Leap of faith: the Catherine Deveney interview

For Gene Robinson, death threats have become a way of life – a price he is paying for being the Anglican church's first openly gay bishop. Now banned from the upcoming Lambeth Conference by the Archbishop of Canterbury, he is at the centre of a row threatening to tear the religious establishment apart

BISHOP Gene Robinson is usually defined in terms of his nationality and sexuality – and they are not unconnected. Gay American bishop Gene Robinson… Well, ain't those Yanks somethin'? Ordaining a gay bishop an' all, no matter what the rest of the world thinks? Same way they goes stompin' off round the globe leaving their big muddy footprints all over places as don't belong to them.

Not that the rest of us don't have gay clergy, of course. It's just that we prefer to keep them locked in the communion wine cupboard as far away as possible from the mitres and preferably with parcel tape over their mouths.

Robinson has become an icon. He's a symbol of American arrogance or modernisation, of disunity or inclusion, depending on your standpoint. He's the man who threatens to split the Anglican church. Robinson says schism is not inevitable and God can bring an Easter out of any Good Friday, but he has been banned from the once-a-decade Lambeth Conference of bishops – which will open in London on July 15 – in case his presence offends the conservatives. Then arch opponent Peter Akinola of Nigeria announces he's not coming anyway, because he wouldn't mix with Robinson's supporters, so the brothers-in-Christ thing is getting a bit strained.

Homophobia has become almost as taboo as homosexuality once was. There are, though, two final bastions: the army and the church. 'Cos in the army you don't want no poofs around when there's men's work to be done and in the church… well, because God says so. Or does he? Robinson says there has been a fundamental misinterpretation of God's word. And perhaps a misrepresentation.

It's a bit dehumanising being a symbol. There are loads of press cuttings about Robinson to read before interviewing him but they are all issue-based – even his book, In the Eye of the Storm. But here he is, sitting with a very human cold, a small, avuncular man with glasses and a smile. You can see the steel flash, though. You need it when all people ever say about you is that you're gay! And American! And a bishop!

The cardboard cut-out version of Robinson makes me curious. What's the journey that took him from being a married priest with two daughters to being a gay bishop kneeling at a New Hampshire altar in a bulletproof vest?

ROBINSON GREW UP in Kentucky, the conservative south of America, in the 1950s. His parents were tobacco farmers. "We were extremely poor. I didn't live in a house with running water until I was ten. If you wanted water, you cranked it up out of a cistern. If you wanted hot water, you brought that inside, put a pan on the stove and took baths in a little pan of hot water."

His parents were largely uneducated. In fact, his father only went back to graduate from high school when Robinson was 11 or 12; there's a picture of the two of them in front of the fireplace, his father holding his precious diploma. But his parents were very religious. They thought most established churches had too much baggage and followed a scripture-based American denomination that, ironically as things turned out, had no priests.

The conventional interpretation of scripture Robinson received inevitably caused him difficulty and he still has sympathy with those who can't reconcile homosexuality with the Bible. "After all," he says, "I grew up with the anti-gay message as well. I was taught what they were taught. And it's only through a very rich and painful journey that I have come to a different place."

The word 'gay' wasn't used back then. People didn't even refer to 'homosexuals'. "We often referred to people who were 'that way' and the thought that you might be was like ending your life prematurely. It was a terrible place to be, and that's part of why I am public now, so that teenagers who suspect themselves to be gay or lesbian have positive role models."

But by the age of 12 or 13, Robinson knew he was 'that way'. "It was too painful to think it might be true in any profound and lasting way, but even as a passing phase it was horrifying. Frightening beyond words. I spent many years praying to God that this would not be true of me, that this would only be a phase I was passing though. It was such a shameful thing."

State laws have changed with regard to homosexuality, and with those changes came cultural change. But how can scripture change? It doesn't, says Robinson. Our interpretation of it does. Take the often-quoted chapter from Leviticus, which says: "You men shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination." Abomination, argues Robinson, means something completely different now. "What that word meant in its context was 'not customary'. There was no value judgment." Eating pork, for example, was also an abomination and few adhere to that now.
We have to acknowledge cultural differences, argues Robinson. Homosexuality was not an accepted concept in biblical times. What was part of Greek and Roman culture, though, was older men teaching adolescent boys the ways of the world and in the process using them for sex. That, says Robinson, was child abuse and no wonder St Paul was against it. But in biblical translations, that has been translated simply as 'homosexuality'.

