Uninvited gay US bishop will attend bishops’ conference

April 21, 2008
Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

The openly gay US bishop at the heart of the Anglican Church’s schismatic row over sex is to “marry” his partner in June and attend the 2008 Lambeth Conference in Canterbury this summer, despite not being invited.

The Right Rev Gene Robinson, Bishop of New Hampshire, has pointedly not been asked by Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to attend the conference in his official capacity as an Anglican bishop.

But Bishop Robinson, who will also be in Britain next week to launch his new book, In the Eye of the Storm, to be serialised from next Monday by The Times, is planning to attend the conference anyway. He was elected as a bishop by the Episcopal Church of the US in 2003. He will also take part in a series of public events to highlight what his supporters regard as homophobic discrimination throughout the Anglican Communion. the rest