A Liverpool priest is showing others you don’t need to choose between your gender identity and faith.
Bingo Allison, who lives in Norris Green, is gender-queer and to their knowledge is the first openly non-binary priest to be ordained in the Church of England.
The 36-year-old attend schools and assemblies and are visible across West Derby Deanery - where they work - in the hope they can inspire others who find themselves in a similar situation to what they were once in.
READ MORE: Christian recalls struggle between his faith and sexuality
Throughout their religious journey, Bingo has met “amazing and faithful” gay Christians - who the third-generation priest said, “are a blessing to the church”. It was after meeting people like this that Bingo realised their traditional and conservative outlook on life was one they wanted to distance themselves from.
The work which Bingo, who is originally from West Yorkshire, does now may come as a shock to those who knew them 15 years ago. Bingo grew up in a “strongly religious” household and this meant the only time “gay people” were mentioned was as a “sinful thing”. Bingo was raised to believe being gay wasn’t sinful but to act on it was.
The parent-of-three recalled one occasion which became key in their journey of self-discovery and religion. Bingo told the ECHO someone corrected them for referring to gay marriage as an “issue” rather than speaking about the topic as if people were involved. They said after being challenged, it helped them to see a “new way” and a “different way of thinking”.
They said: “My views used to be very traditional and very conservative certainly. Some might call them bigoted and there was a lot of ignorance and a lot of ‘othering’. I didn’t take the time to learn from other people’s experiences. I was definitely in a lot of denial and some of that denial came out in denial of other people's identities."
It wasn’t until seven years ago when they first came across the term gender-queer that “everything suddenly clicked”. Bingo considered putting their new-found identity on hold whilst they finished their vicar training - at this point, they were only halfway through the seven-year programme - but this proved harder than they initially expected.
They added: “It was a lot harder than I thought having come out to myself to then remain in the closet. There were definitely lots of times before when I kind of questioned my identity but growing up in a more conservative form of Christianity meant that it was just so far beyond my imagination.
"I didn't know any trans people and I think I probably met two gay people in my life. So it was like another planet almost to me. There were a few times when I really questioned things. But because I didn't really have the vocabulary to describe my experience it just kind of didn't go anywhere.”
It was while writing an essay on how God created the earth that Bingo had an epiphany. They said the language which the bible originally used in Genesis 1:27 spoke about “from maleness to femaleness” as opposed to men and women.
They added: “I was sitting there in the middle of the night when I realised I might need to run my life upside down. It was a deepening spiritual experience, I properly felt God was guiding me into this new truth about myself. One of the things that has kept with my ministry ever since is that transition and coming out can and should be a spiritual experience, as well as an emotional and social and sometimes physical one. There is something beautiful about growing into who we were created to be and growing into our authentic selves.”
The younger generation of the LGBTQ+ community is something Bingo is both envious and in awe of because of how open-minded and exposed they are to the LGBTQ+ community.
They said: “I try to get involved in, not just in my religious work but outside it, with the local secular LGBT youth groups. One of the biggest things is just being a visual representation in my community and going into schools, doing assemblies and making a huge difference in normalising it for children. When I’m wearing my collar it lets children know that is okay and that there is a place in church and the outside world for people like me.”
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