Mirror – Bingo, who now works in Liverpool, visits schools across the area and hopes to inspire LGBTQ+ young people and show them they have a place in church
A non-binary priest says God guided them to come out after an epiphany.
Bingo Allison, 36, is to their knowledge the first openly non-binary priest to be ordained in the Church of England.
Bingo, who now works in Liverpool, visits schools across the area and hopes to inspire LGBTQ+ young people and show them they have a place in church.
Bingo, from West Yorkshire, grew up in a «strongly religious» household and said they were raised to believe that acting on being gay was «sinful».
But the parent-of-three has been on a 15-year journey that included meeting other LGBTQ+ Christians that has completely changed their previously ‘very traditional and conservative’ outlook on life, the Liverpool Echo reports.
Bingo told the Echo: «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.»
The 36-year-old was halfway through their vicar training – a seven year programme – when they first came across the term gender-queer.
That was seven years ago – and Bingo originally considered putting off revelations about their gender identity – but found it difficult.
They said: “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.”
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But one evening, Bingo was writing an essay about God’s creation of the earth when they had an epiphany. They explained how Genesis 1:27 uses the terms ‘from maleness to femaleness’, rather than men and women.
Bingo said: “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.