Bishop Gene Robinson: a sin to treat me this way

Gene Robinson is the American bishop whose homosexuality has split the Anglican Church. He tells Peter Stanford about his anger with the Archbishop of Canterbury and why he believes God is on his side.

Bishop Gene Robinson, the very devil incarnate to some of his fiercest critics, is sitting before me in a London hotel.

"Look at me," the 61-year-old prelate protests when I repeat the charge that he is single-handedly driving Anglicanism to its death.

"I'm a little guy and I don't have that much power. Now if someone chooses to leave the worldwide [Anglican] communion because I'm a bishop, then that's their doing, not mine."

Gene Robinson is indeed small, the result of infantile paralysis which doctors told his parents would kill him young. But his size is not the thing that everyone knows about him.

When he was elected as Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003, Robinson became the Anglican Communion's first openly gay bishop. He has lived in a committed relationship with Mark Andrew, a local government officer, for nigh on 20 years.

Their refusal to deny or cover up that same-sex commitment in order to avoid clashing with official church teaching on homosexuality, sent shockwaves around global Anglicanism.

The storm is set to intensify in July when the world's Anglican bishops meet for their once-a-decade gathering at Lambeth Palace and debate what to do about the "problem" of Bishop Robinson.

However, when the host, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, sent out invitations to the Lambeth Conference, Gene Robinson's was the one name missing from the list. It was, Robinson believes, an "unstrategic" attempt to appease the conservative Anglican primates from Africa, Asia and Latin America, led by Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, who have described the installation of a gay bishop as the work of Satan.

"I have a lot of sympathy for Archbishop Williams," Robinson reflects. I can hear the "but" coming a mile off.

"I pray for him all the time. And I worry about him, not in a condescending way. Given his views and his brilliant writing prior to becoming Archbishop of Canterbury, to see how he has led, or not led, on this issue of homosexuality makes me wonder how he sleeps at night. What he has done, and what he has chosen not to do, violates where he has been all along."

Robinson is in London to promote his new book, In The Eye of the Storm. It is a spiritual memoir aimed, he says, at showing that he is more than "a one issue guy".

The last of its five sections, however, sets a course for the Lambeth Conference and beyond. It is, in one way, Robinson having his say, even though he's not going to be at the event itself.

Or, at least not at the gatherings of the bishops. "I'm going to be there, in the market place," he says, "making myself available to anyone who wants to talk."

He won't, as many Anglicans seem to hope, be allowing the whole issue to go away. It is in this refusal to be silent that I finally begin to see in this otherwise gentle and genial prelate that flash of steely resolve that drives all implacable dissenters forward.

"Jesus never says anything about homosexuality," he says, the light tone in his nasal voice suddenly darkening, "but he says a lot about treating every person with dignity and respect. All the biblical appeals for a particular attitude to homosexuality can never quote Jesus."

What, though, of Old Testament condemnations of "men who lay with men"?

"The Church isn't the same yesterday, today and tomorrow," he says.

"Only God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. The Church has always been changing. The Holy Spirit is leading us into truth. And I believe we have learnt that about people of colour, about women, about those who are disabled and now about lesbian and gay people."

He would, I can see, be impressive in a pulpit. Perhaps it was his oratory that caused the Anglican electors of New Hampshire to vote decisively for him in 2003, and his fellow American bishops to give him their backing.

But, whatever their motives, their decision has had the effect of bringing to a head Anglicanism's muddled attitude to sexuality.

"As Anglicans we agree about so many things," Robinson concedes. "We are not arguing over the divinity of Christ, the Trinity or the Resurrection. We are arguing about a non-essential thing."

 

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