Whining your way to the White House

By Uwe Siemon-Netto

So now Vicki Gene Robinson, the Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, has finally managed to whine his way into some role at President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration. For the sake of an argument, let’s forget, if only one could, that he is openly homosexual; let’s forget, of only one could, that he is the cause of a tragic schism in the world’s Anglican community; let’s forget, if only one could, that he had dumped his wife and later went to  live with a male lover, whom he “married” in a civil ceremony.

Let’s forget, if only one could, that three months ago he led a retreat for homosexual Catholic priests urging them to push for the ordination of women in the Church of Rome, thus meddling in its affairs and offending the members of the largest Christian Church body in the United States, as the Catholic League’s feisty president Bill Donohue has rightly pointed out.

Let’s forget all that and argue, if only one could, that we are all sinners; so why not let this particular sinner give the invocation at the opening event of the Inaugural Week activities?

Well, by whining over President-elect Obama’s choice of evangelical pastor Rick Warren to deliver the actual inaugural invocation Robinson made it clear why one should be appalled by the fact that this “bishop” should play any spiritual part in these events. "It's important for any minority to see themselves represented in some way," he told an interviewer of the Concord Monitor. "Whether it be a racial minority, an ethnic minority or, in our case, a sexual minority. Just seeing someone like you up front matters."

So it’s the “Me” that matters here, or, if you will, the “We,” or, more precisely, the recognition of people’s desires is important, regardless of whether or not they are an abomination in God’s eyes.

It just shows the deplorable confusion over the relationship between the secular and the spiritual realms in this country that no nationwide outcry, even among Lutherans, followed this cleric’s disgraceful comportment.

Robinson is a bishop, an “overseer” in the Episcopal Church. Yet he seems to be oblivious of the fact that in an inaugural prayer a minister must spare his listeners vile speculations about the inner workings of his cassock; no, his sole task is to ask for God’s blessing on the new President who, like all rulers, owes his authority to God.

Comments

[Carol]

The bishop addressed his prayer, not to the Holy Trinity, but to the "God of our many understandings." The text of the prayer is at episcopalcafe.com