PORTSMOUTH, N.H. -- When the Rev. V. Gene Robinson is consecrated today as the bishop of New Hampshire, he will become the first openly gay bishop of a mainstream Protestant denomination.

	Jim Cole/Associated Press
	The Rev. V. Gene Robinson will be consecrated as bishop of New Hampshire today.

He also will precipitate what Bishop Robert W. Duncan Jr. of the Pittsburgh Diocese and others have called "a tear in the fabric of the Communion," a split that could irrevocably change the makeup of the more than four-centuries-old church, which began in England and has become a global network of 70 million members in 164 countries.

Robinson and Duncan represent the polar ends of the theological spectrum in today's Episcopal Church, USA, a church that for all its struggles to adapt and stretch has instead stiffened to the point of rupture.

Virtually the same age -- Duncan is 55 and Robinson 56 -- they are the faces of the schism threatening the church. The former, jowly with arcing bushy eyebrows, has become the de facto spiritual leader of Episcopalians for whom Scripture is immutable. The latter, leaner with a well-scrubbed look, wants an evolving church, one inclusive of all people, including him and his partner of 14 years.

Former classmates at the General Theological Seminary in New York City, the two men have spent their lives in a church that both feel passionately for and yet see quite differently.

By the book

Some of Robert Duncan's earliest memories about Christ Episcopal Church in his hometown of Bordentown, N.J., are playing catch with a football in the church's nave. It was a church, he said recently, that was stable and reliable, a place that infused him and his friends with a sense of trust.

For Duncan, whose home life often included beatings from his emotionally disturbed mother, the affirmation that God could be trusted was invaluable during those times he cowered in his bed, afraid of what the night might bring.

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The security he felt in the church coupled with a fascination of what he calls "the claims of Christianity" spurred his desire to be an acolyte and altar server. His decision to join the clergy was cemented in eighth grade when he heard what he believes was a godly voice stating, "You will be my priest."

In a seminal moment as a freshman at Trinity College, in Hartford, Conn., he decided that since Jesus was the most reliable person he'd ever met, he would follow his word until he discovered differently.

That has been his guiding force since: the unerring truth of the Bible and the church's commitment to live according to the way of Christ.

To leave that path, to interpret the Bible in ways that fit the culture of the day rather than the tradition of the ages, is an empty universality. And, Duncan says, that's not Anglicanism.

More than one way

V. Gene Robinson's childhood also was difficult. He nearly died during the delivery. The story is told that the attending doctor in Lexington, Ky., asked the parents for a name for both the birth and the death certificates. Since Victor and Imogene Robinson had expected a girl, they gave their son a version of the name they'd chosen: Vicky Imogene.

Doctors warned the parents that their boy might never walk or talk, but they were soon proved wrong. What Robinson recalls most about his childhood was the grinding poverty he experienced in a family where his father was a tenant farmer and in a home that lacked running water until he was 10.

For more than a century, Robinson men had been active in the Bethany Christian Church, part of the Christian Church or Disciples of Christ denomination. Robinson said he learned a love of Scripture from the revivals and church functions he attended, and from spending time with student preachers from what is now Lexington Theological Seminary.

Robinson has said that the church taught him that Scripture was "a living faith" -- that God wasn't revealed only when the Bible was open but was active in people's lives every day.

Like Duncan, he was high school valedictorian. He attended the University of the South in Tennessee, a college run by about two dozen Episcopal dioceses, and it was there that he fell in love with the Episcopal Church's history, liturgy and music. He was confirmed as an Episcopalian during his senior year at college and then attended seminary, receiving ordination in 1973.

Robinson believes that each person follows a different journey to holiness. During difficult times in his life, he has compared his own path to that of the ancient Hebrews during their 40 years in the wilderness, when, according to the Old Testament, God provided manna for their sustenance.

Divining the 'truth'

Duncan initially was headed toward a career as a church academician but decided his calling was as a parish priest. He spent 18 years in campus ministries in New York, Delaware and North Carolina, earning a reputation as someone able to revive flagging student participation.

That experience garnered him enough notice to be a finalist for bishop of Colorado in 1990. Two years later, he was hired as canon to the ordinary for then-Bishop Alden Hathaway in the Diocese of Pittsburgh. And while Duncan would be a finalist in an episcopate election in North Carolina in 1994, he already had established a name for himself in Western Pennsylvania as an innovator and an able administrator in the diocese here.

His innovations included requiring each parish to develop a mission statement and a five-year plan for carrying it out; having wealthier, stronger churches subsidize smaller congregations' outreach projects, using direct grants instead of hiring staff experts; and starting major mission projects in old or declining neighborhoods. They won him supporters throughout the diocese.

That proved critical in 1995 when Hathaway announced his impending retirement and a search began for a successor. While Duncan was on the initial search list, he was not a finalist, a slight that still pains him.

	Steve Mellon/Post-Gazette
	Bishop Robert W. Duncan Jr. at his Point Breeze home.

Nevertheless, he was nominated from the floor at the diocesan convention and elected bishop on the third ballot.

