Reply #1: I heard an interview with Gene Robinson on NPR last week

[Ranec]

I was very impressed. He is the openly gay Episcopalean bishop in New Hampshire.

He remarked on how little support he got from the upper reaches of the church hierarchy, but that he felt that he wasn't necessarily bound by their decisions. Something about church authority and so forth.

I think he was sensitive to the fact that anyone be perceived as the leader of the world's Anglicans because the structure is much looser than that.

I'm not an Anglican so I don't really know.

In any case, I really liked what the bishop was saying about how understanding his congregations have been, and how it helped him on his own spiritual journey.

It certainly made the people who came on later threatening to split from the church seem very small.