A week before Gafcon begins in Jerusalem and a month before the opening of the Lambeth Conference in Canterbury, about 120 guests gathered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in New Hampshire for yesterday's ceremony for TEC Diocesan Bishop Gene Robinson and his male partner, Mark Andrews.Read more here and here and here. Apparently Rowan Williams has been petitioned to invite Bishop Robinson to Lambeth here. Hmm ...
TUESDAY UPDATE: We now have a photo from Saturday. Here's an article from the Guardian here.
7 comments:
This is going to sound petty or like a joke, but I don't intend it as such.
If +VGR gets a Lambeth invite, does his partner attend all the spouse gatherings/events?
Not a joke - just asking how many dominoes will fall. The potential is that a +VGR invite won't just be an extra Bishop at the Indaba sessions, but the insertion of his entire disputed lifestyle into every aspect of a leadership event.
And the AC's position is at most Lambeth 1:10, and at least "dialogue" around the implications of 1:10. Recognition of +VGR's lifestyle, even if de facto rather than de jure, would be forcing a conclusion, which the ABC keeps saying he won't use Lambeth to achieve.
Whole thing stinks.
I would say yes, of course. Mark has all ready attended House of Bishops events for spouses. And when I was in New Orleans covering the HOB meeting last year it was clear that there are other male bishops who have male companions or partners and their partners were permitted the same access as spouses. Yep.
The deal is - the laity in the pews have been kept out of the inner sanctum of the bishop cabal for a long time.
bb
Is that an old photo? I hope he didn't wear a mitre in this desecration of holy matrimony.
Marries? Marries? Come on, BB. Where are the quotes in your heading? If that's marriage then my husband and I are calling what we've been involved in for the last 31 years something else!
Ah - good point point, Jill C. Exactly what is marriage now?
bb
I don't mean this as a tongue in cheek quip in any sense, but...
How does this effect +VGR's qualification to sit as bishop now that he no longer is, the husband of one wife?
Well, exactly Andy. So in order to conform one needs to redefine the terms. What is a "husband" and what is " wife." Is denoting that their gender in some way discriminatory? Is it fair that only men can be husbands and only women can be wives? What is the difference, if they are in covenant with one another - why discriminate against men who want to be a wife and women who want to be husband? So let's just redefine those terms and say that the words "husband" and "wife" are discriminatory - and replace the word (as we have at my firm) with "spouse" and "partner." Those are gender-free terms and what we'll see in the TEC marriage liturgies is the abandonment of the terms "husband" and "wife" and change those words with the gender-free spouse. So the bishop is the spouse of only one person.
Of course, that is discriminatory as well - why only one spouse? Is that fair? Why should the church care about what goes on in the bedroom? What if someone wants to have more than one spouse? Is it fair to say to consenting adults that they can have only one spouse at a time? Wouldn't there be less divorce if people could have more than one spouse at a time?
The reasoning is faulty because it's based on a faulty premise. What is marriage really - an why do the scriptures set so much in store on that particular relationship, why is there so much biblical imagery? How are these innovations actually distorting the truth? Don't blink.
bb
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