Since then, membership in the 11-county diocese has remained roughly the same -- about 22,000 people -- an anomaly in a national church whose numbers have been steadily declining. In addition, it has become the center of conservative Episcopal theology, boasting both the Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge and the world headquarters of five mission outreach organizations.

The record has catapulted Duncan into a position of spiritual leadership in the Episcopal Church's conservative wing, a minority within the U.S. denomination but in line with the vast majority of Anglicans worldwide.

That dichotomy is something Duncan comes back to again and again when he says that the church should not -- cannot -- be in line with the prevailing culture of the day. The church, he says, is in the world but not of it.

In a society that he calls highly sexualized and confused, Duncan believes that Robinson is clearly outside the moral bounds of the Anglican Communion. On the day after Robinson's election at this summer's General Convention, Duncan sent him an e-mail that read: "As you can imagine, I can't rejoice in your election. I can't offer you congratulations. I can promise I will pray for you every day."

Duncan's belief hearkens back to issues of truth, to the question of whether it's possible to be in the Episcopal Church without applying what he calls "the clear sense of Scripture."

His answer is always, "no." Duncan said the moral equivocating of today's Episcopal Church reminded him of the lies his family used to live. Duncan sees it as a duty to speak the truth "as the Christian ages have understood it."

In 1999, at a meeting in Kampala, Uganda, that included a number of African archbishops, Duncan made his first public plea for intervention by the Anglican Communion in the affairs of the Episcopal Church, saying that the American church was in a "deplorable" state and unable to reform itself.

In conversations about this and his efforts in the years since, he invokes St. Paul's admonition to "always speak the truth in love." Duncan said the debate over Robinson and same-sex blessings is not about prejudice, but rather about belief, truth and the power of the Gospel.

A silent struggle

Robinson has said he first began to question his sexuality when his pals got an issue of Playboy magazine in the seventh grade. He wasn't as excited by the pictures as they were, but hid those feelings.

He struggled with his homosexuality in college; he had relationships with women but was attracted to men. While attending General Theological Seminary he even sought therapy in an effort to "overcome" his tendencies, and when he met his future wife while serving an internship at the University of Vermont, felt ready to marry and start a family.

Robinson's first position was at a Ridgewood, N.J., church in 1973, the same year that Integrity, an advocacy group for gay Episcopalians, was founded.

Two years later, he and his wife accepted a position at a New Hampshire parish. Robinson involved himself in a girls summer camp and horseback riding farm, and for a number of years he was youth ministries coordinator for Province 1, which includes most of the dioceses of New England.

He has been adept at making faith relevant in the lives of young parishioners, of enabling them to continue in it rather than feel excluded from it. It is a point of pride for Robinson that some teens call him "Canon Dude."

Robinson helped found Concord Outright, a support group for gay and lesbian teenagers. He also co-wrote material for youth and adults about AIDS and was a developer of the national Episcopal Youth Event.

While known for his administrative work and organizational skills -- to upset Robinson, the joke goes in the Diocese of New Hampshire, rearrange things on his desk -- he also has been active in church outreach.

From founding a retreat center and helping feuding parishes resolve their conflicts to being a leader in the diocese's partnership with the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund, Robinson is known for facilitating debate and for a keen sense of humor.

He is the father of two grown daughters, Jamee and Ella, and often says he had a wonderful marriage. But in the mid-1980s, he said he felt compelled by God to declare his homosexuality. He and his wife divorced in 1986, releasing each other from their wedding vows in a church service and maintaining joint custody of the children.

Risking the loss of his children and his ordination was the biggest challenge he had faced in his life, but the experience left Robinson with an unshakeable faith in his personal integrity and in God.

He was named canon to the ordinary for the bishop of New Hampshire in 1988, and five years later decided that he wanted to be a bishop himself. Before his election in June as bishop of New Hampshire, he had been nominated twice before, in the dioceses of Newark, N.J., and Rochester, N.Y.

In looking for a candidate, the New Hampshire search committee sought someone with a deeply rooted spiritual life and a collaborative decision-making style, someone willing to address current issues and help congregations grow. Robinson's 14-year relationship with his partner was well-known to the search committee and the diocesan voters. In his answers to one of the search committee's questions, he wrote, "There is no room for 'them' and 'us' in the church because in God's economy, there is NO 'them.' "

He was elected on the second ballot, and confirmed two months later at the Episcopal Church's triennial convention by a majority of laity, clergy and bishops.

Robinson has said he respects those who believe that Scripture condemns homosexuality outright. But he also believes that none of the half-dozen explicit references to it in the Bible reflect the kind of monogamous, committed relationship in which gay and lesbian couples model the best of family Christian values.

He bolsters his debates with people on the issue with humor -- Leviticus forbids the consumption of shellfish but we eat it, he says -- and by pointing out that Christians' faith calls on them to be inclusive of those on society's margins, just as Jesus reached out to lepers and other outcasts.

In the midst of the possibility -- some say probability -- that his consecration today will cement a church schism, Robinson has said he realized that those who oppose him are following their call from God and their understanding of Scripture as best they know how.

He only hopes that they can acknowledge that he also is doing the same thing.