- The first openly gay Anglican bishop has sparked outrage
for suggesting that Jesus might have been homosexual.
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- The Rt Rev Gene Robinson, the Bishop of New Hampshire
in the Episcopal Church of the United States, said that Jesus was an unmarried,
"non-traditional man" who did not uphold family values, "travelled
with a bunch of men" and enjoyed an especially close relationship
with one of his disciples.
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- His comments, made in a recent address at the Christ
Church of Hamilton and Wenham in Massachusetts, have enraged traditional
Anglicans who have suggested that the Bishop should be "struck down
by thunder and lightning bolts". Bishop Robinson, whose consecration
in 2003 triggered a schism between evangelicals and liberals in the worldwide
Anglican Communion, was giving an address entitled "Homosexuality
and the Body of Christ: Is There a New Way?"
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- In answer to a question from the congregation about how
the acceptance of homosexuality could be squared with the scriptural emphasis
on redemption for sins, the Bishop replied: "Interestingly enough,
in this day of traditional family values, this man that we follow was single,
as far as we know, travelled with a bunch of men, had a disciple who was
known as 'the one whom Jesus loved' and said my family is not my mother
and father, my family is those who do the will of God. None of us likes
those harsh words. That's who Jesus is, that's who he was at heart, in
his earthly life.
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- "Those who would posit the nuclear family as the
be all and end all of God's creation probably don't find that much in the
gospels to support it," he said.
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- David Virtue, an evangelical commentator who runs the
influential conservative Anglican website, VirtueOnline, called the comments
"rubbish".
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- He said: "It is appalling deconstructionism from
the liberal lobby which will spin even the remotest thing to turn it into
a hint that Biblical figures are gay. It is so utterly preposterous to
imply that Jesus's relationship with John was homo-erotic, but twisting
the truth is the only way these people can get scriptural justification
for their lifestyles. Can you imagine Calvin, Luther or Erasmus saying
something like this? It is a wonder that thunder and lightning bolts don't
strike Bishop Robinson down."
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- Mr Virtue also said that passages in which Bishop Robinson
compared the loneliness of being gay to a black person being called "a
nigger" were "deeply offensive". The comments came at the
end of a sermon in which Bishop Robinson dispensed with his notes and spoke
freely of his experiences growing up as a homosexual. In one passage he
recalled a Playboy magazine being handed around his classmates and realising
that it was causing them "a whole lot more excitement" than it
was for him.
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- "I was terrified in high school, especially dreading
the 10th grade [for 16-year-olds] when we would go into a gym class and
have to go into the showers and I was absolutely terrified that I would
get beaten to a bloody pulp if something happened in the showers that might
indicate in some way that I was erotically attracted to boys my own age,"
he continued.
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- "It was a very lonely place to be. At least if you're
black and you're called a nigger, you can go home to your mother and father
and say, 'Oh my god, they called me a nigger today', and the parents have
had the same experience. But a young kid growing up terribly fearful that
he or she might be gay can't go home to the parents because of the consequences."
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- Bishop Robinson, who married his partner, Mark, said
that he had come to reconcile his sexuality with his faith and could feel
"God's light and God's life ooze over me like warm butter".
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- Canon Chris Sugden, a spokesman for the evangelical organisation,
Anglican Mainstream, said: "He's really selective in what he's addressing.
He makes no mention of Jesus's teaching on marriage, for instance. And
he does not acknowledge that nowhere in the text or in ancient literature
is there any suggestion of any form of sexual impropriety among Jesus or
the disciples. Jesus broke the cultural traditions of the time and has
women mixing with men in public and having them teaching. Those of us who
put scripture as a priority are called on to obey the scripture even when
that is in conflict with our culture.
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- "Bishop Robinson is saying that the culture has
moved in his direction and that it's all becoming accepted, so he's looking
for ways to interpret scripture to support that instead of realising that
scripture asks us to do the unpopular thing and stand against the prevailing
culture."
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- This is not the first time that it has been suggested
Jesus might have been gay. In 1977 Mary Whitehouse, the moral campaigner,
brought a private prosecution against the Gay News for publishing a poem
by Professor James Kirkup called The Love That Dares To Speak Its Name.
The poem depicted a centurion's love for Christ and the newspaper was fined
under the blasphemy laws.
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- Mike Barwell, a spokesman for Bishop Robinson, said:
"Jesus was a non-traditional person who broke all the rules and hung
out with all the wrong people. Anything else that people infer from the
Bishop's comments is all speculation."
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.
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- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai
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