HERESY: THE DECEPTIVE AND INSULTING SERMON OF VICKIE GENE ROBINSON

By David W. Virtue

In a sermon delivered in Chicago honoring Absalom Jones—the first African-American priest ordained in the Episcopal Church—Bishop V. Gene Robinson equated racial oppression with the Church’s rejection of homosexual practice:

“People of color. Women. Gay and lesbian folk. The physically disabled. The aged. All oppressed… and all offered liberation by this great God of ours.”

Robinson cited Isaiah 61, claiming it speaks to “the kinds of oppressions that we are all dealing with,” and implied the controversy over his election was part of God’s call to “go deeper… into deeper waters.”

His remarks outraged several Black Anglican leaders. The Rev. James Johnson, a Black priest from Philadelphia, called the sermon “deceptive and insulting”:

“What is tragically ironic is that this very passage… which Mr. Robinson uses to argue explicitly for gay liberation… in actuality calls upon him and us all to repent of our sinful ways.”

Johnson emphasized that Isaiah 61 is a Jubilee text—calling for repentance and deliverance for penitent sinners, not affirmation of sin. He rejected Robinson’s “false parallel” between race and sexuality:

“Skin pigmentation is a small part of the beautiful diversity of the good created order… Homosexuality, by contrast, is not part of God’s design but a manifestation of the Fall.”

He noted that Scripture consistently portrays marriage — male and female in covenant — as an icon of Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5:31–32), and that homosexual behavior is presented as a dramatization of idolatry: the exchange of worship of God for worship of self.

Dr. Michael Howell, a Black Episcopal layman and professor of marine geology, likewise condemned the sermon as “a very dangerous combination of ignorance and deceit.”

He stressed:

Race is genetically determined and unchosen; homosexuality is a pattern of behavior, not a fixed genetic trait.

Peer-reviewed science does not support the “born this way” claim for sexual orientation in the way it does for race.

Unlike racism — which Scripture opposes (e.g., Numbers 12, Galatians 3:28) — homosexual practice is uniformly condemned in both Old and New Testaments.

“Scripture never condones slavery and eventually advocates its eradication… But homosexual behavior is clearly against God’s created order.”

Both leaders warned that conflating civil rights with sexual morality distorts the Gospel and undermines biblical authority.