The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, pleaded yesterday with two third world archbishops not to provoke a schism in the US Episcopalian church - the American equivalent of the Church of England - by consecrating four rebel bishops, opposed to the church's line on gays and women priests, at a service in Denver next Sunday.
Emmanuel Mbona Kolini, archbishop of Rwanda and Datuk Ping Chung Yong, archbishop of south-east Asia, have been called in by conservative Episcopalians anguished at the direction their church is taking. Their consecration of the renegade bishops threatens to split apart the 3m-strong Episcopalian communion which remains the church of the white US establishment.
Dr Carey, writing from Lambeth Palace as head of the worldwide Anglican communion, called on the two archbishops to withdraw:
"What you are proposing to do cannot strengthen but can only undermine [the] communion ... I simply cannot believe this is in conformity with the way Christ would want us to behave."
The split is the latest indication of the divide which opened in the church following the 1998 Lambeth conference of bishops, where more conservative African and Asian bishops in a compromise brokered by Dr Carey imposed a harder line against homosexuality than many in the more liberal western Anglican churches wanted.