THE consecration of the first openly gay bishop in the Anglican Communion took place last night despite formal complaints and threats of schism.

Security at the ceremony was so tight that clergy had to remove crosses from around their necks to get through the metal detectors. Rival protesters taunted each other outside as Gene Robinson was made Bishop of New Hampshire, with his gay partner and ex-wife in the audience.

Supporters whooped with delight as the bespectacled bishop-elect, a divorced father of two, entered the university sports arena dressed in a hooded white cassock and pledged to uphold church unity. Bishop Robinson, who was close to tears after the laying on of hands that marked his formal elevation, made an emtional call for reconcilation.

“You cannot imagine what an honour it is for you to have called me,” he told the congregation. “There are people, faithful, wonderful, Christian people, for whom this is a moment of great pain and confusion and anger and our God will be served if we are hospitable and loving and caring toward them in every way that we can possibly muster.

“And they must know that if they must leave they will always be welcomed back into our fellowship.

“This is not about me. It is about so many other people who find themselves, for whatever reason, on the margins and for whatever reason have not known the ear of God’s favour,” he said. “The eyes of the world are on us. Let’s use it. We couldn’t buy this kind of publicity. But let’s use it for God.”

After the consecration, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said in a statement that the divisions caused by Bishop Robinson’s consecration were a matter of deep regret.

At the ceremony, which followed months of controversy, a diocesal official delivered a formal testimonial that leaders of the Episcopal Church knew of “no impediment” to Bishop Robinson’s consecration.

But conservatives, who plan to walk out of the Church in protest at Bishop Robinson’s elevation, made their voice heard when three people came forward to register formal objections as part of the service.

The most awkward moment came when Father Earl Fox, of the conservative Pittsburgh Diocese, attempted to give the audience of several thousand a lesson in homosexual behaviour. As he began to recount research which claimed that 99 per cent of homosexuals engaged in oral sex and 91 per cent in anal sex, the presiding Bishop, Frank Griswold, asked him to “spare us the details”.

Meredith Harwood, a New Hampshire laywoman, called the consecration a “defiant act of a deaf Church” which flew in the face of appeals from the vast majority of Anglicans around the world. “We must not proceed with this terrible and unbiblical mistake, which will not only rupture the Anglican Communion. It will break God’s heart,” she said.

David Bena, Assistant Bishop in the Albany Diocese, read a statement from 36 current and retired North American bishops warning that Bishop Robinson’s “chosen lifestyle” was “incompatible with the Scripture of this Church”.

When it came for the invited audience to affirm the consecration, however, they let out a hearty shout that rang around the arena: “That is our will. This is real Christianity in the 21st century. This is what it’s all about,” said Judith Pitman, a New Hampshire housewife. “We are told to love God and to love our neighbour. That is what we are trying to do.”

The departing bishop, Douglas Theuner, won rapturous applause when he said that Bishop Robinson’s consecration would bring an entire group of “hitherto unacknowleged” Christians into the Church.

Immediately after the laying on of hands that marked his consecration, Bishop Robinson received a golden mitre from what the order of service described as “Gene’s family”, his partner, Mark Andrew, and his two daughters. In one of his first acts in office, Bishop Robinson gave Mr Andrew a hug of thanks for the gift.

Outside, mounted police kept apart students from the university campus chanting “2-4-6-8, Jesus loves you, gay or straight” and fundamentalists shouting “No fags in Heaven” and waving placards denouncing homosexuality.

The Rev Susan Russell, president of the Episcopalian gay rights group Integrity, said: “Any time you take a major step forward in the direction of justice, you leave some people behind. What history has always taught us is that people catch up. The good news we have is that this is a Church that welcomes everyone, gay or straight.”

But Canon Kendall Harmon, of South Carolina, a leading voice among conservatives, predicted the creation of a network of what he called orthodox Anglican churches.

He insisted that conservatives had the tacit consent of the Archbishop of Canterbury to establish a separate network of parishes within the Anglican Communion.

“The Episcopal Church is the one leaving the Anglican Communion,” he said. “We are not going anywhere.”

Dissident Episcopalians held a competing service at a nearby Evangelical church at the same time as the consecration.

But Episcopal officials said that not one parish would break with the New Hampshire Diocese. “We have some parishioners who are struggling with this legitimately, but we are going to continue to reach out to them. We are not going to lose any parishes,” the Rev Hays Junkin, pastor of St Andrew’s Church, Hopkinton, and president of the Diocese’s standing committee, said.

Explore World News

• World Agenda

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Afghanistan News

• Asia News

• Africa News

• Ireland News

Times Recommends

• A doctor, a daughter and a man called Johnny
• Mona Lisa's smile may have belied ill health
• ‘Parasite economy’ lies behind Greek tragedy