Free Republic

Across the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, congregants and clergy today reacted with heavy hearts to word that Bishop V. Gene Robinson is retiring. Robinson, 63, whose consecration seven years ago as the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church divided the Anglican Communion worldwide, yesterday announced at the annual convention of the New Hampshire diocese that he plans to retire in January 2013, short of the mandatory 72-year-old retirement age for Episcopal bishops. He cited death threats and the considerable strain that the worldwide rift has placed on him, his family, and the church.

The Episcopal Church in the United States took another major step toward ensuring its own demise last week, by adopting a resolution endorsing the ordination of homosexuals as clergy and bishops. The resolution, adopted at the denomination’s General Convention, said that “gay and lesbian persons . . . have responded to God’s call and have exercised various ministries,” and declared that “God has called and may call such individuals, to any ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church.” The resolution was widely interpreted as abandoning a moratorium on the ordination of homosexual bishops that was adopted after the furor surrounding the...

Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the only openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church, has been asked to give the invocation at the first official inaugural activity, a welcome event with the president-elect on Sunday afternoon on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Robinson had been critical of president-elect Barack Obama for asking Rick Warren, the evangelical pastor who encouraged voters to overturn same-sex marriage in California, to deliver the invocation at the inauguration. Episcopal Cafe has an e-mail from Robinson: "I am writing to tell you that President-Elect Obama and the Inaugural Committee have invited me to...

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it (John 1:5). The world settles into winter, at least in the northern hemisphere, and life to many seems increasingly bleak. Foreclosures, layoffs, government bailouts and financial failures, continuing war on two fronts, terrorist attacks, murders of some identified only by their faith -- this world is in abundant need of light. We know light that is not overcome by darkness, for God has come among us in human flesh. Born in poverty to a homeless couple, to a people long under occupation, Jesus is human and divine...

JOHN SHELBY SPONG, whose books have sold more than a million copies, was Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark for 24 years. His admirers acclaim him as a teaching bishop who makes contemporary theology accessible to the ordinary layperson. A longtime champion of progressive Christianit y, Spong is a visionary voice in the religious communit y, calling people to step beyond boundaries of tribe, prejudice, gender and even religion to create a new humanit y. He is a committed Christian who has spent a lifetime studying the Bible and whose life has been deeply shaped by it. Now he...