Pride flag as an altar frontal: Leicester Chancellor delivers her verdict

Feb 20, 2024 by Jill

By Shiranikha Herbert, Church Times:

THE consistory court of the diocese of Leicester has refused to grant a faculty for the introduction of a new altar frontal at St Nicholas’s, Leicester, displaying the Progress Pride flag and incorporating a cross in the design.

The Progress Pride flag was “not a Christian emblem”, the Chancellor Naomi Gyane said. While it was “a sign of welcome for people from the LGBTQIA+ community, and although not itself political,” it was, she said, “a secular contemporary emblem used for many causes and contemporary discourse”.

[…] Dr Ian Paul, who is a member of the General Synod and the Archbishops’ Council, did not wish to become a party opponent, but made written objections.

He stated that the purpose of the table at which holy communion was celebrated was to focus the congregation on remembering the death of Jesus for the forgiveness of sins, and not to focus on contemporary and political issues; and that the presence of the Progress Pride flag introduced a tension with the teachings of Jesus and the scriptures as a whole into the centre of the rite of communion.

In addition, he stated that the teaching of the Church of England was that marriage was between one man and one woman, and the proposed frontal brought to the centre of the rite a contradiction to the Church’s teaching; that placing a symbol that introduced the concept of sexual identity at the centre of the service was inappropriate due to the presence of children, and therefore caused a potential safeguarding issue; that there was contemporary debate in wider culture on aspects of the ideology underpinning the flag; and that the use of the frontal would be divisive as there was strong feeling and debate within the Church of England on the matter of doctrine underpinning it, so that those with contrary views, including clergy or laity, might feel excluded from worship at St Nicholas’s, and/or unable to participate in the central rite of communion.

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