In biblical times, the male seed was seen as containing everything necessary for life and women were mere incubators. So masturbation and coitus interruptus were also frowned upon. "But we have changed our minds, haven't we?" says Robinson. "Even the so-called biblical literalists pick and choose what they want to be eternally binding." Jesus said his followers should give up their possessions, he continues. But the literalists don't fixate on that. So does Robinson believe the Bible reveals absolute truths? "Yes. But do I believe in one person's ability to grasp it? No. I don't think any of us have the whole truth. Only God knows the whole truth."

As a young man, he hadn't worked out his own truth and undertook therapy to try to 'cure' himself . "I look back on it now as a lot of wasted money. Twice a week with a guy whose neck I'd like to wring. I think it's a failed proposition to say this can be changed. But I desperately wanted not to be gay and I longed for a family. I loved children."

Eventually, he believed himself ready for a relationship with a woman and he met Boo, who was to become his wife. He never deceived her. "I told her within a month that I had struggled with this my whole life, that the only romantic relationships I had had were with men, that I had gotten into therapy and felt that I had changed." Looking back, did he love Boo or just convince himself he did? "Oh, I loved her. Oh God, yeah. I loved her. I wanted this marriage to work. I thought it would work."

But a month before their wedding Robinson became anxious. "I remember breaking down in tears and saying I was just so fearful that this might raise its ugly head again somewhere down the road. She was very understanding and said, 'You know, if that happens, we love each other enough that we will find a way to deal with it.' And 13 years later, we did."

About ten years into the marriage, and by now an Anglican priest, Robinson recognised that he couldn't suppress his sexuality forever. For the next three years, he and his wife went to therapy, both together and separately. "We decided the only way we could keep our wedding vows to honour each other was to let each other go. There was no other person involved. She was not involved with anyone. I was not involved with anyone. We just did this for ourselves and each other."
Robinson decided they had to be honest about the reason, because everyone thought their marriage was perfect. "Ours was the marriage to emulate." Robinson's parents were devastated. "I flew home to Kentucky to tell them, not even sure I would be able to stay in the house that night. I think my father was on the verge of throwing me out. I did wind up staying, but it was horrible." Men are often more threatened by homosexuality than women. Did his mother react differently? "Oh yeah. My mother is the one who has always exhibited God's unconditional love. I don't think I could do anything that would make my mother stop loving me. But I think it was horrendously painful for her, for both of them."
And for him and Boo, of course. They ended their marriage by going back to church. "We took a priest with us to the judge's chamber for the final divorce hearing, then we went back to his church and asked each other's forgiveness for any ways we might have hurt each other." Then they returned their wedding rings as a symbol that they were each releasing the other from the vows they had made. "We pledged ourselves to the joint raising of our children, we cried a lot, and then we had communion together," recalls Robinson. "It was one of the most healing moments of my whole life."

He still has a great relationship with Boo, who married again. She was even a presenter at his consecration. "In a way we still love each other very much." And if they'd stayed married? "Everyone would have been damaged. It would have hurt me, it would have hurt her, it would have hurt our children. You can't live a lie and not have it affect everyone around you. I think it would have eaten me alive from within and it would have caused untold distress for my wife. Clergy climb into the pulpit every week and ask people to live lives of integrity. And if they're not able to do that themselves, what credibility do they have? So I never doubted it was the right thing to do."

But by doing it, he risked everything. Back then, there seemed no prospect of being openly gay and remaining a minister. "I thought my life as an ordained person in the church was over." His two daughters were eight and four and he told them the truth immediately. "Kids often think they have caused divorce somehow, that they are responsible, so I didn't want it kept secret. I think it's probably easier on girls than boys but they have been fantastic."

But at the time he was frightened of losing them. "I can remember during that very dark period when I thought I had lost my ordained ministry, and I didn't know if I would ever find anyone to be intimate with, and I thought, 'Oh my God, what if Boo marries someone else and moves away?' And I can remember crawling into bed at night and feeling like the only two things I have right now are God and my integrity. And what I learned from that is that it's enough. Now, I wouldn't want to live my whole life with only God and my integrity, and I have not had to, but it's amazingly freeing to find out if you have to, it's enough."

IN THE RUN-UP to his election as bishop in 2003, the hate campaign against Robinson intensified. At the height of it, a fellow priest gave him a weather-satellite photograph taken miles above a hurricane in the Atlantic. At the centre of that storm, a tiny pinpoint of calm was visible. Robinson has tried always to find that place inside himself.
He's very grounded. But for 36 hours after he got the news that he would not be welcome at the Lambeth Conference, he was "pretty devastated". "It was really hard to hear. It doesn't matter whether or not I am offended or rejected but it just broke my heart that the Archbishop of Canterbury was sending a message – whether he intended to or not, and I suspect he didn't – that gays and lesbians everywhere are second-class citizens in this church. And I don't believe we are."
He will travel to London anyway. Will he use his visit to protest? "No, no, no, I don't play that way. My mother taught me to play nicely with others."

