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THIS MONTH has seen Pride events all over the country. It’s 50 years this year since the first Pride March in London in 1972. To mark this milestone, our Coordinator Kieran Bohan was one of a number of faith leaders interviews on BBC local radio on Sunday 26th June.

LOOKING for something to make your community’s Pride celebrations sparkle? This new digital download is just what you need! OTN Co-Chair Alex Clare-Young and their wife Jo have contributed to, and edited this collection by the Iona Community’s LGBTQ+ Common Concern Network as a reflection of all they seek to celebrate and affirm.

CELEBRATIONS for the 14th birthday of the first Open Table community in Liverpool, and seven years since we became a network, reached their peak last weekend, at our national gathering on the theme ‘More Than Welcome’.

AT A SPECIAL communion service to celebrate the 14th birthday of our first Open Table community in Liverpool on Sunday 19th June 2022, OTN Coordinator Kieran Bohan shared this reflection on Pride Month and how the origin of Open Table is linked to Liverpool’s first official Pride event.

SINCE JUNE 2008 when we began, we have bloomed and grown! Starting with a group of just six, we've turned Open Table into a network of welcoming, affirming LGBTQIA+ worship communities. We're multiplying and blossoming. In March 2021, the Open Table Network became a charity. Read a summary of our first annual report.

Suzanne from Open Table Chester shares a poem for Pride Month: ‘Finding acceptance at Open Table has been transformative for me. Our friends there are some of the extraordinary people who have loved me back to life. Thank you for everything you do.’

A RESPONSE to a call to ban the Pride rainbow flag on church buildings because ‘what [the flag] represents… is contrary to the word of God’, by Revd Robert Thompson, the vicar who hosts our Open Table community in West London, and a member of General Synod.

JUNE 1st-7th is Volunteers’ Week, and this year’s theme is ‘A Time To Say Thanks’. The Open Table Network wouldn’t - and couldn’t - exist without the volunteers who give energy, time and talents, across England and Wales. All of our Trustees and Patrons do the same. So we want to thank them all for making OTN what it is today.

OUR ONLINE celebration of Pride Month features a reflection by our Co-Chair Alex Clare-Young, on the relationship between Pride and Pentecost, the 50th day after Easter, on which Christians remember the gift of the Holy Spirit to the frightened first followers of Jesus following his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension to heaven.

OTN TRUSTEE Augustine Tanner-Ihm reflects on finding reconciliation after being uninvited from a student ministry outreach event because of his involvement with the Open Table Network.