Mortal Follies: Episcopalians and the Crisis of Mainline Christianity<\/em><\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\u201cEverything Gene does tends to be conditioned upon his absolute faith that he knows what he is talking about,\u201d Murchison said. \u201cHe\u2019s a man of some charm, but if you get beyond these somewhat basic and superficial credentials, I don\u2019t believe there\u2019s a whole lot of \u2018there\u2019 there.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The first openly partnered homosexual bishop in the Episcopal Church and the wider Anglican Communion, Robinson has a high profile both in and outside of the denomination, often traveling outside of his diocese to speak at national events. In 2009, Robinson offered a keynote address at the Human Rights Campaign\u2019s Clergy Call, a bi-annual conference in Washington for liberal clergy engaged in gay rights activism. Robinson was also invited to lead prayers at President Barack Obama\u2019s inaugural concert, following criticisms from homosexual activists that California megachurch pastor Rick Warren was too conservative to lead prayers at the inauguration itself.<\/p>\n
Robinson most recently drew attention from comments made last week at the Spring meeting of the Episcopal Church House of Bishops. Expressing dissatisfaction with two policy papers presented for and against same-sex marriage, Robinson said it was time to move beyond speaking of \u201cGLBT\u201d orientations.<\/p>\n
“There are so many other letters in the alphabet,” Robinson said. “There are so many other sexualities to be explored.”<\/p>\n
The Bishop did not elaborate as to what other sexualities might be, and to their corresponding letters of the alphabet. Asked in an interview with CAP how his new role at the think tank connects with his leadership of the New Hampshire diocese, Robinson replied that the connection would be seamless.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe responsibility of any leader in a religious institution is to connect the values articulated in that particular faith with the culture and issues that surround us every day,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cAll of the Abrahamic religions talk about love of God and love of neighbor\u2014and love of neighbor is really nothing but caring about the issues and the people of the culture and bringing one\u2019s religious values to that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI laughingly told someone the other day that I was about to do what our mothers told us never to do at dinner parties, which is to mix religion and politics,\u201d Robinson recounted. \u201cBut for me the two are quite inseparable. Dearly held religious values always propel us into the public square and the issues that face us at any given time. For me, the two go hand in hand.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Episcopal prelate said he was interested in all of the issues that CAP addressed, but that some, such as economic justice, lent themselves to a religious perspective due to an emphasis on the poor in Abrahamic religions.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny of us in any culture is going to be judged by how we care for the most vulnerable among us,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cI hope to focus on issues such as health care reform, immigration reform, the economy, and the ramifications of this jobless recovery.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy biggest concern is that we have lost the notion of the common good,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cWe are devolving into a, \u2018If I\u2019m OK, then to heck with the rest of the world\u2019 attitude. We need to be called back to the common good. It was part of our Founding Fathers\u2019 vision of this country and is certainly part of the progressive agenda in America.\u201d<\/p>\n
The New Hampshire bishop said he was excited to work with CAP on the intersection of race and public policy and religion.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur experience of slavery, albeit banished 150 years ago, still weighs us down,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cThat racial divide is still in our midst and is mostly played out in economic terms. Yet it seems to be the thing that Americans will tell you is over and should be over\u2014yet we still see the effects of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the interview, Robinson was also asked about the controversy over his election as the first openly partnered homosexual bishop in the Episcopal Church.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo have me elected and consented to\u2014and consecrated\u2014a bishop was a very serious statement on our church\u2019s part that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people are children of God and equal in the eyes of God,\u201d Robinson said. Robinson explained that by 2006, the American church had gotten such a negative reaction from the Anglican Communion around the world questioning that decision that the Episcopal Church decided to \u201cpush the pause button\u201d and not elect any other partnered gay or lesbian bishops \u201cat least for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBy 2009, at our general convention last summer, we had thought about it, prayed about it, and decided, nope, actually we had done the right thing,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cWe were going to move forward in the direction we thought God was calling us, and that was full inclusion of all of God\u2019s people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Following the church\u2019s General Convention, the Diocese of Los Angeles elected a partnered lesbian, Mary Glasspool, to be one of new suffragan (assisting) bishops. Having obtained the church\u2019s consent, Glasspool will be consecrated on May 15 in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn that period of just seven years, we have seen the Episcopal Church go out on a limb for its gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender members,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cI think we are winning that struggle. A few people have left, but certainly not as many as you would suspect by reading the headlines. My sense is that the Episcopal Church is ready to move on and do its mission in the world of fully recognizing that our gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender members are fully a part of that effort. I couldn\u2019t be prouder to be an Episcopalian.\u201d<\/p>\n
Robinson said that early in his episcopate he \u201cdidn\u2019t want to be the gay bishop,\u201d but realized within a couple of years that he had no control over that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t write the headlines in The Washington Post or The New York Times and at least for a time, and until someone else was elected, I was just probably going to be the gay bishop,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cI decided rather than spending all of my time and energy resisting that title, it would be better to spend my time making good use of the opportunities that presented themselves because of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Episcopal bishop also addressed international issues, specifically those in the Global South. He amplified unproven allegations that U.S. religious conservatives were pushing African countries to adopt legislation imposing harsh penalties on homosexuals (To read the IRD\u2019s coverage of this issue, click here<\/a>).<\/p>\n\u201cRecently we have come to understand that some of the very conservative and so-called religious groups in America are fanning the flames of this prejudice in other countries,\u201d Robinson said, highlighting controversial legislation in Uganda that would criminalize homosexual behavior. \u201cWe looked at that more closely and discovered that several organizations, but principally the Family, which is the sponsor of the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., were really behind all that. When confronted about that they said, \u2018Oh, my goodness, we never meant for anything like that happen.\u2019 But you can\u2019t play with fire and then claim no responsibility if all of sudden you start a brush fire.\u201d<\/p>\n
Robinson said that in California, people who start camp fires that get out of control are punished.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey hold people accountable for what they did that led to this tragedy,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cSo it seems to me that part of the responsibility in America, as gay and lesbian people, as progressive organizations, we need to hold people accountable for stirring up the fires of bigotry and hatred in other countries.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not everyone agrees that Robinson\u2019s ends are externally focused.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all about Gene, everything is about Gene and about how to satisfy his inner needs and the requirement for affirmation,\u201d Murchison said. \u201cThe good of the broader organization doesn\u2019t seem to resonate with him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Center for the American Progress is the organization that Patriarch Bartholomew endorsed during the Green Patriarch publicity offensive late last year. This George Soros funded institution started out as Hillary Clinton’s cabinet in waiting but was converted into a full-time think tank after her loss. Soros is reportedly still the major backer. ++++++++++ \u201cBishop […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1784],"tags":[1012,11,968,1304,1158,42,60,1179,48],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6193"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6193"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6202,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6193\/revisions\/6202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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