Beyond toleration: Abigail Maxwell reflects on two light-filled events
‘LGBT+ Pride is about being wholly ourselves.’
Let me begin in 1688, when it ceased to be criminal to evade the Church of England, or worship elsewhere. In the following decade, Quakers in Finedon built a tiny Meeting house, and as they walked to it, local people stoned them. They refused to retaliate, but built a high wall around the Meeting house to mitigate the attacks. We became a peculiar people, with peculiar clothes and ways. That Meeting was laid down in 1912. By 1931, in our church government documents, we wrote, ‘Should… another religious body appear to meet [the membership applicant’s] spiritual needs, it is unlikely that his right place is among us’. Some of that spirit of holding ourselves apart remains.
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