Life, Faith, and St James’s Church

Tony Sánchez shares his personal journey as a gay Christian man born into a culture that did not accept his sexuality. He describes a journey that brought him to St James’s and why its ethos is needed now more than ever.

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Tony Sánchez

My family came from Northwestern Spain, from the same province as Santiago De Compostela, the final destination of pilgrims on the Camino, and also the same province where Franco, the Spanish dictator, was born.

My family grew up in a conservative Roman Catholic faith.  My father didn’t think much of the Roman Catholic Church.  He, like most Spaniards at the time, was compelled to attend Catholic mass on a Sunday.  When he emigrated, he enjoyed the freedom of not having to go to church, and so, as a result, I wasn’t involved much in church life when I grew up.  However, my family had strong traditional Christian beliefs.  As a result, I thought a lot about faith when I was growing up, whether I believed in God or not.  At the age of 11, I decided I did believe.  At the same age I also identified as gay.  It became a struggle to reconcile my belief with my sexuality until the end of my adolescence.

My first degree at university was in Religious Studies at the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.  It led to me developing a faith that could question traditional Christian beliefs.  I realised I could have a Christian faith while being fully myself as a gay man.  I was particularly inspired by Liberation Theology.  It promoted a view of God that had a preference for the oppressed.  This resonated for me as someone who had grown up in an immigrant family who had lived in abject rural poverty in a fascist state before emigrating.  It also resonated as a gay man who had seen and lived with homophobia.  Being at university was also a time when I felt I needed to be part of a Christian community.  I was lucky that the Catholic and Anglican chaplaincies there were places that were open and inclusive.  I tried different student Christian groups, but I felt most at home in the Student Christian Movement, a place that not only questioned traditional individual Christian faith but also saw Christianity as a vehicle for social justice.

When I left university, I looked for a Christian community where I could feel at home.  I found the Progressive Christianity Network.  I went to their groups, and I am now one of their Trustees.  You can find out more about them here.  I also looked for a church.  I tried the Roman Catholic Church, but I found it hard to go to an institution that could not tolerate being questioned.  I came across St James’s because someone I had a crush on went there.  Instead, I fell in love with the church.  I came in the last year of Donald Reeves as rector.  I wasn’t just bowled over by his charisma but also finding a church that was how I felt a church should be, but I thought I would never find.  It is a church that is not afraid of challenge and questions, and where priests were not in a hierarchy above the laity.  I was also amazed to find that it had a LGBTQ+ group.  I couldn’t imagine before that a church would ever have such a group.

I’ve been coming to St James’s for over 20 years and have been involved in lots of activities.  It seemed to me that was how I would get to know people here.  I have been part of a drama group, I went to the LGBTQ+ group for a time, I used to run tea and coffee, I was a welcomer for a time, and I was a churchwarden for six years. Currently, I’m on the reader’s rota; tea and coffee rota. I’m in the prayer group, and I’m an intercessor.  As I write this, I realise how much a part of my life it has been.  It seems now there are more churches like St James’s. Attitudes on some areas have progressed, including around sexuality.  Yet, we’re also seeing a wave of populism and a rise in reactionary attitudes.  It seems that a place like St James’s is needed more than ever, a community that works with the marginalised and promotes God’s voice from among them. Hopefully the Wren Project will further establish us and deepen our roots.

I now work as a counsellor/psychotherapist.  It’s perhaps there where I most see God’s grace, in the situations that seem most hopeless and stuck.  From a Christian point of view perhaps the work is about how I can help people know themselves as God knows them.  At St James’s perhaps we strive to create a place where people can be fully themselves, as I believe God meant us to be.