Bishops at the Episcopal General Convention held in Minneapolis, Minn. voted 62-45 to make a queer Bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire. August 5, 2003
God will never forgive these FALSE PROPHETS of a so-called
Christian Church .
Aug. 5 — The election of the V. Gene Robinson to lead the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire has thrown the Anglican Communion into turmoil. NBC's Jim Avila reports.
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MINNEAPOLIS, Aug. 5 —V. Gene Robinson was confirmed Tuesday night as
the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church after surviving a
last-minute investigation of allegations of inappropriate conduct. Conservative
members of the Anglican Communion said they were considering whether to leave
the church in protest.
BISHOPS AT THE CHURCH’S Episcopal General Convention voted 62-45 to confirm
Robinson as head of the Diocese of New Hampshire after a debate that mirrored
the divisions in the larger worldwide communion.
Robinson, 56, a divorced father of two, has been attending the convention with
his daughter and his partner of 13 years, Mark Andrew, 50. Robinson was elected
by his diocese in June, but the church required that a majority of convention
delegates ratify his election.
The Episcopal Church, part of the 77 million-member worldwide Anglican
Communion, has been deeply divided for decades over homosexuality, and the vote
on Robinson fueled those tensions. The American Anglican Council plans a meeting
in October to decide whether to break away from the church or take other action.
Anglican Mainstream, an organization of conservative Anglicans, issued a
statement Tuesday night expressing regret at Robinson’s installation. It was
signed by church leaders from Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America and
followers from England, India and elsewhere.
“We expect that primates of the [Anglican] Communion will be meeting soon to
consider what action to take,” the statement said. “Dioceses and parishes in the
United States who wish to remain loyal to the Anglican Communion will also be
considering their position in the coming weeks.”
‘CHAOS AND LOSS’
The final debate at the convention sounded similar themes. Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh urged his fellow bishops to reject Robinson during final debate Tuesday evening, saying appointment of a gay bishop would invite “chaos and loss.” But the current bishop of New Hampshire, Douglas Theuner, whose retirement led to Robinson’s nomination, addressed critics who had said the diocese was trying to impose a “gay agenda” on the church, noting that “New Hampshire is not particularly an epicenter of gay culture.” He also noted protests from conservative bishops in the Anglican Communion, of which the Episcopal Church is the U.S. member. When New Hampshire chose Robinson, it was not thinking about “how it would play in Singapore or Lagos or Sydney or anywhere else,” Theuner said. He acknowledged that the election of Robinson had caused a “burden” for the church, but he said New Hampshire church members felt he was the best candidate for the job.
ALLEGATIONS DISMISSED
Robinson, whose appointment had already been approved in a preliminary vote Sunday, was formally confirmed after two whirlwind days during which allegations abruptly surfaced and then were dismissed that he inappropriately touched another man and was affiliated with a group whose Web site could indirectly link users to pornography. A hastily arranged investigation of the eleventh-hour allegations threw the church meeting into turmoil after several days of intense debate over whether Robinson’s election would strengthen or shatter the church. “In both allegations, it is my conclusion that there is no necessity to pursue further investigation,” the bishop who led the investigation, Roger Scruton of the Western Massachusetts diocese, said Tuesday in a speech to bishops.
The most serious allegation surfaced in an e-mail message sent Sunday to Bishop Thomas Ely of Vermont by one of his parishioners, David Lewis of Manchester, Vt. Lewis asked Ely not to consent to Robinson’s election because Robinson “does not maintain appropriate boundaries with men.” Lewis said Robinson “put his hands on me inappropriately” at a church event “a couple of years ago” and described himself as “a straight man reporting homosexual harassment.” But Scruton said Lewis refused to lodge a formal complaint when Scruton interviewed him by telephone Monday afternoon.
NO INAPPROPRIATE COMMENTS
Lewis said he was “made uncomfortable” by two brief encounters with Robinson at a church event in November 1999, both of which took place in public, Scruton said. Lewis, whom Scruton referred to only as “the individual,” told him that Robinson “put his left hand on the individual’s arm and his right hand on the individual’s upper back” as Robinson answered a question Lewis had asked. Scruton said the other encounter occurred when Lewis turned to make a comment to Robinson and the clergyman “touched the individual’s forearm and back while responding with his own comment.” No inappropriate sexual comments were made, Scruton said. Scruton said Lewis acknowledged that other people could have seen the incidents and viewed them as “perfectly normal.” He said Lewis told him that he “regretted using the word ‘harassment’” in his e-mail message. Lewis “indicated he had no desire to pursue the matter any further,” Scruton said. “He said he was thankful the church had taken this seriously and that he felt ‘listened to.’ " Scruton said questions about Robinson’s role in the Web site for a gay and lesbian support group he founded also appeared to be moot because Robinson’s involvement with the group ended four years before the Web site was created. Robinson was not immediately available for comment. But some of his supporters called the timing of the allegations suspicious. The diocese of New Hampshire issued a statement Monday expressing “continued confidence” in Robinson, while the Episcopal gay advocacy group Integrity said it felt “deep frustration and disappointment." It's character assassination,” said Robyn Cotton, an Episcopalian from Concord, N.H., who supported Robinson.
