CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Bishop-elect Gene Robinson’s personal safety is on some parishioners’ minds as the state’s Episcopalians prepare to consecrate the national’s church’s first openly gay bishop Nov. 2.

Robinson, a Lexington, Ky., native, has been accompanied by discreet security guards at some public events at least since this summer, when his election by New Hampshire was confirmed at the church’s national convention in Minneapolis. At a recent Sunday mass, uniformed Manchester police officer stayed in the sanctuary at Grace Church while Robinson preached.

“I pray for him every Sunday,” Jim Milliken, a member of Concord’s St. Paul’s Church, said. “We need to be appropriately cautious.”

A threat to Robinson was reported to the Concord Police Department in August, police spokesman George Pangakis said. The department referred the threat to the FBI and postal authorities, he said.

FBI spokesmen in Bedford and Boston could not confirm the agency was investigating.

Visitors to the diocesan office in Concord are now buzzed in to the bishop’s office, a new security procedure, retiring Bishop Douglas Theuner said.

“That’s not a response to anything that happened. It’s just a preventative,” Theuner told a reporter recently.

Diocesan spokesman Mike Barwell declined to comment on Robinson’s security.

Police in Weare, where Robinson lives, said they had not investigated any threats against him or responded to any protests or incidents at his house.

Grace Church hired the officer to work during the church service, police spokesman Sgt. Mark Fowke said. The officer was to help with traffic control and any protests, Fowke said.

“There were no threats at all that we were aware of,” Fowke said. There were no protests.

Robinson will become bishop on Nov. 2 when the church holds a consecration ceremony at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. Campus police Capt. Paul Dean said he assumes there will be protesters, though no one has notified him yet.

A Quaker group, the American Friends Service Committee, is talking to the diocese about stationing members specially trained in nonviolence outside.

“This won’t be the Quaker SWAT team,” the committee’s Arnie Alpert said. “We would just be there to help keep things calm.”

He noted that the group performed a similar function in Hartford, Conn., in August when ministers from across Connecticut marched on that state’s diocese to protest Robinson’s confirmation. The New Hampshire diocese and the committee have not decided yet whether to work together in Durham, Alpert said.

Robinson has encouraged his opponents to find a way to disagree about his sexuality while remaining in the church. He has often said they are welcome in his church, and he hopes he is welcome in theirs.

“That’s who he is,” Milliken said. “Why should he have to be protecting himself from those who are really threatening bodily harm? I guess it’s upsetting to some. For people to be so threatened by him is too bad. How much more unthreatening could he be?”