The consecration of the openly gay Gene Robinson as Anglican bishop of New Hampshire has caused a potential fracture in the Anglican Communion. He talks to Patsy McGarry, Religious Affairs Correspondent.
BISHOP GENE ROBINSON seemed to share at least one of God's qualities at the Lambeth Conference in Canterbury this week. He was everywhere. But, unlike God, he was also visible, usually surrounded by well-wishers, supporters and the media. Where the latter was concerned he was easily the most accessible and available of all the 670 bishops invited to the conference - to which he wasn't invited.
Bishop Robinson (61) is the first openly gay, non-celibate priest to be ordained a bishop in any major Christian denomination. He had been married with two daughters, and now two grand-daughters.
He discussed his probable orientation with his wife before marriage but they decided to continue together. They divorced in the 1980s, by which time he had gone public about his sexuality.
He met his current partner, Mark Andrew, in 1987. In 1988 he was made a canon in the US Episcopal diocese of New Hampshire and was elected bishop there in June 2003. He was consecrated bishop in November 2003, while wearing a bulletproof vest.
The event convulsed the worldwide Anglican Communion and threatens to split it asunder. About a quarter of its bishops have boycotted the current Lambeth Conference due to dissatisfaction at how the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, titular head of the Communion, has handled the crisis. On June 29th, most of those bishops gathered in Jerusalem to form the Global Anglican Future Conference, which some see as a breakaway Anglican group.
Meanwhile, in the US, disaffected Episcopalians disaffiliated from their Church and formed the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, with the support of the Nigerian church, led by its primate, Archbishop Peter Akinola.
BUT ON THURSDAY morning last, while most of those 670 other bishops attending the Lambeth Conference were walking through central London in support of the Millennium Development Goals, Bishop Robinson was bravely visiting the magnificent Canterbury Cathedral.
"Bravely", because this was where another "turbulent priest" was dealt with rather summarily. For this is the very cathedral where there was murder. On December 29th, 1170, four knights loyal to King Henry II killed Archbishop Thomas Becket there. With their swords they sliced the crown off his head at a spot near the High Altar.
It is said that, in exasperation at Becket, King Henry had said sometime beforehand, "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" The knights decided to oblige. Becket was canonised three years later and his shrine became a focus for one of the major pilgrimages in Christendom.
Bishop Robinson visited the spot where Becket met his end. It is also marked by a plaque which records that Pope John Paul II and the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, prayed there in May 1982. Indeed, so nervous were the cathedral authorities at Bishop Robinson's presence last Thursday that they requested no photographs be taken to mark the event.
Bishop Robinson's connections with Ireland go back to his days as a canon. His diocese was twinned with the Church of Ireland diocese of Limerick and Killaloe, and he visited there occasionally. Speaking to The Irish Times this week, he recalls that in 2000 he gave a retreat for clergy of that diocese at Dingle. "What a beautiful place," he says of the Co Kerry town. It was also why his consecration as bishop in 2003 was attended by the then Bishop of Limerick and Killaloe, Right Rev Michael Mayes.
Had he been invited, this would have been his first Lambeth Conference. Regardless, the people he met there this week were "wonderful, extraordinarily warm", and their reaction to him had been "astonishingly positive". The worst he encountered were "people who won't smile". He did not take part in official events at the Conference, nor had he any plans to.
It troubles him that some described his consecration as Bishop of New Hampshire as just another example of US unilateralism, comparable to the invasion of Iraq.
"That derives from America's standing now. America is seen as some sort of drunken cowboy swaggering around the world. America needs honest feedback," he says, adding that its handling of its role as the only world superpower was "not at all positive". But his own election and consecration as bishop followed "thoughtful, prayerful and careful consideration" by those responsible.
He also feels that preoccupation by the Communion with such same-sex issues while "young men are knifing one another in London, and while over a billion people live on less than a dollar a day, is the height of irrelevance".
Asked why the churches generally seem so preoccupied with sexuality issues, he says it is down to "patriarchy. It is about the empowerment of women, whether through controlling their fertility or ordination. It has been in place a very long time. There has been a change in the culture over the past 50 years. Before then straight, white, educated men made most of the decisions for the rest of the world. Now people of colour, women, gay and lesbian people have set off an enormous change in the way the world operates." And, as far as he is concerned, "misogyny and homophobia are linked" in the churches, too.
THE BIBLE WAS written in patriarchal times, he says, But he doesn't believe "God stopped revealing himself in the first century. He continues to do so through the Holy Spirit." He also refers to the much greater role women had in the early church, when many were deacons.
"And of course women were hugely involved in the ministry of Jesus," he says.
He recalls giving a retreat to 75 gay Catholic priests, at a secret location, where he was asked what they must do to change the church's attitude to homosexuality. "I told them to take care of the women's issue first. The rest will follow."
He is high in his praise of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, where organisation of the current Lambeth Conference is concerned. "He has got it exactly right. It is about conversation and the building of relationships. It is not about proclamations," he says.
More generally, he challenges those attending the conference.
"No one is saying I am the only gay bishop here. No one is saying I am the only partnered gay bishop here. Maybe the question is really one of honesty," he says. He recalls a BBC interview with a Nigerian bishop who had said that while homosexuality among clergy there was officially forbidden, the reality was that a gentleman's agreement operated not to talk about it. It was another "don't ask don't tell" situation, he says.
Bishop Robinson wonders "how such clergy can go into a pulpit on a Sunday and ask people to live a life of integrity". In his view, "God selects the members of his church. Our role is to love each other the way God loves us. It is not for us to decide who should be in or who should be out."