‘THE STUFF OF SCHISMS’
The investigation overshadowed the issue that had dominated the convention until
then, the possibility that the election of an openly gay bishop could lead to a
schism within the Anglican Communion. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, is known to support the
appointment of gay priests.
But he has taken pains to avoid a split in the worldwide church over the issue,
which has inflamed passions even greater than those stirred up by the debate
over female priests in the 1970s.
With Robinson’s installation, Williams will have little choice but to express
misgivings to avoid alienating the Nigerians and other fast-growing
congregations in developing countries, said Clifford Longley, a religion
journalist who covers the church for The Daily Telegraph of London.
“If he just accepts the American decision, then he will lose the ‘new Anglican’
communities in Africa, Asia, Latin America and so on, which are much more
conservative than the Episcopalians in the U.S.,” Longley wrote in a Telegraph
article.
“This is a collision between a certain kind of traditionalism and modernity,
frankly, and that is very much the stuff of schisms,” he wrote.
NBC’s Jim Avila in Minneapolis, MSNBC.com’s Alex Johnson, The Associated Press
and Reuters contributed to this report.
U.S. Episcopalian conservatives protest gay vote
MINNEAPOLIS, Aug. 6 — Some Episcopalian conservatives walked out of the U.S. church's convention Wednesday to protest the ratification of its first openly gay bishop, a sign of the fractures forming in the global Anglican denomination.
''This church will never be the same,'' the Rev. Kendall Harmon, a conservative, said before leading dozens of delegates out of the convention center for a period of fasting and prayer at a nearby Lutheran church. ''Some will be leaving the convention and going home, some will stay off the floor for a period of fasting and prayer and others will return (to the convention) duty-bound'' to have their voices heard, said Harmon, editor of the Anglican Digest, a church publication. New Hampshire Bishop-elect Gene Robinson, cleared by church leaders Tuesday of allegations of sexual misconduct and approved by 62 of the 107 bishops, said he prayed his appointment would not lead to a church rupture. ''Any time anyone decides to leave the church it's a very sad thing. I certainly have been praying and will be praying every day that such a thing does not happen. And indeed I don't think it needs to happen,'' Robinson told ABC's ''Good Morning America.'' Several conservatives said Robinson's approval was tantamount to recognition of non-celibate, same-sex relationships by the church, contradicting a 1998 Anglican resolution that called homosexual sex ''incompatible with scripture.''
SAME-SEX UNIONS
The U.S. church edged closer Wednesday to full acceptance of homosexual relationships when the bishops, by voice vote, approved a resolution that recognized that blessings of same-sex unions were already taking place at the local parish level with the approval of some bishops. The measure will be taken up by the church's House of Delegates during the remaining two days of the convention. Originally, liberals hoped to create a liturgy sanctioning such blessings, but the bishops passed a toned-down version that stopped short of being a national directive. Conservatives chafed at the latest measure, while liberals were triumphant. ''The bishops now have the right to develop their own pastoral practices,'' said the Rev. Michael Hopkins, head of Integrity, a gay support group. ''We have a significant move forward in this church toward the honoring of gay and lesbian (relationships).'' Harmon criticized the resolution as ambiguous. ''Let's say what we're going to do and what we're really talking about and vote on it,'' he said. Bishops who opposed Robinson's ordination appealed to the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, as well as conservative Anglican leaders in Africa, Asia and elsewhere, for ''godly direction and emergency intervention.'' That presented Williams, the nominal leader of the 70 million-member Anglican Communion, with one of the biggest crises of his eight-month tenure. In a statement from London, he said: ''Difficult days lie ahead for the Anglican Church after the decision. ... (Robinson's appointment) will inevitably have a significant impact on the Anglican Communion throughout the world and it is too early to say what the result of that will be.'' Church liberals have questioned the threats of a schism, noting conservatives failed to follow through after objecting to the mid-1970s decision to ordain women. The Most Rev. Frank Griswold, presiding bishop of the U.S. Episcopal Church, who voted in favor of Robinson's ordination, said he believed that ''different points of view can be held ... without the issue of sexuality becoming church dividing.''