‘It’s harder for straights to feel Christian charity than gays’

Theo Hobson meets Gene Robinson, the only openly gay Anglican bishop, who says that homosexuals are more open to the Christian ‘message of radical change’

I am sitting in St Mary’s church, Putney, home of right-on Anglicanism. Bishop Gene Robinson — the gay American whose election nearly split the Anglican church — is seeking reassurance from his fans. He’s had a grilling from our nasty press, he says, and is relieved to be among friends. I get out my pen and prepare to dip it in poison. I feel deeply ambivalent about Gene — not hostile, but very much in two minds. And I think he may hold the future of the Anglican communion in his hands.

‘The Anglican tradition is uniquely capable of holding two seemingly contradictory ideas together,’ he says. ‘Its position on abortion, for example, is that all human life is sacred [he stretches out his right hand, as if to seize this principle, then continues].