Eclectic Amateur

Well, they did it. General Convention confirmed the election of Canon Gene “New Easter” Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire. Along with approval of the development of rites for blessing same-sex “unions” and urging more embryonic stem-cell research. About the only thing that didn’t happen was the appointment of our first openly-Muslim bishop. (Give it time, give it time …)

Whoever granted Wendy Griffith her press pass to anything remotely Episcopalian must be kicking themselves right now. She’s hit two grand slams in the last week. First, she gets Frank Griswold to do his best deer in the headlights impression:

Wendy Griffith, a reporter with the Christian Broadcasting Network, asked presiding Episcopal Bishop Frank Griswold about Bishop-elect V. Gene Robinson, who was confirmed Tuesday as the first openly homosexual Episcopal bishop. He is divorced and lives with his male partner.

If, the reporter asked, a divorced male bishop could live with a man to whom he was not married, what about a divorced heterosexual male bishop living with a female lover?

“Or,” she added, “is being outside marriage only OK if you are gay?”

“The Episcopal Church honors holy matrimony,” Bishop Griswold said, “and certainly if a male were elected bishop and was living with a woman without benefit of clergy, that would be a significant problem.”

“So there’s a double standard, then?” Miss Griffith asked, at which point church spokesman Jim Solheim abruptly ended the press conference.

I’ll just bet he did.

Then, she gets to do her special reporter jujutsu on V. Gene himself (via MCJ):

CBN reporter Wendy Griffith asked Robinson how he reconciles the gay lifestyle with the Bible.

Griffith asked, “How would you interpret Romans 1:26-‘For even the women exchange the natural use for what is against nature, likewise also the men leaving the natural use of the women, burn in their lust for one another; man with man committing what is shameful.’ How do you reconcile that?”

Robinson suggested that the Scriptures are out of date.

“Uh, when those Scriptures were written in both the Old and New Testaments, everyone was presumed to be heterosexual, so to act in any other manner would be against one’s natural inclinations. The whole notion of sexual orientation is only about a hundred years old. So to take the concept of homosexuality as a sexual orientation and to read it back into an ancient text, uh-is very shaky ground to be on.”

Proving that not only is V. Gene ignorant of Scripture, he doesn’t care to know squat about history, either.

But Griffith isn’t done with V. Gene just yet —

Reporter Wendy Griffith asked him,

“Is Jesus Christ the only way, as Jesus says, ‘I am the Way, the Truth
and the Life, and no one comes to the Father except by me?'”

Robinson’s reply: “I would be the last person in the world to try to put God in some kind of a box.”

I don’t care if V. Gene was laser-beam straight. If he can’t answer that question with a simple “yes”, he has no business as a bishop. Or priest. Or Sunday-school teacher. Janitor or mechanic, maybe. At least then he’d be doing some honest work.