Of the fates that might await Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold after he retires as the top official of the Episcopal Church in the United States, obscurity will not be one of them.

When the history of the angry disputes in mainline Protestantism over the acceptance of homosexuality is written, Bishop Griswold, 68, will be remembered for leading the Episcopal Church when it elected the first openly gay man as a bishop.

The decision deeply offended some people in the church, and many primates of the worldwide Anglican Communion, of which the Episcopal Church is the American arm, saw it as a blatant disregard of Scripture. The 77-million-member denomination has since been threatened with schism.

Much of the anger has focused on Bishop Griswold, but that does not trouble him.

What people think of him, “agent of Satan or hero,” matters little, Bishop Griswold said. “I did not choose what has been set before me,” he said. “We don’t get to make those choices. I do know I have tried very hard to be faithful in responding to the circumstances as they have presented themselves. That matters to me a great deal.”

Bishop Griswold’s day-to-day immersion in the debate will soon end.

On Tuesday, bishops and diocesan delegates of the Episcopal Church will gather in Columbus, Ohio, for the denomination’s triennial general convention. They will elect a successor to Bishop Griswold, whose nine-year term ends in November. It was at the last general convention in 2003 that the church’s House of Bishops, including Bishop Griswold, consented to the election of the Rev. V. Gene Robinson, an openly gay minister, as the bishop of New Hampshire.

Bishop Griswold spent part of a recent morning at the Episcopal Church’s main offices near the United Nations reflecting on the conflict, offering occasional glimpses of frustration but, like any deep believer and astute politician, landing on the side of optimism.

“Reconciliation won’t come in trying to create one point of view but in common prayer,” Bishop Griswold said of the debate over sexuality. “Our differences can coexist in the larger frame of our common focus on Christ.”

Bishop Griswold’s supporters and critics alike are far less sanguine about the Episcopal Church staying together over time, or remaining part of the Anglican Communion, given the virulence of the debate.

Many Episcopalians worry that the controversy over sexuality will unsettle the convention, or even lead to a split. Church critics said that recommendations by a special Episcopal commission in response to the sexuality crisis, like an expression of “deep regret” for the pain inflicted upon other Anglicans by the election of Bishop Robinson, were inadequate.

Critics would like to see the church place a moratorium on the election of gay bishops, to repent for the consecration of Bishop Robinson, and even to roll back his election.

Bishops and lawyers are looking at how they would respond if all the congregations of a particular diocese were to leave the church over the ordination of Bishop Robinson, as has been rumored in the past few weeks. But Bishop Griswold said he had faith in the church’s resilience, having seen it withstand other painful controversies before, including the ordination of women.

“Every convention has had hovering over it a catastrophic fantasy,” he said. “And then you get to general convention and people listen to each other carefully. At the end of the day, you usually come out in a place that represents what I call the diverse center of the church.”

To his critics, such optimism discounts the seriousness of what they say are the Episcopal Church’s transgressions. They contend that their rupture with the Episcopal Church is not about sexuality, but about a generation-long drift of the church away from the primacy of Scripture and the shared beliefs of the communion.

According to an open letter signed by 22 current and retired Episcopal bishops, “A crisis of faith runs deep in the Episcopal Church over the uniqueness of Jesus as Savior and Lord, the sacred authority of the Apostles’ teaching in the Holy Scriptures, and the responsibility Christians have to act in charity and accountability with each other.”

To Bishop Griswold, the uniqueness of the Anglican Communion rests in great part in its willingness to accommodate divergent views. But people are so upset over this issue because it is about sexuality, he said.

“Sexuality is a free-ranging force that can overwhelm reason and is therefore dangerous,” he said. “Some people feel that if sexuality isn’t carefully circumscribed, it will subvert all sorts of things.”

Bishop Griswold, who says he has read the Bible twice a day for years, said the passages about homosexuality referred to certain behaviors, not to what he called “patterns of affection.”

He recounted that his understanding of homosexuality was affected in the 1960’s by a couple in his Pennsylvania parish. One man had multiple sclerosis, and his companion’s selflessness in caring for him convinced Bishop Griswold that such love did not contradict biblical teachings.

“In the Gospels, Jesus says, ‘I have many more things to say to you but you cannot bear them now,’ which suggests to me that God’s truth is always unfolding,” he said. “If we can accept that there are new truths that science brings us, or new discoveries in medicine, why is it when it comes to sexuality, there is no new truth?”

Bishop Griswold added: “A number of those most upset about our seemingly ignoring Scripture, though they are solidly heterosexual, have enjoyed the mercy of the church in the case of their own divorce and remarriage, which is something Jesus commented on.”

The seven candidates to succeed Bishop Griswold are: John Neil Alexander, bishop of Atlanta; Edwin F. Gulick Jr., bishop of Kentucky; Katharine Jefferts Schori, bishop of Nevada; Stacy F. Sauls, bishop of Lexington; Henry N. Parsley Jr., bishop of Alabama; Charles Edward Jenkins III, bishop of Louisiana; and Francisco J. Duque-Gomez, bishop of Colombia. In 2003, Bishops Parsley, Jenkins and Duque did not give their consent to the election of Mr. Robinson as bishop; the other four candidates did.

After retiring, Bishop Griswold said, he may write a book or two. Or take up invitations to teach. Or tend to his house in New Hampshire, where, he said, he can scythe a meadow.

“I like to scythe,” Bishop Griswold said, with a small smile, “because grass obeys in a way people sometimes don’t.”