In England, where they lived, Jones was one of the first women ordained into the Church of England. Jones had been called to the church also. ‘If you love someone, then that gives you joy.’ Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian ‘It’s seeing Josephine being able to be herself, most fully and most joyfully,’ Jones says. Come July, they will have been married for 37 years. Penny Jones sits with Inkpin in the Pitt Street church office, and they butt into each other’s sentences in furious agreement or to finesse details. She fell in love, “and it’s hard to unwind that”. That different role, or space, changed as life became more complex. At the same time it was sort of trapping.” “There’s a bit more female sensibility, you might say. She found it a space where she could exist outside the confines of male behaviour. Because while the whole world was telling her that she was something she felt she was not, “there’s this space, this reality, called God that says you are loved just as you are”.Īs she grew older, she studied theology and joined the Anglican church as a priest in 1987. Sometimes people are surprised, she says, when she and other gay and transgender religious people say “that the thing that still partly oppresses us actually kept us alive”. “You knew you loved, when you got the chance, dressing in garments that weren’t supposed to be for you, and a whole lot of other things – a sensibility about life.” But she could see no pathway for herself. There were nearly no transgender people in her world, and no language to understand what she was feeling. When Inkpin was growing up in an Anglican family in England, she knew she different. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian ‘An awful thing to carry’ When Inkpin was invited by the Uniting Church to lead Pitt Street, it was the first time a transgender person had been appointed as a minister in a mainstream church. “I can’t get this: why would a secular government support particular people within churches or other bodies and choose sides on something that needs to be worked through in the religious community?” If they go to a religious school where their very being is the subject of condemnation, she says, “not only will they be battling their community, but the government will actually be backing these people to make their lives more difficult”. Those children do not get to choose what schools they go to and what messages are debated in the public domain. “The people who are most threatened by this legislation, or aspects of it, are LGBTQ+ children in religious families,” Inkpin says. Much of the general debate around the religious discrimination bill, and amendments to the sex discrimination act, has centred on “statements of belief” – that statements that would otherwise be considered discriminatory are not so when made in line with an honestly held moderate belief – and the rights of religious organisations, specifically schools, to exclude or discriminate against LGBTQ+ staff and students. Inkpin joined the Anglican church as a priest in England in 1987 and came out in 2017 after emigrating to Australia. “It’s damaging, I think, for maybe religion as a whole but certainly for a lot of Christian churches because people start to doubt whether or not places which actually are very gentle and kind aren’t, actually, interested in discrimination.” She laughs, as though the statement is so obvious it’s absurd. While she believes there is a gap in the law in recognising religious identity, which is important to address and fix, the bill is “giving people powers to oppress other people, that’s just not right”. She has been writing submissions, lobbying politicians, forming coalitions, and all the while taking calls from transgender and gay individuals and their families looking for advice, solace and recognition. Aside from the traditional work of a priest, it has meant, says Inkpin, a lot of extra work. The religious discrimination bill has loomed large over Inkpin’s rookie year in the church, a year in which she also dealt with the disruption of Covid and death of her parents. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian ‘I know the shame’ Josephine Inkpin (left) with wife Penny Jones outside the Pitt Street Uniting Church in Sydney.
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