Simple Country Bishop Just Like Joan of Arc

from Stand Firm by Matt Kennedy 

Surprisingly, Gene Robinson, the reclusive publicity shunning Epsicopal Bishop of New Hampshire, is the subject of yet another full length documentary film. Somehow, the producers of "Love Free or Die" persuaded the embarrassed and reluctant country bishop to allow their cameras to follow him around England during the 2008 Lambeth Conference. The resulting documentary premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this month. And now, emerging from his quiet hermitage, Gene Robinson has relented to incessant public demand and has agreed to be interviewed:

When I spoke with openly gay bishop Gene Robinson about following him through a particularly harrowing period that he was about to enter, I told him that talking to him was like talking to Joan of Arc, in a time when a doc crew could capture the drama of the church/state firestorm he had found himself in. He laughed but said that it was true – he was caught in the crosshairs of cultural change and it was important to record it along the way, so he invited me to follow him for the next four years.

The experience has been packed with revelation, some lost on the camera but many captured...more