In negotiations between Archbishop Williams’s staff and three American bishops designated by Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, the consolation offered to the American for not being seated was an opportunity to be interviewed, at a conference session, by a BBC reporter. Bishop Robinson said he rejected that as falling short of the “substantive and meaningful” role he wanted, but said he had urged other Episcopalian bishops, at a meeting this spring in Navasota, Tex., not to boycott Lambeth on his behalf. In the end, 150 American bishops came, led by Bishop Jefferts Schori.

Image Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. Credit... Luke Tchalenko for The New York Times

Bishop Robinson characterized the role he fashioned for himself here as nonconfrontational. “I think the leadership here expected me to show up, and protest, and try to wrestle the microphone from Archbishop Rowan, or try to get into meetings to which I wasn’t invited, and I’ve done none of these things,” he said. Instead, he said, what he had sought with his gadfly presence was “to bear witness to the love of God I know as a follower of Jesus Christ, and to be a constant reminder to the bishops gathered here that there are gay and lesbian Christians sitting in the pews in every one of their churches, and that they have taken vows to serve all in their flock.”

Talking in the courtyard of the Falstaff, founded as a 15th-century pilgrims’ inn, it seemed natural to ask whether he saw himself in the mold of Thomas à Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury who was martyred in the cathedral a slingshot away. “Heavens no!” he said, chuckling, “I have no aspirations of that kind at all, only to be a good bishop.” To make the point, he gestured to a burly British Army veteran seated close by, hired as his security companion for the tour, and cited the fact that he and his partner, Mark Andrew, wore bulletproof vests at his consecration five years ago.

By Bishop Robinson’s estimate, at least some countries represented at the Lambeth meeting have the death penalty for homosexuality, while about 25 others make same-sex relationships punishable by imprisonment. But he said that at least some conservative bishops seemed open to dialogue. American bishops have held two evening sessions to introduce Bishop Robinson to non-Americans at the conference; these have drawn about 200 bishops and their spouses, including some from African provinces that have been strongly hostile to compromise on homosexuality.

“A goodly number of the bishops took a considerable risk by being there,” the bishop said. “There were those among them who spoke very movingly, and without rancor, of the problems my consecration has posed for them. Afterwards, they told me they would pray for me, and asked me to pray for them.”

If there was any edge to the bishop’s feelings, and it was only fleeting, it came in his references to Archbishop Williams. As an Oxford-and-Cambridge educated theologian, the 58-year-old archbishop gained a reputation as a deep-thinking liberal, strongly sympathetic to gay rights, and underscored that as archbishop of Wales by appointing openly gay men to the clergy. “We were dancing in the streets when Archbishop Rowan was appointed,” Bishop Robinson said of the prelate’s elevation to the Canterbury seat in 2003. But then came the archbishop’s efforts to placate the conservatives, and his denial of a Lambeth invitation to Bishop Robinson.

The two men have met only once, in 2005, and that meeting, Bishop Robinson said, was held at the deanery of St. Paul’s Cathedral, not at Lambeth Palace, to avoid any chance of it being noticed by the British press. He said he sympathized with the archbishop, who had been placed in “an impossible position” by the uncompromising attitude that hard-line conservatives in the communion had taken on homosexuality. But by excluding him, the American said, the archbishop had made a strategic miscalculation. “In the end, the conservatives didn’t come to the conference anyway, only proving that bullies never get enough,” he said. “They always come back for more.”