Gay bishop, whose nomination split church years ago, visits Falls Church – The Washington Post
Robinson’s ordination to bishop in New Hampshire in 2003 spurred more conservative members to split from the Episcopal Church, with a large swath of worshipers who didn’t approve of having an openly gay man in the role starting their own church, The Falls Church Anglican, leaving behind a small, liberal group.
The splinter caused a lengthy legal debate over church property that ended in 2014 when the Supreme Court declined to take up a lower court’s ruling that the centuries-old property belonged to the Episcopal Church.
While each side has chartered their own path since Robinson was named bishop coadjutor in 2003, Robinson himself has had time to reflect on how he became widely known as the “gay bishop” who brought “Satan in the church,” as a Kenyan leader said many years ago of his election.
On Saturday, Rev. Burl Salmon of The Falls Church, 51, who is openly gay, introduced Robinson.
“Your presence among us on this day is history,” he said. “It’s remarkable.”
Robinson, 75, began by telling attendees that he’s been praying for them since the split, explaining that divisions within congregations were never his intention.
He outlined his life as a boy from a family of sharecroppers who used an outhouse, to a young man who found the Episcopal church at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn. Higher education was where he found a faith that he said still clings to his bones.
While living in New York, Robinson asked a therapist if it was possible to be made into a heterosexual because he wanted a family and loved children. He later married a woman and had two children, but the marriage dissolved more than a decade later.
“She freed me to pursue a life with men and I freed her to pursue a life with men,” he joked.
Nearly two years later, he met his now-deceased ex-husband on a beach in St. Croix, a partnership that would span decades.
Robinson said he had the courage to be an openly gay man after reading “Embracing the Exile: Healing Journeys of Gay Christians” by John E. Fortunato, a book whose passages he read at the beginning and end of his speech.
The day Robinson found out he had been named as bishop, he received his first death threat by the time he returned home, and continued to receive death threats for two years, he said. Police would remain a presence at his New Hampshire home until he left in 2013, he said as he teared up and flushed crimson.
At the height of the frenzy surrounding him, Robinson said reporters often asked him what he thought about being the reason behind the split of so many churches.
“I didn’t make Falls Church or any other church do what they did,” he said. “I did what I did.”
Montgomery College student Victoria Turner, 27, was among the dozens who showed up to hear Robinson speak. Turner, who identifies as queer, has heard about Robinson over the years, and his election came as a surprise to her when she learned about it, she said.
“Up to that point, I had known a lot of self-identifying Christian and queer people,” she said. “I knew that those things could be in conjunction with one another. It was surprising it could create such a schism.”
The Episcopal Church’s response to Robinson made her question if she should call herself a Christian, she said. But a gay priest in her hometown of Minneapolis explained to her that the bigotry of some didn’t determine what was true for the majority, she said.
Hearing Robinson speak reminded her that she needs to work to find ways to ensure that more people feel welcome in faith spaces, she said.
“There’s nothing wrong with me that could hinder me from going to heaven,” she said. “You’re still loved and you’re still a child of God.”
Robinson isn’t as top of mind as he was among congregants nearly 20 years ago, though many know who he is, Salmon said in an interview. Most of the members of the church now are not the same members who made the choice to split in 2006, he said.
For the small number of original members, Robinson’s return offered a sense of closure for those who still carry the pain of the split many years later.
“A lot has happened in the world,” Salmon said, citing his own marriage in Mississippi to his husband. “The world has changed, the church has changed, but I think it’s because of Gene.”