A non-binary vicar believes God “guided them” to come out following a revelation while reading the Old Testament.

Speaking to the Liverpool Echo, Bingo Allison said it was Genesis 1:27 which speaks about “from maleness to females” as opposed to men and women which helped them make the click.

They 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.

“One of the things that has kept with my ministry ever since is that transition and coming out can and should be a spiritual experience, as well as an emotional and social and sometimes physical one. There is something beautiful about growing into who we were created to be and growing into our authentic selves.”

The 36-year-old and parent to three children said their “strongly religious” upbringing taught them to see being gay as “sinful”. But after meeting other LGBT Christians, their “'very traditional and conservative” outlook on life changed.

Allison, who is, to their knowledge, the first non-binary vicar to be ordained in the Church of England, works across West Derby Deanery, attending schools and youth groups to show the LGBT community they “have a place in the church”.