The first openly gay US Episcopal bishop was barred from a once-a-decade Anglican meeting so he would not become a focus of the global event.
Anglicans on all sides of the issue agree: the strategy has backfired.
New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson has been embraced by sympathetic Anglicans in England and Scotland who view his exclusion as an affront to their Christian beliefs.
Robinson plans several appearances on the outskirts of the Lambeth Conference to be what he called a “constant and friendly” reminder of gays in the church.
“I’m just not willing to let the bishops meet and pretend that we don’t exist,” Robinson said in an interview on Sunday before preaching at St Mary’s Church Putney.
“They’ve taken vows to serve all the people in dioceses, not just certain ones,” he said.
The Anglican spiritual leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, did not include Robinson and a few other bishops in the conference as he tried to prevent a split in the world Anglican Communion. The 77 million-member fellowship — the third-largest in the world behind Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians — has been on the brink of schism since Robinson was consecrated in 2003.
The Episcopal Church is the Anglican body in the US.
Robinson and Episcopal leaders had tried for years to negotiate a role for the New Hampshire bishop at Lambeth, but were unsuccessful.
He resolved to come to England anyway.
“I’m not storming the pulpit to wrestle the microphone from the archbishop,” Robinson said. “My agenda is this: What does the church’s treatment of gay and lesbian people say about God? You’ve got all these people talking about gays and lesbians being an abomination before God. Does that make you want to run out and go to an Anglican church and sing God’s praises?”
Robinson preached on Sunday at the 16th-century parish on the Thames River, despite a request from Williams that he not do so. A protester briefly interrupted the sermon, waving a motorcycle helmet and yelling “Repent!” and “Heretic!” before he was escorted out.
An emotional Robinson resumed preaching, asking parishioners to “pray for that man” and urging them repeatedly not to fear change in the church.
Last night, Robinson was to join Sir Ian McKellan at a London literary festival for the British premiere of For the Bible Tells Me So, a documentary about gay Christians that features Robinson.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion