship should look like.<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, it was groundbreaking, because it was the first time that I [could] actually just go to church,\u201d Thornton says. \u201cI just wanted to go to church, and be part of it, and not have this huge thing, [to] feel like a problem, or feel like [acceptance] was conditional, or have shame.\u201d<\/p>\n Going on to lead that community sends a strong signal to others who have felt rejected in the same way, he adds. \u201cI think a lot of people, when they see somebody queer actually at the front, they know that there isn\u2019t going to be a barrier \u2013 that there isn\u2019t going to be a ceiling.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Being gay is not my defining characteristic\u2019\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Debates around gender and sexuality have threatened to split the Church of England for decades.\u00a0 Since 2023, same-sex couples have been able to receive blessing prayers that form part of ordinary Sunday church services, but after a vote in February of this year, proposals to deliver stand-alone blessing ceremonies<\/a> for same-sex couples remain off the table. The Church\u2019s national assembly, the General Synod, voted to continue to look into the issue in the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n Debates have until now taken place under an initiative known as Living in Love and Faith (LLF), which the General Synod voted to pause<\/a> earlier this year. Leggat-Green describes the process as \u201cbrutal\u201d, while Thornton says it feels like the goal posts are being constantly shifted.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBeing gay is not my defining characteristic,\u201d Leggat-Green adds. \u201cIt\u2019s not the first thing that I would tell you about myself or that I would want you to consider about myself if you met me for the first time. And I think that that\u2019s what the Church of England is making happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Revd Canon Neil Patterson has seen the LLF discussions up close from both a national and local perspective. He\u2019s chair of campaign group Together for the Church of England, and is Vice Dean at Bristol Cathedral. He also has a personal stake in this conversation \u2013 having openly written about his experience of coming out in the Church.\u00a0<\/p>\n I ask him about what LLF \u2013 and the disagreement over same-sex blessings and ceremonies \u2013 means for LGBTQ+ parishioners, particularly those looking to celebrate their relationship in the Church.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI do think it means it feels like an uncertainty,\u201d he says. \u201cWe have to offer a service that\u2019s somewhat prescribed, and that has to not look too much like a wedding, and that feels like a kind of half-hearted welcome.\u201d<\/p>\n Financial fracturing<\/strong><\/p>\n Walking around Bristol\u2019s churches, or doing a quick Google search, you can see the divide within the Church for yourself. Some proudly display the rainbow flag or online badges of inclusivity. Others are equally open about what they describe as a \u201cbiblical\u201d approach to sex and marriage.<\/p>\n That distinction has manifested financially, too. In 2023, the Ephesian Fund<\/a> was set up to enable churches and individuals to direct donations and parish share \u2013 the financial contribution each church pays to a central diocesan fund \u2013 towards \u201corthodox evangelical ministry\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n Last year, almost \u00a310 million<\/a> was given across 32 dioceses towards parish share using the Ephesian Fund. Parish share covers costs such as clergy\u2019s salary, pensions, and housing. It\u2019s unclear how big of an impact it\u2019s having locally, as the Ephesian Fund told us it does not publish or routinely share diocese-level figures on the number of churches using the Fund. The Diocese of Bristol also couldn\u2019t provide this data, and said it was still considering its position on the fund.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a short statement, an Ephesian Fund spokesperson told the Cable that use of the Fund \u201cshould not be treated as a proxy for the number of churches in any diocese who hold particular convictions on the doctrine of marriage.\u201d<\/p>\n One Bristol church leader, however, who is also a patron of the Fund, did open up about the use of the Fund in their church.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ed Shaw is the Pastor of Emmanuel City Centre Church and has written extensively about being celibate and, in his own words, experiencing \u201csame-sex attraction\u201d. At Emmanuel Bristol, he says the Ephesian Fund has been \u201ca really good way of encouraging our church family to keep giving generously to our local church context and also to the diocese and national side of things too.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been a way of saying to people, you can give your money to the Ephesian Fund, and it will go and support churches that you can get behind,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Jeni Leggat Green at her church. Credit: Agnes Wolfe<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Ed1-1080x1620.jpg\")
Ed Shaw at his home in Bristol. Credit: Lottie Turner<\/p>\n