New York, USA - Signaling a widening of the fractures within the Episcopal Church over homosexuality, three theologically conservative dioceses began efforts yesterday to separate themselves from the church.
The dioceses — Pittsburgh, South Carolina and San Joaquin, Calif. — appealed to the archbishop of Canterbury to be freed from oversight by the presiding bishop of the American church and to answer to a different primate in the worldwide Anglican Communion. They did not specify a particular primate.
All three belong to a group of dioceses, the Anglican Communion Network, that rejected the Episcopal Church's consecration of an openly gay man as a bishop in 2003 and the blessing of same-sex unions.
In explaining their decisions, the dioceses indicated that they felt emboldened to push for greater distance from the Episcopal Church because of a letter issued on Tuesday by the archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, faulting the American church for actions that are sharply at odds with the theology of most of the 77-million-member Anglican Communion.
In the letter, Archbishop Williams put forward a plan that could compel the Episcopal Church in the United States either to renounce gay bishops and same-sex unions or to give up full membership in the Communion.
The Rev. Robert Duncan, bishop of Pittsburgh and moderator of the Anglican Communion Network, said the letter vindicated the position of dioceses like his, bringing them a step closer to assuming officially the mantle of Anglicanism in the United States.
"This is to say as we have long said that we are legitimately the Episcopal Church in this place," Bishop Duncan said in a telephone interview, "and that we believe that we'll be recognized by the world as the legitimate inheritors of the Anglican trademark."
Ever since the Episcopal Church consented to the election in 2003 of Bishop V. Gene Robinson to lead the Diocese of New Hampshire, individual congregations have left the 2.3-million-member denomination and placed themselves under the oversight of theologically conservative prelates, largely in Africa.
Efforts by some congregations to hold on to their property have landed them in lawsuits with their dioceses. A report in 2004 commissioned by the archbishop of Canterbury cautioned against such departures.
Until the end of the Episcopal Church's triennial general convention last week, no diocese had sought to disassociate itself from the church. But with the election of Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of Nevada as the church's new presiding bishop on June 18, the Diocese of Fort Worth, which does not ordain women, asked the archbishop of Canterbury to be placed under a different prelate. The three dioceses that requested alternative oversight yesterday are likely to be joined by others, Bishop Duncan said.
A representative of the archbishop of Canterbury could not be reached for comment. The Episcopal Church's presiding bishop, the Rev. Frank T. Griswold, said in a statement that he found the decision by the Pittsburgh Diocese "unsurprising and altogether consistent with their implicit intention of walking apart from the Episcopal Church."
The Diocese of Pittsburgh said its request for outside oversight did not constitute a complete break with the church. Rather, the diocese planned to withdraw its consent to remain in a province of the Episcopal Church and then ask the Episcopal Church to set up a separate new province for conservative dioceses.
If the province is not created, Bishop Duncan said his diocese would remain outside an Episcopal province, but still in the church, a step, he said, that would protect it from lawsuits over property and finances.
Bishop Duncan said similar action was taken in the Diocese of Missouri in the 1950's. But Joan R. Gundersen, the president of Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh and a church historian, said the church's canons would not permit such steps.
Supporters of the Episcopal Church said the announcements by the dioceses seemed to leapfrog the process spelled out by the archbishop of Canterbury. For the proposal of a two-tier Communion to be enacted, at least a half-dozen major church meetings spread out over at least the next four years would need to be held, the Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon, secretary general of the Anglican Communion, said Tuesday.
The Episcopal presiding bishop has far less power than other Anglican primates do. But the symbolism of an American diocese's turning to another prelate as its leader was not lost on some Episcopalians.
"It's very divisive," Ms. Gundersen said. "It will create tremendous pain in a diocese. Many parishes include a broad spectrum of the church, and this will drive a wedge right through them."