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| Nobody knew that Karl Barth, Fuller Seminary's favorite theologian, was bedding Charlotte, his assistant, in his own home and in a summer cottage while they wrote their magnum opus. |
Bishop Robinson’s Divorce is Huge Black Eye for Episcopal Church Leadership
EDITORIAL
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
May 4, 2014
Gene Robinson, the homogenital bishop of New Hampshire and the poster boy for The Episcopal Church’s new morality is not talking. He won't respond to emails from the secular and religious press about his divorce from his partner Mark Andrew.The reason is simple. He cannot justify his sex life --- two marriages and two divorces (one to a woman and one to a man) --- to a church and public that has given him a lot of inclusive and diverse rope. In the end, he hung himself. A one paragraph note to the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops and leaked to VOL said only that Robinson was divorcing his partner. “As you can imagine, this is a difficult time for us -- not a decision entered into lightly or without much counseling. I'm sure that you will understand the private nature of this change in our lives and our commitment to keeping those details appropriately private.”
He asked for prayers. But prayer for what exactly. It is unclear. Reconciliation perhaps? Unlikely it would seem. Prayer that both men can move beyond this and take up with new partners without promoting outright scandal?
We do know that Robinson was an alcoholic and Andrew had threatened to leave him if he started to drink again. Robinson joined AA (and discovered a higher power) and has apparently been sober, but who knows. Robinson isn’t talking. It’s “private” he says. Really. For the last dozen years his lifestyle has been anything but private. He has traipsed the world and the US promoting and pushing his homoerotic lifestyle, wearing it like a huge badge on his chest challenging anyone who opposed it by shaking the fist of homophobia in their faces.
He shredded the Anglican Communion, causing the most populace provincial archbishops from not turning up to Lambeth even though he cruised the fringes of the Lambeth Conference himself giving interviews to any sympatico media he could find. Now he says his divorce is private.
The Episcopal Church, as it journeys down the road to full inclusion, now finds itself with the embarrassing realization that inclusion -- that defied and contradicted biblical standards -- has not worked. In fact, it is emptying churches, including the diocese of New Hampshire, Robinson’s former diocese.
Sodomy became the radioactive behavior that forced tens of thousands of Episcopalians to leave the Episcopal Church bringing about the formation of the Anglican Church in North America. A realignment has begun that will not end.
It divided Anglicans across the globe, destroyed friendships, released angry exchanges among archbishops in one primates’ meeting after another, and just plain disgusted African, Asian and Latin bishops who saw no value in embracing it in their own cultures and churches.
Robinson whined, cried, cajoled and twisted the church into a sexual pretzel aided by the increasingly volatile pansexual forces of small groups likeIntegrity within the church and those they promoted to grab the reins of power in the church’s administration and seminaries.
Sexual self-control went out the window. From two sexualities, gay and lesbian, they morphed into lesbitransgay, intersex, inquiring and more. With newer revelations that there might be as many as 70 different sexualities, The Episcopal Church now faces the embarrassing possibility that some deadly serious Episcopal pansexualist will offer up a resolution at the next general convention covering inclusion of all the latest sexualities. Trannies will mix it up with “cluster f**ks”.There won't be enough toilets to cater to all the rampant sexualities.
Robinson’s divorce is a huge black eye for Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and the House of Bishops who have bent over backwards (and some say forwards) to make Gene welcome. Less than a handful of bishops now oppose his behavior and the church’s embrace of an illegitimate lifestyle. The last public display of righteous anger occurred when South Carolina Bishop Mark Lawrence stormed out of the HOB at the last General Convention disgusted by the direction of TEC. He has since been in litigation over church properties.
Now the Episcopal Church spin machine will kick into high gear. They will undoubtedly tell us that straight marriages dissolve at the rate of 50% so why should we worry about the odd gay divorce! Except of course that gay marriage cannot be found in Scripture in the first place, is ontologically and cosmologically impossible, and that it is not only deeply offensive to the vast majority of our Global South brothers and sisters, it is the primary cause of murder and mayhem in Nigeria and Southern Sudan.
No, Robinson’s divorce will be the final turning point for tens of thousands of Episcopalians who must now face the reality that The Episcopal Church has no moral or theological order, that it is completely out of control and can no longer be taken seriously as a Christian denomination.
It is time to end the charade. It is time for Episcopalians, sickened by 40 years of revisionist sexual spin, to say enough is enough and call the church out or leave.
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| Many are fleeing to the Church of Rome, which is like a monastery fish jumping from the frying pan into the friar. |