Urs Mattmann is a trained social worker, accredited psychotherapist, spiritual director and retreat leader. He was instrumental in the Gay Christian movement (especially in the 1980’s, 1990’s and 2000’s) and initiator and co-founder of different important gay/lesbian spiritual projects during that time. In these engagements he met quite a number of people who are listed with profiles on this website. He has written a book on his own on the theme and contributed in the past thirty years to different other spiritual books. Since 2005 he lives with his partner Emmanuel Grassi in England. As the legal situation changed they were able to enter a Civil partnership the year after.
Urs was born in Basel, Switzerland on 1st of February 1960 and grew up in an evangelical working class family within the Methodist Church. As a younger child he suffered diverse health problems but as he went through puberty this health stabilised.
In his teenage years he also discovered his sexual orientation. While Switzerland was already then a somewhat liberal country (decriminalisation of homosexuality by popular vote in 1942), he remembers growing up in a world where gays and lesbians were hardly ever mentioned. On the positive side, he did not experience any bullying for being not sporty at all and loving to play with girls as well, loving to drew glamorous women dresses and even having a Barbie doll! He describes his upbringing in his book Coming In: Gays and lesbians reclaiming the spiritual journey in more detail.
At the time Urs became aware of sexual and romantic at age 13, he had no words for it as he did not know what homosexual or gay (“schwul” in German) meant. He found out and felt confused and a few years of hiding followed. Very helpful were seeing TV shows at age 16 and 18 where gay men were open about their sexual orientation. The Methodist church youth group was more open and here his coming out slowly started at age 18 with positive reaction of the few peers he came out too.
At the same time Urs had a spiritual awakening experience of God’s transforming love, which let him discover an adult Christian path besides his awareness of homophobia in many churches. Helpful was starting to attend the Schwulen- und Lesben-Tagungen (gay and lesbian conferences) in the large Swiss Protestant centre Boldern and the Catholic Paulus Akademie in Zurich. Here he also met Boldern directors Dr. Marga Buehrig and Dr. Else Kaehler, both theologians in the Swiss Reformed church who pushed an accepting gay agenda. Kaehler was in the 1960’s working together with Christian pioneer Theophil Bovet who already had published a gay positive Christian book in 1959 (Sinnerfueltes Anderssein). In 1965 Kaehler contributed to a new theological gay affirming book by him: Probleme der Homophilie in medizinischer, theologischer und juristischer Sicht. So she was really one of the pioneers. Urs also met some men who were engaged in the Swiss Pre-Stonewall gay movement “Der Kreis” (The "circle") from 1942 to 1967, like Marcel Ullmann (1936 to 2016).
In 1979 and at age 18, Boldern was the beginning of engagement with the LGB Christian movement for Urs. In 1979, he joined a group within the Swiss Reformed church to work on those issues which culminated in the first every worship service in Switzerland with a LGB focus. In the same year Urs travelled to London where he stayed for a month, did an English course, and used every opportunity to get to know the Christian LGB organisation that had just sprung up in the last few years in Britain. He met Rev. Richard Kirker of the nationwide LGCM (Lesbian Gay Christian Movement) and for the first time he attended MCC services, namely MCC North London where he met Rev. Jean White and Rev. Hong Tan. They were all encouraging and inspiring for Urs. In the Gay’s the Word bookshop in London, that amazingly still exists today, he found very valuable books that much inspired his journey as a gay Christian and his spiritual growth. Most important was Is the Homosexual my Neighbour?” by Virgina Mollenkott & Letha Scanzoni as well as Norman Pittinger’s Time for Consent.
A bigger adventure awaited Urs as he stayed as part of a Youth exchange programme for one year in Sacramento, California (summer 1980 to summer 1981). Here he did volunteer social charity work and had ample of time to connect with organisation like Dignity and MCC. In that context he met Rev. Troy Perry and Sacramento’s MCC minister Rev. Freda Smith which much impressed him with their courage, energy and empowering message and life affirming campaigning.
Back in Switzerland Urs had the firm vision to start a LGB Christian caucus. With a fellow gay man, Markus Fischer, Urs managed indeed to get one off the ground. They choose the name of a similar organisation in Germany, HuK – Homosexuelle und Kirche (Homosexuals and Church) He got to know Huk already in 1979 as he helped getting the HuK regional group in Freiburg in Germany off the ground. Working together with other gay and lesbian Christians he managed to give birth to three regional groups in Basel, Bern and Zurich. Through this engagement he became active in the effort to initiate an European-wide organisation. He went to meetings in Strasbourg and then Amsterdam and the European Forum of Gay and Lesbian Christians was born. In this context. He also met Rev. Joseph Doucé whom he stayed in contact until his brutal abduction, torture and murder by the French Secret Police in 1990. Urs was able to visit the Centre du Christ Liberateur in Paris that Joseph was leading and also engaged Doucé as a speaker at an ecumenical LGB conference in Switzerland in circa 1986.
Professionally, Urs started off with a business degree (1979) and from 1981 to 1983 attended a Theological Seminary in Aarau, Switzerland. This was a very mixed experience as the institution was more fundamentalistic then the thought and he had to end studies for being gay, through that was camouflaged by the directorate. Thankfully he had supportive friends and grounded faith and managed to get selected to train as Social worker in 1985 and he successfully graduated in 1988.
Of life-changing importance were two encounters in the 1980’s. In 1986, he met his life partner Emmanuel Grassi (born 1949). Already in 1988, before it was officially promoted by the Swiss Reformed church, Urs and Emmanuel had a service of blessing facilitated by a Reformed minister. A few years later both appeared on German Television to share about their experience and Urs was engaged in a work group within the Reformed church to officially introduce such services. Happily this was successful.
