+Gene Robinson to Step Down

As I opened my email late this evening, my eyes widened when I saw the headline:

"BREAKING NEWS: +Gene is retiring"

The bishop of my native New Hampshire made the announcement at the diocesan convention Saturday. It isn't immediate; he will stay on until 2013. But there will be a search to find a replacement, and much church politicking, I'm sure.

Most of the focus of this story will be (and is) on +Gene's significance as the first openly-gay bishop in the Anglican Communion, the wailing and gnashing of teeth that followed that historic moment in 2003, and the half-baked attempt to preserve the Anglican Communion through an Anglican Covenant.

But that is not my story of Gene Robinson. Mine is the one that starts in January, 1981, at the Sign of the Dove Retreat Center in central New Hampshire where I first met Rev. Gene Robinson. My confirmation class from Christ Church in Exeter had gone there as part of our preparation for the transition to Christian adulthood. I had become fixated on the phrase, "Begotten not made" in our study of the Nicene Creed, and I'd taken great pleasure in pressing priests for the answer to an unanswerable question: "Where did God come from?" Coming to the Sign of the Dove, I saw I had another priest I could test with this question. But, unlike others, Rev. Gene Robinson took delight in taking this awkward punkish kid from Exeter seriously. Rather than trying to b.s. his way past my inquiry, Gene smiled and looked me in the eyes.

"That's a great question!" he proclaimed. "I don't know where God came from. But I have faith that there is a God."

He talked to me seriously and sincerely about what that meant--having faith in the untouchable and the unknowable. We talked about confirmation and the commitment of staying with God even if we can't know the answer to "where did God come from?" I couldn't believe that a man in a black shirt and white collar had really talked to me like a person and not a stupid person at that. I was impressed, and I felt validated. So funny to have had him turn the tables on me; I was trying to test him, and he put me to the test in a kind way. He left me to think, "Do I have faith in this God?"

When I learned that Gene had been elected by my fellow Episcopalians in my home state, I was delighted and elated. Him being an openly-gay man was important, but it was far more important to me that a man had been elected bishop who had spoken so passionately with a teenager about what it means to have faith in God. That was a much bigger deal. In my opinion, the church could use many more bishops, priests and deacons who don't shy away from discussing faith with people who aren't the monied members. How one treats a child or teenager in the church goes a long way toward determining if that child will know to come back should they drift away. This, in my opinion, has been Bishop Gene's greatest contribution to the broader Church. His demeanor as a pastor has removed stumbling blocks that have stood in the way of people seeing any value to the Episcopal Church. Certainly, LGBT members of the church who have heard him or seen him have seen in +Gene that they, too, are beloved members of the body of Christ. And nothing--nothing--stands between the love of God and those seeking that love.

My prayers go out to +Gene and his husband, Mark, and my childhood diocese of New Hampshire. I know that it probably has been both a thrill and definitely sometimes a headache to be in the international spotlight. But ultimately I know that God does good work through Bishop Gene and Gene has provided good leadership to New Hampshire. Blessings!