Where is love? asks Andrea Heron

When I was 18 months old, I was taken to St Stephen’s URC, Wavertree, for the first time by my grandparents. Or so I’m told. I can’t remember, though I believe there may be photographs. Confirmed into membership of the URC at 12, as time passed I learned how to sit quietly when others were speaking, how to read aloud in public and be heard, and I learned how to speak up during meetings.

I became involved in the Fellowship of United Reformed Youth, or FURY as we were known then. And we were! Furious. (In our defence, there was plenty to be furious about in the late 1980s, particularly in the North.) Being involved in the Church at that time also afforded me the privilege of travelling to Germany twice to attend Kirchentag, a gathering of German and European Protestants, once in Frankfurt and once in Berlin, East and West. These trips had a profound effect on me. There I saw the Church performing a different function to the one we’re used to in this country. Rather than being viewed as a bastion of the status quo, there the Church was a haven for the LGBTQ+ community, for political dissidents, for protestors. Indeed, church membership there was seen as radical, rebellious, a decision of conscience for young people, one that brought with it, at best, exclusion from key aspects of society. At worst, dissent led to accusations of working against the communist state, with all that entailed at the time….

Andrea Heron is Lay Chaplain to the Moderator of General Assembly

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This is an extract from an article published in the Issue 2 – 2025 edition of Reform

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