Conservative Anglican Christians have moved to breakaway from the Episcopal Church amid an internal war over gay clergy and women priests.The Common Cause Partnership, which groups some 700 conservative Anglican congregations, on Wednesday released a provisional constitution and canons for a new branch of the Anglican Church in North America.
It hopes this will be recognized as a province, or key jurisdiction, of the Anglican Communion.
But on Thursday, a spokesperson for Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the head of the Church of England which is the mother church of the Anglican Communion, said the rebel clergy had not even begun to create a new church.
"There are clear guidelines set out in the Anglican Consultative Council Reports ... detailing the steps necessary for the amendments of existing provincial constitutions and the creation of new provinces," the spokesperson said.
"Once begun, any of these processes will take years to complete. In relation to the recent announcement from the meeting of the Common Cause Partnership in Chicago, the process has not yet begun."
The breakaway church announced Wednesday includes eight North American Anglican groups and bishops and congregations that have linked themselves to conservative churches in Kenya, Uganda, and South America.
The split in the community which had begun over the issue of women clergy, deepened after the 2003 ordination of an openly gay bishop in the US.
With an estimated 100,000 members, the breakaway movement represents a small fraction of the global Anglican Communion, which is estimated at 77 million adherents, including 2.2 million in the United States.
But a spokesman for the newly-formed branch of the US Anglican church denied gay rights were the reason for the break, insisting theological differences were the problem.
"The homosexuality issue, issues of women's ordination are just symptoms of the real problem," Robert Lundy, spokesman for the Anglican American Council which is a member Common Cause Partnership, told AFP.
"This is a split over deeply held theological convictions and matters essential to the faith. Homosexuality is not essential to the faith. Jesus is and the Bible is, and that's why this is happening," he said.
A spokesman for Katherine Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, issued a statement just prior to the announcement of the new church, stressing that the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada and La Iglesia Anglicana de Mexico "comprise the official, recognized presence of the Anglican Communion in North America."
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(Source: AFP)