Conservative U.S. Episcopal leaders on Thursday called for the punishment of bishops who earlier this year asked for the ordination an openly gay priest as bishop in a move they said could eventually lead to a split in the 77 million-member worldwide Anglican Communion.
"These actions have broken fellowship with the larger body of Christ and have brought the Episcopal Church under God's judgment," the some 2,700-strong conservative members said in a mission statement at the end of a three-day meeting in Dallas.
The representatives, spurred by disapproval of the American church's recent acceptance of gay rights including same-sex union ceremonies, were planning to sign a statement of solidarity later in the day.
That statement would declare their repudiation of the 2.3 million-member Episcopal Church of the United States of America and appeal to international primates -- spiritual leaders in the communion -- for help in securing a new conservative framework for the church.
"We're asking primates not only to intervene but to discipline those bishops who by their actions departed from biblical faith and order," said the Rev. Kendall Harmon, canon theologian of the Diocese of South Carolina and an American Anglican Council member.
"We hope that the primates will hear a strong and desperate and clear plea from faithful Anglicans."
The group meeting in Dallas included 800 members of the clergy and 46 bishops.
POSSIBLE SCHISM
On Wednesday they were presented with a possible road map for a potential alliance between American and Canadian conservatives with conservative primates mainly from Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Loosely referred to as "The Church of the Intervention," the plan could possibly involve a break with their spiritual head, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, if he chooses to remain in communion with the American church.
"Quite simply, that failure would come at the price of a wrenching split in the whole fabric of the communion" that could take months or years to complete, said Bishop Robert Duncan of the Diocese of Pittsburgh.
Duncan is a leader in the American Anglican Council -- an alliance of bishops, clergy, and more than 500 American Episcopal churches meeting here to map out a plan for schism.
The group bills itself as being committed to "preserving biblical orthodoxy."
In August the Episcopal Church voted at its convention in Minneapolis to approve as bishop-elect of New Hampshire the Rev. Gene Robinson, a 56-year-old gay priest who is divorced and the father of two daughters.
The convention also approved a resolution acknowledging that gay unions were being conducted throughout America with the approval of some bishops.
Conservatives believe that homosexuality is uniformly condemned in the Bible and therefore the Episcopal Church in its votes abandoned 2000 years of Christian tradition.
Liberal Episcopalians believe the Bible is not to be taken literally, said the Rev. Susan Russell, who heads two groups working to fully include gays and lesbians in the Church.