MINNEAPOLIS -- The confirmation yesterday by the Episcopal Church of an openly gay bishop made it the first mainline Christian denomination to take such action.

	Ben Garvin/Concord Monitor
	The Rev. V. Gene Robinson, left, his partner Mark Andrew, and Robinson's 21-year-old daughter Ella Robinson celebrate Robinson's confirmation as the Episcopal Church's first openly gay bishop yesterday in Minneapolis.

The Rev. V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire was confirmed by a 63-43 vote with two abstentions after a church investigation cleared him of last-minute accusations of inappropriate conduct with another man and of connections to a Web site that was alleged to have pornographic links.

After the vote was announced, one of Robinson's opponents, Bishop Robert Duncan, of Pittsburgh, led a solemn contingent of 19 bishops to the front of the assembled bishops to call for intervention from the Anglican Communion in "the pastoral emergency that has overtaken us."

"The bishops who stand before you are filled with sorrow," Duncan said. "This body, in willfully confirming the election of a person sexually active outside of holy matrimony, has departed from the historic faith and order of the Church of Jesus Christ."

Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold tried to soothe all souls at a press conference following the confirmation vote.

"This is not a time for either triumph or dissolution," Griswold said. "It is my hope and prayer that this conflict can be a gift from God, redeemed by God and an invitation to reconciliation."

Archbishop Rowan Williams, the head of the 77-million-member Anglican Communion, of which the Episcopal Church USA is a part, said the vote "will inevitably have a significant impact on the Anglican Communion throughout the world." Although it is too soon to assess the results, he said, "we need as a church to be very careful about making decisions for our own part of the world which constrain the church elsewhere."

The Rev. David C. Anderson, president of the American Anglican Council, the mainstream Anglican network within the Episcopal Church USA, compared Robinson's confirmation to a "domestic abuse situation."

"We have been beaten up in the Episcopal Church for a long time," he said. "We're not leaving the Anglican Communion but the Episcopal Church now has."

For Robinson, 56, a divorced father of two who has lived with his partner for 13 years, the confirmation was a validation of what he has called his personal "journey to holiness." Addressing reporters after the vote, he said he had been "unjustly charged and wrongly accused."

He called his election "a huge step for gay and lesbian folk in the [Episcopal] church."

Robinson was confirmed Sunday by the clergy and lay deputies in the House of Deputies, the other half of the church's bicameral legislative body. Yesterday's action by the House of Bishops sets the stage for his consecration Nov. 2 in Durham, N.H.

Since his election in June, Robinson has received death threats and been the focus of a concerted opposition, which claimed that his confirmation would be against Scripture and church teaching.

But Robinson also became a rallying point for the disaffected in the 2.3 million-member Episcopal Church, and among gays, lesbians and others who felt disenfranchised from their American church denominations by the long-running -- and unresolved -- issue of sexuality.

Yesterday morning, the gravity of the allegations against Robinson hung like a millstone on the deputies and observers in the downtown convention center. Both opponents and proponents of his confirmation talked of following "the process," the canonical steps the church would take in order to investigate not only the allegation of a 40-year-old Vermont man that Robinson "put his hands on me inappropriately" during a convocation several years ago, but also the Web-site charge.

Bishop Gordon P. Scruton of western Massachusetts, who led an investigation into the charges, concluded that "in both allegations ... there is no necessity to pursue further investigation and no reason on these grounds to prevent the Bishops with jurisdiction from going forward with their voting about whether or not to consent to Canon Robinson's consecration."

In opposing Robinson's confirmation, Duncan invoked the constitution of the Episcopal Church, which he said would be violated by allowing Robinson to become a bishop.

The result, he said, "will invite for us a kind of chaos and loss, which I do not believe this church has known since after its convention in 1859" when an evangelical wing left the church over theological disputes.

But bishop after bishop rose to paint the vote not as a referendum on homosexuality or intervention by the Anglican Communion, but as a decision between fear and hope. One said the vote was this church generation's crucible, just as past gatherings dealt with desegregation of the church and the ordination of women.

A threatened walkout by conservative bishops opposed to Robinson did not materialize.

"I realize what a moment this is," Griswold said, "what a difficult moment this is for many people. I ask you to be profoundly sensitive to one another at this time knowing that for many, this is a very, very difficult decision indeed."

Scruton's investigation was sparked when the bishop of the Vermont Diocese first received an e-mail from a Manchester, Vt., man Sunday night that read, in part, "I am a straight man reporting homosexual harassment by a gay male priest from another Diocese."

Scruton said that he spoke Monday afternoon by speakerphone with the e-mail writer, David Lewis, in the presence of Vermont Diocese Bishop Thomas C. Ely, his chancellor and the president of the New Hampshire Diocese's standing committee, which serves as a type of board of directors.

Lewis, 50, who is married and an active lay member of his church, described to Scruton the two incidents that formed the basis of his allegations of Robinson's inappropriate conduct. Both occurred in November 1999 when Lewis and Robinson were both at a convocation at Mont Marie Conference Center in Holyoke, Mass.

In the first incident, Lewis said that as Robinson was passing by him, he asked the priest a question. "Canon Robinson put his left hand on the individual's arm, and his right hand on the individual's upper back as his listened to his questions and answered them," Scruton's report read, adding that Robinson "spoke no inappropriate words." Canon is an honorary term for a priest who is accorded extra duties.

In the second incident, Lewis said he was standing near Robinson and spoke to him. "In response," Scruton's report read, "Canon Robinson touched the individual's forearm and back while responding with his own comment."

When Scruton asked him if he wanted to file a written complaint, Lewis said no, and that "he had no desire to pursue the matter any further."

The second arm of the investigation concerned Robinson's involvement with a pornographic Web site that could be reached through a link with a Concord, N.H. Web site that the priest had helped found. Scruton found that Robinson helped found an organization in 1995 -- called Concord Outright -- that provided support and counseling for young people concerned about their sexuality.

But Robinson ended his involvement with Outright in 1998, Scruton said, and has not been associated with it since. The Web site in question was established in 2002.