what are christian spaces in bangor like?

going to bangor uni in september and i would like to potentially get involved in the christian union &/ church there, but i'm lgbt and want to make sure it's inclusive. obviously there might be individual homophobes but does anyone know how inclusive the christian union itself is? would i be welcomed as a visibly queer person or would it be potentially uncomfortable? thanks!

Reply 1

Anonymous #2

Original post by Anonymous

Hey, I’m Catholic and will be going to Bangor aswell. Firstly anyone is welcome in Church it’s not for anyone to decide or to judge you. Just to be honest it depends on what you mean by visibly queer on how people will interact with you tbh because being LGB isn’t a sin just the acts but if you make a big deal out of you being queer then it will probably make people treat you differently otherwise people will treat you like anyone else. Hope that helped and hope to see you in September :smile:

Reply 2

Anonymous #3

Hi, I'm a christian at Bangor and although not part of the CU I have friends who are and have been to some events (both official and just get-togethers with friends who are very involved with the society). Out of the people I know in the CU two are lgbtq+ (although there's probably more to be honest), I would say out of them one is visibly queer, and I've never heard her speak of feeling uncomfortable in the society. I've really only ever got the impression that it is a very friendly and welcoming place. As you said there are always a few funny ones, but I've found that Bangor is generally very inclusive, with a high queer population, and the SU are really good at dealing with issues within societies. They've also recently created a mandatory wellbeing/inclusion role for societies, I'm not really sure what they actually do 😅 but seems positive anyway.

There are also loads of different kinds of churches in Bangor depending on what kind of thing you're looking for. Personally I had issues at one of them, where I felt kind of uncomfortable being there as a gay person, but bc there are quite a lot I was able to find another church. So now I attend Mosaic evangelical Church which I found welcoming immediately. Everyone is so friendly, and there's a lot of students there. So if you usually go to an evangelical church then I would 100% recommend. Only downside is it's more of a trek to get to than most of the other ones 😅 but bonus - there's often free food.

Sorry that ended up a bit of a long one but I hope it was helpful. Also one last random thing - sometimes they have bowls of pin badges in the SU reception.So if you like freebies...I got a really cool pride flag and a slightly less cool (but still nice) pronoun pin last semster hahaha