The appointment of the Rev. V. Gene Robinson as the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church is a historic moment for mainline Protestantism in America and for more liberal interpretations of Christianity, say divinity professor Mary McClintock Fulkerson and women's studies professor Kathy Rudy of Duke University.

"All denominations have been struggling with this issue for more than 20 years, and the courage displayed by the Episcopal leadership should be commended," says Rudy, an associate professor of ethics and women's studies and author of the book "Sex and the Church: Gender, Homosexuality, and the Transformation of Christian Ethics." "This step is an important one for the continued inclusion of all God's people in the Church body."

Critics have publicly condemned the Episcopal Church for violating historical interpretations of the Bible by voting this week to appoint Robinson, but Rudy says the decision was in keeping with church tradition.

"The moral teachings of the Episcopal Church are built equally on Scripture and tradition, rendering the denomination's ethical paradigm very flexible and able to respond to the needs and issues of current events," she says. "Thus, the denomination has been a worldwide leader in incorporating disenfranchised peoples of all sorts."

Fulkerson agrees, saying liberal interpretations and teachings of the Bible are no less valid than more conservative ones.

"You can't even open the Bible and say anything about it without bringing to it a system of moral beliefs and history and culture that inform those words," says Fulkerson, an associate professor of theology who has written a number of articles challenging theologies that make heterosexuality the norm for Christianity. "All sorts of 'stuff' gets imported into any reading of the Bible."

Just as understandings of sexuality have changed over time, so, too, has the Christian Church, says Fulkerson, an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church who chaired her church congregation's task force on human sexuality.

"To make heterosexuality a timeless normative ethical requirement is to ignore that all things human change -- and should change," she says. "It is to ignore the ethical imperative to pay attention to whether something in the tradition is no longer timely, appropriate or right.

"To absolutize this convention -- preferring heterosexuality -- is to commit idolatry," Fulkerson says. "It is to make eternal something that is not eternal."

Rudy can be reached for additional comment at (919) 684-4063 (office), (919) 419-7323 (home) or by e-mail at krudy@acpub.duke.edu. Fulkerson can be reached at (919) 660-3458 (office), (919) 383-8131 (home) or by e-mail at mfulk@mail.duke.edu.