cw: death
Dear reader,
Another year of writing, speaking and teaching has come to an end, and I want to thank you for engaging with my work. Whether you’ve participated in one of my Woodbrooke courses, listened to me presenting Pause for Thought on the radio, or read one of my blog posts, I’m truly grateful for your time and attention. My theological work is my ministry, it’s what truly fulfils me, so I’m very fortunate that there are people like you who value and support it. In this post I summarise and reflect on my ministry in 2025 and think about what it might look like next year.
In 2025 I experienced death close up. My mother-in-law died at the beginning of May after a long struggle with cancer. Supporting my husband through the whole sequence of events – her final months, her death, and all the post-death admin – has taken up a lot of room this year. And whilst this was happening, one of my oldest and closest friends, Ben, died at the end of March at the age of 46, also from cancer. The metaphor of ‘the veil’ makes total emotional sense to me now. In the days after each death it felt like a door opened between this life and the next. A breeze from beyond the lifted veil blew through us, filling me with a quiet holiness.
This heavenly silence was soon shattered in the aftermath of Ben’s death. The homophobia of his evangelical Christian family turned his funeral into a traumatic, spiritually abusive event. It’s taking me a long time to recover. This blog is a place where I process stuff, and so I wrote an alternative eulogy for Ben. I read it at a memorial we organized to exorcise the ghost of his homophobic funeral, celebrating his life in a gay bar whilst ministered to by a drag queen singing ‘I Am What I Am’ and ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow.’ I tried to process my anger by writing about what it means to desire Jesus in a world of queerphobic Christianity. I wrote about the comfort I’ve found in God’s wrath and vengeance, qualities quickly rejected or passed over in liberal religion.
A couple of months before Ben died, I showed him a draft chapter of a new book I was working on. This chapter began as a talk for Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting, after which an enthusiastic Friend encouraged me to submit a book proposal to a publisher. Ben loved what he read. A week after Ben died I received a contract from Broadleaf Books for my book tentatively titled Unapologetic: a queer Quaker approach to the Bible, set to be published in 2027. This was the most thrilling news of the year. Despite having two published books under my belt, to be offered a contract, with an advance no less, feels like a huge validation of my skills as an author. I’ll be dedicating the book to Ben’s memory. I wish he could read the whole thing.
My other blog posts have engaged with important conversations among Quakers in Britain. I responded to the 2026 BYM Epistle, asking if love really is the central message of the New Testament, and I wrote about withdrawing from ongoing ‘dialogue and debate’ with transphobic Quakers, a post later printed as an article in the Friend. I’m glad that the Yearly Meeting is remaining steadfast in its commitments to trans and non-binary dignity, but it is so disheartening to witness unrelenting opposition from a minority of Friends committed to a transphobic ideology. I’ve received some push-back for expressing these views publicly, including a Quaker accusing me of advocating for a ‘gay authoritarian dictatorship,’ but I’ve had far more messages of thanks. I hope Friends in Britain can continue to be unapologetically trans-inclusive in 2026.
I’ve had the opportunity to serve Britain Yearly Meeting as a theologian, acting as a kind of theological consultant to the Quaker Committee for Christian and Interfaith Relations, and advising those working on a Quaker theology of reparations on behalf of Britain Yearly Meeting. I taught an online session through Woodbrooke on ‘Reparations, Responsibility and Quaker Theology’ in the autumn, and it was gratifying to share the fruits of my PhD research with a wider, non-academic audience.
Other fun engagements in 2026 include being interviewed on the excellent vlog Quake It Up, giving a talk to the University of Birmingham Student Christian Movement, and presenting more Pause for Thoughts on BBC Radio 2 in March and October. I’ve delivered papers at the annual conferences of the Society for the Study of Theology and the Quaker Studies Research Association, and had a review of Zachary Moon’s Goatwalking published in the journal Quaker Studies. I spent a wonderful afternoon with Watford Quakers talking about Quaker-shaped Christianity, and led Taizé-style worship for an Anglican church in Manchester. I ran two enjoyable online book clubs with Woodbrooke, reading my latest book The Spirit of Freedom, and Thomas Kelly’s classic A Testament of Devotion.
In 2025 I began training in ‘spiritual accompaniment’ (also known as ‘spiritual direction’) in the Ignatian tradition, and I made my first visit to St Bueno’s, the Ignatian spirituality retreat centre in north Wales. I also spent a June weekend in Glastonbury with the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, part of a spiritual adventure I’ve been having for the last few years but haven’t written much about, although that might change in 2026.
The year ahead promises some significant milestones. The plan is to complete my PhD in the spring, and finish Unapologetic by the autumn. With only a few months left of my student grant, the question ‘how will I pay my grocery bills?’ looms large on the horizon. I’ve got some work lined up with Woodbrooke, such as a course on Christian mysticism in February, a weekend at Glenthorne Guest House in the Lake District on Quaker and Ignatian approaches to spirituality, working as a personal tutor on the relaunched Equipping for Ministry programme, plus more courses and book groups to be announced in due course.
2026 is the year I definitely start a podcast. I also want to do a lot more writing, making my PhD discoveries accessible to a broader audience. I’ve a strong sense that my vocation is to be a ‘public minister’ in the Quaker tradition, preaching a Quaker-flavoured message of God’s love, abundant life in Christ, the freedom of the Spirit, the dignity and worth of queer people, and the theologically generative nature of queer experience. How do I balance this calling with my responsibilities to my family and my need for some kind of income? What might that look like when I’m a member of a Yearly Meeting that doesn’t recognise the kind of role I’m called to, and with whom I’m not theologically aligned? Watch this space.
Of course, without people who appreciate my ministry my hopes for the future would feel completely unrealistic. Thank you for your time, your support and your engagement with my offerings on this blog and elsewhere. Every time I get a message from someone who’s found my work helpful, my fire burns brighter. Thank you! I hope you’ll be nourished by what I have to offer in 2026.
May God’s peace and deep joy accompany you through the coming year, whatever difficulties lie ahead.
Love
Mark
[Cover image photo by Kevin Butz on Unsplash]
Jolly Quaker 