The Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island is pleased to welcome The Rev’d Dr. Charlie Bell for a weekend of conversation, education, and inspiration. We hope you will join us for some or all of the weekend’s events! Please help us by posting these events in your communities.
For those of you unfamiliar with his work, Charlie Bell is Official Fellow and College Lecturer in Medicine and Public Theology at Girton College, Cambridge, and a Registrar in Forensic Psychiatry at St George’s and Southwest London NHS Foundation Trust. He is a priest in the Diocese of Southwark, Scholar in Residence at the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York City, Visiting Scholar at Sarum College, and a Research Fellow and Associate Tutor at St Augustine’s College of Theology. He has published in both medicine and theology, and in the space between the two. His research interests are primarily in the field of theological anthropology, including culpability, responsibility, and determinism. He is also research active in psychiatry, investigating possible biological signatures for psychiatric and personality disorder.
Queer Redemption: Queer Theology
Friday October 4th, 1 – 3 pm (ADT), online and in-person at AST
For far too long, the lives of queer people and the life of the church have been seen as incompatible – as impossible, even, to reconcile. In recent years and in some quarters, there have been increasing moves towards inclusion and affirmation, and yet some of the fundamentals remain untouched. Queerness remains somehow alien, somehow different, and the church remains unchanged.
In this talk, author and priest Charlie Bell will ask what might happen if queerness was allowed to liberate the whole church, seen as a gift to the whole rather than something for the margins. What might happen if queer lives, loves, and relationships were taken as read, rather than treated as a matter of debate? What is this queer theology? And what might a queer-infused church look like?
Join us for an afternoon of insight and conversation. Tickets available through Eventbrite.
Affirming Communities: Conversation and Dinner
The Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island has invited a group of lay and clergy advocates to gather and reflect on where we are as a Diocesan community and what resources we require to continue our work with the LGBTQ2Si community. Both as those who identify as LGBTQ2Si and those who name themselves allies, we are deeply invested in advancing and encouraging positive and affirming work at both the parish and Diocesan levels. Join us in conversation with Charlie Bell, further exploring our response to, care for, and just resourcing of both the clergy and lay who identify with this community. How do we minister with integrity, hold wide the parish door, and celebrate the unique gifts experienced in relationship? This, and many more questions, may form the basis of our conversation.
We hope you will join us for dialogue and stay for dinner! (Saturday, October 5, 3 – 5 pm with dinner at 6 pm, St. Andrew’s Cole Harbour). Please email Executive Director, The Rev’d Ann Turner, for more information and to register.
Cathedral Church of All Saints
Sunday, October 6, 2024 at the 11 am service
The Rev’d Dr. Charlie Bell will preach at the 11 am service at the Cathedral. Visit the Cathedral’s website if you require more information (https://www.cathedralchurchofallsaints.com). All are welcome!
Queering the Church: In Conversation with the Rev’d Dr. Charlie Bell
Monday, October 7, 1 – 2:15 pm and 2:30 – 4 pm, Zoom only
For lay and clergy, a time for listening, sharing wisdom, and igniting hope.
You are warmly invited to join the online discussion(s). Meet with Charlie Bell, a priest visiting the diocese from the Church of England, who is currently involved with the conversations at their General Synod relating to sexuality and gender. There will be two sessions, and you are very welcome to attend either or both.
The first, How Things Progressed: The Journey in Canada, is an opportunity to talk through the way that the path towards LGBTQ2SIA inclusion has been forged and the challenges, opportunities, and tensions along the way. This will primarily be a look over how things have landed where they have today, and the opportunity to share learning from the Canadian journey that might prove beneficial to those involved in the English process. There will also be the opportunity to hear a little about the current situation in the Church of England and the relationship of this to conversations in the wider Anglican Communion.
The second, The Art of the Possible: Living Together across Difference, will focus on the situation as it is now in Canada, in a church that has found – and continues to find – ways to live together despite deep and enduring differences in matters of sexuality and gender. Insights from both churches and a variety of perspectives will be shared, and we will look to find those things that work well, that work less well, and that could work better, and the implications for shared life in communion. Click HERE to register and receive your Zoom invitation.
I hope to see you at one or all of these interesting events!
Take good care,
Ann E. Turner (The Rev’d), Executive Director