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Queer Holiness

The Gift of LGBTQI People to the Church

Charlie Bell

978 1 913657 92 5
Hardback |224 pp |216 x 135 mm
Price: £16.99

978 1 913657 93 2
eBook |224 pp

‘This is an enjoyably grown-up book. As such, it is a useful rebuke to the desperate immaturity of the Church of England’s official stances on sexuality, but it is also a gift to the wider Christian Church: a call to enrich its mission and to listen more closely to the implications of the Gospel.’

Diarmaid MacCulloch


‘Charlie Bell has written a fine, orthodox Christian book. He is faithful to God’s revelation, respectful of Scripture, committed to a good future for the Church. He will not stand for a world where the lives and loves of LGBTQI people are disdained or intellectualised as a subject for “debate". His anger is real and measured and true, placed in a context of divine love and human holiness, like the anger of the biblical Jesus himself. And in the end he points us to a vision of a whole humanity redeemed in Christ; a vision of glory. Very highly recommended!’

Rt Revd Paul Bayes, former Bishop of Liverpool


‘This insightful book is a comprehensive survey of the role of scripture, tradition and reason in understanding what it means to be human and Christian, focusing consistently Christ, human and divine, and on “being human”. The author describes it as a call to action – for LGBTQI people, their allies, and the whole people of God. I hope it will be very widely read and pondered: It deserves to be.’

Rt Revd John Inge, Bishop of Worcester

LGBTQI people in the church have spent a long time being told what God expects of them and how they should behave. From prohibitions on who they might love or marry, to erasure and denial, the theological record is one in which LGBTQI people are far too often objectified and their lives seen as the property of others.

In no other significant religious question are ‘theological’ arguments made that so clearly reject overwhelming scientific and experiential knowledge about the human person. This book seeks to find a better way to do theology – not about, but with and of LGBTQI people – taking insights from the sciences and personal narratives as it seeks to answer the question: ‘What does human flourishing look like?’

Charlie Bell is a Forensic Psychiatry Registrar, and also the John Marks Fellow, College Lecturer and Director of Studies in Medicine at Girton College, Cambridge. He is a priest in the Diocese of Southwark, Scholar in Residence at the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York City, and a Research Fellow and Associate Tutor at St Augustine’s College of Theology. He is also the author of Queer Redemption (DLT, 2024).
ISBNs: 9781913657925 978-1-913657-92-5 Title: queer holiness ISBNs: 9781913657932 978-1-913657-93-2 Title: queer holiness