Home

Subscribe

Prophetic Trends

Current Issue

Newsletter Archive

Frequent Questions

Featured Item

Make A Donation

Contact Us

US president-elect Barack Obama has invited the world's first openly gay Anglican bishop to offer the prayer that will mark the beginning of the inauguration festivities.

In an email sent to a US blog yesterday the Right Rev Gene Robinson, of New Hampshire, said it would be an "enormous honour" to offer prayers for the country and its new president at the Lincoln Memorial.

Robinson said he had not received any time constraints or direction from Obama's office, but added: "It won't be overtly Christian. I want the prayer to be for all people," he said.

Robinson's selection follows criticism from gay rights groups over Obama's decision to have Rick Warren give the invocation at the official inauguration ceremony next Tuesday. The founder and senior pastor of an evangelical megachurch, Warren supported Proposition 8 - eliminating the right of same-sex couples to marry in his home state of California. Robinson, who entered into a civil union last June with Mark Andrew, his partner for 20 years, initially described the choice as a "slap in the face".

Robinson has been the scourge of conservative evangelicals since his consecration in 2003. A divorced, non-celibate homosexual cleric, his appointment led traditionalists from the US Episcopal Church to warn of a schism in the Anglican communion. It is a prophecy that has largely been fulfilled thanks to a mass boycott of last year's Lambeth conference, the 10-yearly gathering of the world's Anglican bishops, and the formation of a body intended to replace the US wing of the Anglican communion.