V. Gene Robinson
- Title / Office:
- bishop (2004-2013)
V. Gene Robinson (born May 29, 1947, Lexington, Kentucky) was the ninth Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire (2004–13) and the first openly gay bishop in the Anglican Communion.
Robinson was born into poverty, the son of Kentucky tobacco sharecroppers. Because his parents had been expecting a girl, they decided to name the child Vicky Gene; as an adult, Robinson would use only the first initial of his first name. Because of severe complications during childbirth, he suffered temporary paralysis and almost died as a baby. Raised in the Disciples of Christ denomination, he joined the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA) while attending the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, from which he graduated in 1969. Robinson received a Master of Divinity degree from the General Theological Seminary of New York in 1973 and was ordained in the same year. In 1975 he moved to New Hampshire, where he and his wife, Isabella Martin, opened both a retreat center and a camp and horse farm for girls. In 1987 Robinson openly declared his homosexuality, and he and Martin amicably divorced. Robinson subsequently began a domestic partnership with Mark Andrew, a civil servant; the two were legally joined in a civil union in New Hampshire in 2008; in 2014 Robinson announced that they were divorcing.
Even before his election as bishop, Robinson had been an active clergyman in the ECUSA, promoting clergy wellness (programs to encourage the physical and mental health of priests and their families) and gaining particular recognition for his work in counseling clergy and reconciling parishes in conflict. He also promoted education—both within and outside the church—about AIDS, civil rights, and tolerance, especially for gays and lesbians. Robinson served as Youth Ministries Coordinator for the seven Episcopal dioceses in the Episcopal Province of New England from 1978 to 1985 and acted as executive secretary for the province from 1983 to 2003. He was elected to the episcopacy on June 7, 2003, and consecrated bishop on November 2. He became bishop of New Hampshire the following March, amid opposition from conservative bishops in the Anglican Communion.
Robinson’s election to the episcopacy became the focus of heated controversy not only within the ECUSA but also within the larger Anglican Communion—the body of national churches representing traditional Anglicanism worldwide. After being profiled in the documentary film For the Bible Tells Me So (2007), Robinson published a memoir containing his reflections on the controversy over his ordination, In the Eye of the Storm: Swept to the Center by God, in 2008. He was excluded from official meetings of the 2008 Lambeth Conference of Anglican Communion bishops, although he did attend as an observer. In 2009 he led the invocation at ceremonies preceding the inauguration of U.S. Pres. Barack Obama. Robinson was influential in the 2009 decisions by the ECUSA General Convention to affirm the right of gays and lesbians to be ordained and to explore liturgical options for performing same-sex marriages.
In 2010, however, Robinson announced that he would retire in 2013, citing the controversy over his election as bishop and the resulting strain on both him and the diocese. In the book God Believes in Love: Straight Talk About Gay Marriage (2012), he drew upon theology, social science, and personal experience to make an argument for same-sex marriage.