In 1984, Urs met the unique ecumenical community Friedensgasse (Peace Alley) that was inspired by Taize, the Franciscan ideals and the L’ Arche communities. 1987 Emmanuel joined the community as well and 1988 to 2005 they were employed in this community and charity which also included a radical lifestyle choice: it meant sharing one’s life with disadvantaged people, mainly men and women with severe mental health issues, drug and alcohol problems and learning disabilities.
In 1991, Urs and Emmanuel started with a three other Gay Christian men what was likely Europe’s first regular ecumenical LGB church services. The founders named it Lesbische und Schwule Basiskirche LSBK. (Lesbian and Gay Basis church) They celebrated services monthly in a large Reformed inner city church. This was also officially supported by the Roman Catholic Church as well. Those services lasted for 30 years and inspired more such regular services in other Swiss and German towns and then beyond. The most powerful project today is the Open Table Network in Britain, where such monthly services happen in around 40 cities.at the time of writing this biography.
The services were led by Urs and a team and always a Reformed or Methodist minister or Roman Catholic priest were invited to celebrate Eucharist. Often local choirs where invited to build further bridges to the local community.
Through Friedensgasse Urs personally met such renowned theologians as Matthew Fox, Dorothee Soelle and especially Richard Rohr which whom he stayed in contact and Rohr wrote the foreword to Coming In that Urs wrote.
From 1997 to 2002 Urs trained as psychotherapist (transpersonal and integrative, with Psychosynthesis at the core). Later he did diverse trainings to enable him to have a healing focus on Trauma and PTSD as well as to work as Clinical supervisor.
In 1997, Urs started to organise and facilitate retreats either for all LGB people or specifically retreat leader in the Podere Fiorli centre in Tuscany, Italy. Some of his co-facilitators were well known, like gay Catholic theologian James Alison or bisexual Catholic spiritual writer and broadcaster Stafford Whiteaker (1930 – 2023). Soon Urs was invited by British retreat centres and one highlight were one week retreats at Iona (island at the West coast of Scotland} for the global Iona community. Another highlight was when Rev. Jean Richardson invited Urs to facilitate a Gay and bisexual men’s retreat in Kirkridge on the U.S. East Coast in 2008 with renowned gay Christian minister, activist and writer Chris Glaser. While in Kirkridge Urs and Emmanuel were interviewed and filmed and they can be seen in the acclaimed film about the great John McNeill’s life: “Taking a Chance on God”. In context of the LSBK and C-Queer, Urs manged to invite John McNeill and his partner Charlie Chiarelli in 2000 to Switzerland for well-attended talks. John was also interviewed by the press and got very good coverage on being gay and catholic and LGB liberation theology.
Out of those rich experiences, Urs wrote the book Coming In: Gays and lesbians reclaiming the spiritual journey. The German edition was published in 2002 and the English one with some additions in 2006. The later was published by Wild Goose Publications and 20 years late still in print and selling.
In 2005,Urs and Emmanuel moved to London where Urs took a leading role in the substance misuse sector and Emmanuel worked as support worker with adults with learning disability. Urs soon was in charge of the Counselling team in drug & alcohol sector and in the yearly Gay Pride weeks in London Urs helped with outreach to LGBTQ people with substance misuse problems. He also for years co-facilitate in London a group for Gay and bisexual men with an alcohol problem. During the Covid crisis in 2020/2021 he organised an online Gay spirituality group for which many isolated gay and bisexual men were thankful for. While living in London Urs and Emmanuel were both much engaged in an Anglican church where Urs started an LGB Meditation group in 2007.
In 2020 Urs and Emmanuel moved to Thirsk in North Yorkshire where at Holy Rood House, a Centre for Health and Pastoral care created a new role as senior psychotherapist for Urs. In addition, he joined the chaplaincy team as spiritual director and contributes several times a year to retreats in this centre. Currently the retreat focus for Urs are men’s spirituality retreats, for all men whatever their sexual orientation. And at Holy Rood House, as well as other Retreat centres in the UK, Urs co-facilitates every-year retreats inspired by the teachings of Richard Rohr, open to everybody.
Over the years Urs contributed to contributed to other books like Stafford Whiteaker last edition of The Good Retreat Guide and recently a transpersonal book on couples (Willing to Love) where Urs shares about his partnership with Emmanuel from a transpersonal perspective.
In 2025 gay spiritual writer and visionary Toby Johnson contacted Urs to contribute a chapter with other gay spiritual pioneers to contribute a brand new spiritual book that is being published in early 2026, Spirits Queer, Spirits True: Explorations of the Soul.
Urs has been especially fond of the mystics and the contemplative path: Christian mystics like Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, Bede Griffiths, Thomas Merton and Thomas Keating. Contemporary mystics contemplative writers who have influenced him in recent years are Richard Rohr, James Finley and Cynthia Bourgeault. While Urs is devoted to the Christian path, he was enriched through interreligious experiences in India and Japan and by being a Zen Meditation student for a number of years. While he still appreciates Zen, he favourite spiritual practice currently is Centering Prayer.
Urs is a railfan and takes much spiritual impulses from classic musical theatre. “Open a New Window” from Jerry Herman’s Mame is one of the songs that has become a theme song for his life.At 66 he looks back at his life with great thankfulness to God having experienced many blessings. Being of service and a channel of healing and blessing to others and to the world.
(This biographical statement written by Urs Mattmann.)
Biography Date: January 2026