He has been with his partner, Mark Andrew, a local government officer, for 20 years and this month they underwent a civil-partnership ceremony. Robinson will never regret his marriage, but being with Andrew has brought him an inner peace that would have been impossible with Boo. "The closest I can come to describing it is that when you are trying to be someone you are not, it's like grinding the gears in your car. Then when you make the decision to be who you are, the gears drop into place and things are smooth and peaceful."

Not smooth for everyone, of course. I'd like to quote Peter Akinola, I tell him. "I think I've heard that name before," he murmurs dryly. Akinola said: "I have been so demonised by the western media. I tell people when they talk about this, Christ had it so much worse."
"Isn't that interesting," says Robinson quietly. "It is hard for me to view Bishop Akinola as Christ-like when he calls gay and lesbian people lower than dogs. In order to be able to persecute people, you first have to see them as subhuman." He's never heard that particular quote before. "It's amazing to me. He and the Archbishop of Kenya have, time and again, demonised people, so to be claiming to be victim I find… any word from amusing to infuriating."

Is Akinola his brother? "Absolutely," he says immediately. "You don't get to choose your family. I will never write him off. I want to be in the same church as him and I want us to hang in there while we figure this out." Perhaps Robinson can understand something else Akinola said: "When America invaded Afghanistan, it is in the name of world peace. When Nigeria moves to Biafra, it is an invasion. When England takes the gospel to another country it is a mission. When Nigeria takes it to America it is an intrusion. All this imperialistic mentality is not fair."

Robinson is sympathetic to the anti-American sentiment in Akinola's words. "America is swaggering around the world like a drunken cowboy. I use that image because it's so reminiscent of our president – of whom we are ashamed. I do think my consecration was viewed as another instance of Americans doing what they damn well pleased and I regret that. It robs the world of understanding that it was done prayerfully, thoughtfully and carefully and not thoughtless and rashly. And Peter Akinola is right to hold the so-called first world to account for the evils of colonialism and racism. That's part of why I want him in my church."

But the anger of his opponents is out of all proportion to the issue. "That tells me something deeper is going on. My hunch is that it's something to do with the end of patriarchy, but I think it's anybody's guess what fuels this."

He finds it interesting that Playboy magazine used to regularly print nude pictures of two women together and nobody complained. "But two men? Oh my God. Then the rockets go off. It's to do with men being perceived to be giving up their male privilege and being treated like a woman. Ugh – who would want to do that, right? The connections between homophobia and misogyny are deep and profound."

In recent years, Robinson has fought alcoholism but says it wasn't connected to the strain of his position. "No, it would be easy for me to say it was the pressure. But I drank too much because I'm an alcoholic." He was never drunk at work but he realised he was using it too much to relax in the evenings. It was hard work to give up, but he thinks he found it less difficult than many and hasn't relapsed since.
But undoubtedly dealing with the furore is difficult. Both sides claim to be speaking the word of God. One side must be wrong – doesn't that shake his faith? Because if one side is hearing a non-existent voice, maybe both are. Maybe God doesn't exist at all. "No. it doesn't make me believe in God any less. It just makes me think human beings can distort anything. And threatening violence in God's name is just an unbelievable distortion."

For his part, how does he know, when he thinks God is talking to him, that he's not just talking to himself? "I'm never sure, to be honest. And I'm very nervous around people who are sure." He works with a prayer director. "Her job is to help me discern if the little voice inside my head is God's voice or my own ego doing a magnificent impression of God's voice."

On the eve of Lambeth, Robinson will be with Sir Ian McKellen at a showing of a new film called For the Bible Tells Me So. It's the story of five Christian families who discover their child is gay and Robinson appears in it with his own parents. It's on the human level of a family that Robinson has his deepest understanding of God. There is nothing his daughters could do that would stop him loving them. How much more perfectly can God love him? But what if Robinson is wrong, Akinola is right, and God is displeased with him? "I hate to sound so sure but I have absolutely no doubt," replies Robinson. "I am betting my eternal salvation on this."

• In the Eye of the Storm by Gene Robinson (Canterbury Press, £12.99); Bishop Robinson will be at the UK premiere of For the Bible Tells Me So on Monday, July 14, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, after which he will be in conversation with Sir Ian McKellen (tickets cost £12, from www.londonlitfest.com)