Obama asks Gene Robinson to give Inaugural concert invocation

From the Concord Monitor coverage:

New Hampshire Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, an outspoken, international gay rights leader, has been asked to give a prayer at one of President-elect Barack Obama’s first inauguration events at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

The announcement follows weeks of criticism from Robinson and gay-rights groups over Obama’s decision to tap the Rev. Rick Warren, who’s likened committed gay relationships to incest and polygamy, to pray on inauguration day.

Robinson, an early Obama supporter, said last month the choice of Warren left him feeling as if he’d been slapped in the face. In a telephone interview this weekend, Robinson, of Weare, said he doesn’t believe Obama has included him in response to the Warren criticism. But he said his inclusion won’t go unnoticed by the gay and lesbian community.

1. N.H. bishop invited to D.C. to give prayer, Annmarie Timmins, Concord Monitor
2. NH’s Bishop Robinson will be part of inauguration, the Associated Press report, Union Leader
3. A good summary of coverage at Episcopal Cafe’s The Lead.
4. New Hampshire bishop invited to offer prayers at inaugural kickoff event, Mary France Schjonberg, Episcopal Life Online
5. Metafilter also discussed the appointment.

An Intimate History of a Celibate Movement in the Episcopal Church

Project Canterbury preserves this text online. I haven’t read it all yet, but it describes the history and theology of the now-dead Episcopalian priestly celibacy movement of the late 19th century. A similar movement persists in the Church of England known as the Sodality of the Precious Blood.

• Hawks, Edward. William McGarvey and the Open Pulpit: An Intimate History of a Celibate Movement in the Episcopal Church, and of Its Collapse, 1870-1908. (Philadelphia: The Dolphin Press, 1935).

Read it here.

Sodality of the Precious Blood: Anglican celibate priests

The SPB appears to be the only Anglican priestly association that requires celibacy. Hawkes wrote about an earlier, American movement in An Intimate History of a Celibate Movement in the Episcopal Church.

From the site:

The Sodality of the Precious Blood is a confraternity of priests who serve in the Anglican Church, but who desire to live in accordance with the faith and tradition of the wider Catholic Church of the Christian West. It is not a ‘congregation’ or a religious order, but its members are strongly bound together for mutual support, prayer and a common witness in proclaiming the Catholic faith and and promoting the spiritual life, as well as working for the visible unity of Christ’s Church on earth in communion with the Bishop of Rome as successor to Saint Peter the Apostle.

The purpose of the Sodality is to give its members the strength that comes from a fellowship of prayer, and to make explicit in the Church of England the form of priestly life known to the wider Church by cultivating a deep spirituality founded on orthodox belief, the life of celibacy and the attentive celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours according to the Roman Breviary of Paul VI, in the name of spiritual ecumenism for the sake of the visible unity of the whole Church.

Find it here.