My kind of priest

All Christians are called to be in communion with Christ, but very few are chosen to be in direct two-way communication with Him.

The Rev Bingo Alison, C of E vicar in Liverpool, is one of the chosen few. He had the rare privilege of being blessed with an appearance of Our Lord, as he (Bingo, not Our Lord) was reading the Book of Genesis.

Suddenly, the skies opened and Jesus materialised before Bingo. “Is this really thee, Lord, in all thy glory?” asked Bingo, trembling all over and falling down on his knees.

“It is I, God thy Lord,” said Jesus. “And I am glad thou got my prepositions right. Now, Bingo, let’s work on yours.”

“What dost thou mean, Lord?” asked Bingo. “What’s wrong with my prepositions?”

“What’s wrong,” explained the Saviour, “is that thou readest Genesis 1:27, but without understanding one jot or one tittle.”

“But it says clearly, black on white: ‘Male and female created he them,’”objected Bingo, both awed and perplexed. “What’s there not to understand?”

“Verily I say unto you, Bingo, thou art one dumb vicar. There is plenty to understand. For behold, I said ‘male and female’, not ‘male or female,” explained Our Lord. “What dost thou think I meant?”

“That we can be both at the same time?” asked Bingo tentatively, scales falling from his eyes.

“Bingo!” cried the Lord. “Thou art not as dumb as thou looks.”

Then He spake unto Bingo, saying: “Verily I say unto you, thou canst be both, either simultaneously or consecutively. The choice is thine own, but from now on thou art non-binary. And thy prepositions are they/them.”

Actually, I’ve had to fill in the blanks, for the Rev Bingo hasn’t vouchsafed the verbatim content of the exchange he had with Jesus. He has only revealed that the conversation indeed took place and as a result he – or rather they – now identify as ‘gender-queer’.

That part was easy, but, according to Bingo, breaking the news to his wife and three children proved “difficult”. After all, “obviously you marry what you think it a straight guy and obviously things are more complicated than that.”

Complicated is one way of describing it. For the Rev Bingo didn’t just identify as gender-queer. He went the whole hog, as it were and, as you can see in the photograph, developed quite a fetching cleavage.

Mercifully, the Church of England “was open to me coming out”, which says more about that institution than about Bingo. “On the outside you might think ‘oh, they’re quite a traditional church so they might have traditional views’, but I’ve always been treated as a person and as a priest.”

Traditional church? Traditional views? Perish the thought. No one who has ever seen today’s C of E in closeup would have formed that impression. Accepting non-binary priests is a logical next step from having female (and often lesbian) bishops.

The time when the Anglican Church was called the Tory Party at prayer is long since gone. These days it’s more like a combination of the Labour Party and PinkNews, ready to compromise on the prayer, but never on its commitment to woke perversions.

After that original tête-à-tête, Bingo’s chinwags with Jesus continued. In the aftermath of one such session, he (Bingo, not Jesus) posed a selfie with a caption saying Jesus “loves sparkly eyeshadow”. And by the sound of Him, He simply adores blasphemous freaks.

The Rev Bingo won’t hide his (their?) light under a bushel. In Matthew 5:16, Jesus expressly said, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”

In that spirit, the vicar travels the country, speaking to various panels on how to make the Church more inclusive. Christianity, he explains, has historically been guilty of favouring the views of “rich, white, straight, cisgender, able-bodied, neurotypical men”. 

One doesn’t necessarily get that exact impression from reading the Gospels, but then reading is one thing and getting the info straight from the original source is quite another.

Since I am no longer a communicant in the Church of England, I don’t think it’s my call to suggest that this sideshow be unfrocked. And in any case, should that garment be removed, I wince just thinking what we might find underneath.

But as a subject of His Majesty, the Supreme Governor of our established Church, I lament its plight. Rather than leading men and women to salvation, it does a good job leading lemmings to the precipice.

The only question I’ve got is whether the Rev Bingo is one of the leaders or one of the lemmings. A bit of both perhaps – after all he is (they are?) non-binary.