Amid accusations that the Archbishop of Canterbury is failing to act robustly enough over homosexuality and the ordination of women bishops, the newly formed Global Anglican Future Conference (Gafcon) is threatening to disrupt this month's Lambeth gathering.Peter Jensen, the Archbishop of Sydney, made his way up to the podium amid an air of expectancy and surveyed the hundreds of pilgrims gathered in the ballroom of the Renaissance Hotel, Jerusalem.
Archbishop Jensen did not disappoint.
"The Anglican Communion is about to receive a dose of order," he told them and the crowd burst into cheers and applause.
This marked the final moment of the Global Anglican Future Conference (Gafcon) last Sunday.
The gathering had been assembled by conservative evangelicals determined to set themselves apart from the rest of the Anglican Communion following the ordination by the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (Ecusa) of an openly gay bishop five years ago.
The time had come for the conference's leading lights to explain how they were going to do it.
This task was left to the Primate of Uganda, Archbishop Henry Orombi, who told delegates they were witnessing the launch of a new movement.
This movement would have its own evangelical basis of faith, the Jerusalem Declaration, and would recognise Canterbury as an historic see rather than a source of ultimate authority.
The evangelicals believe that the Archbishop of Canterbury should have dealt with the American liberals far more firmly and they had become disillusioned with his leadership.
The Gafcon conference, with more than 1,000 delegates (including some 300 bishops, representing over half the 77 million-strong worldwide Communion) unanimously agreed an uncompromising statement.
Archbishop Orombi read out loud all four pages of the Gafcon statement, including the Jerusalem Declaration, and before he had even finished the pilgrims were giving him a standing ovation which lasted several minutes.
Just in case there was any doubt, the Primate of Nigeria, Archbishop Peter Akinola, later asked the pilgrims: "Is it your will it be adopted?" and was answered with a resounding "Yes!"
Later Akinola cried: "That glorious future we have been looking forward to has been born." Speaking to reporters, Archbishop Jensen said the sleeping giant that was evangelical Anglicanism had been aroused.
The Gafcon statement described the new movement as a "Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans" and the journalists lost no time in giving it the acronym Foca. The Jerusalem Declaration contained within it consists of 14 tenets and notably does not mention the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.
Deeply evangelical in nature, it calls for Christ to be recognised as the only way of salvation, speaks of judgement and hell and calls for a traditional heterosexual interpretation of marriage and sexuality.
It also adheres to the traditional pillars of the Anglican faith: the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the Thirty-nine Articles, the four ecumenical councils and the three historic Creeds. In addition to the Jerusalem Declaration, the statement also calls for the recognition of a new Gafcon primates' council with the task of recruiting more support for the movement around the world and the formation of a new province in North America.
This latter development will mean that members of the fellowship's American Anglicans can ally themselves with like-minded evangelicals instead of the liberal-leaning Episcopal Church (TEC, as it now known) in the United States of America.
There remain many unanswered questions about the new movement. No details have been given for membership of Gafcon's primates' council, nor of its relationship with the Anglican Communion's Primates' Meeting. However, the movement is clearly distancing itself from Canterbury. As Archbishop Akinola put it: "We don't need to go through Canterbury to get to Jesus."
There is nothing new about movements within Anglicanism. The Church of England is full of them, ranging from traditionalist groups to women's rights movements. There have also been independently arranged pre-Lambeth meetings of bishops before now. What sets the Gafcon fellowship apart is its sheer size and the numbers of Anglicans it represents, with the bulk coming from Africa and Asia. The most senior figure from Britain is the Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali.
Gafcon's organisers say that the conference emerged from the turmoil caused by North American Anglicans' increasingly liberal approach and openness to homosexuality. In his opening speech to the delegates, Archbishop Akinola made clear his view that Dr Williams could and should have dealt with the Americans more robustly.
According to Akinola, the storm was already brewing even before the 1998 Lambeth Conference, and concerns over sexuality had been voiced at the Anglican Encounter in the South meeting in Kuala Lumpur in 1997.
The following year the Lambeth Conference had proved a victory for the conservatives after the majority of bishops agreed to Lambeth resolution 1.10 - a landmark article which rejected homosexual practice as "incompatible with Scripture".
The Nigerian primate then revisited the events of 2003, which saw the highly controversial consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire. The consecration, he lamented, was in complete defiance of Lambeth 1998 and had "inflicted the most devastating wound" on the Church. He went on to list several primates' meetings which took place after Robinson's consecration. Lastly, he mentioned the primates' meeting in Tanzania in February 2007 in which TEC had been requested to "clarify'" its stand by 30 September.
While a response was still being sought, Archbishop Akinola said that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, had issued letters to TEC bishops, including those who consecrated Robinson, inviting them to the 2008 Lambeth Conference. This was an act of defiance towards the conservative sector, the archbishop said. "All our bishops and wives who would normally look to the Lambeth Conference for fellowship ... now could not."
On Tuesday the Gafcon roadshow moved to London when Archbishops Jensen and Orombi were joined by British-born Greg Venables, primate of the Southern Cone, comprising Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay.
Before inviting Church of England clergy to hear about their new movement at a meeting at All Souls, Langham Place, they held a press conference at which Archbishop Jensen told reporters: "The idea that this is a gay-bashing movement is a myth. We are united by a tremendous sense of the Gospel."
By then Dr Williams had already responded to the Gafcon initiative. In a statement issued on Monday he told its supporters that they would gain nothing by "demolishing existing structures".
Referring to delegates' scepticism regarding the Instruments of the Communion, he said: "If they are not working effectively, the challenge is to renew them rather than to improvise solutions that may seem to be effective for some in the short term but will continue to create more problems than they solve."
He added: "I believe that it is wrong to assume we are now so far apart that all those outside the Gafcon network are simply proclaiming another gospel. This is not the case; it is not the experience of millions of faithful and biblically focused Anglicans in every province."
Dr Williams was also critical of the new movement's primates' council."A primates' council which consists only of a self-selected group from among the primates of the [Anglican] Communion will not pass the test of legitimacy for all," he said."And any claim to be free to operate across provincial boundaries is fraught with difficulties."
Breakaway evangelicals in the Anglican Communion are not Dr Williams' only problem. He received a letter signed by 1,300 clergy and 11 bishops this week suggesting they may be unable to continue in their ministry if the Church of England goes ahead with plans to ordain women bishops.
Most of these are conservative Anglo-Catholics although there are also evangelicals among them.
With the General Synod this weekend and the Lambeth Conference later this month, Dr Williams has some gruelling days ahead.
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