One day after a council of conservative Episcopalians announced that 13 Episcopal dioceses had formed a new network opposed to their church's stance on homosexuality, three bishops sought to distance their dioceses from the network and said the announcement had been premature.
The controversy laid bare the tensions among the conservatives over how far they can go to disassociate themselves from the Episcopal Church U.S.A. without being perceived as causing a schism.
"The cart is way, way ahead of the horse, and I'm not sure it's the right cart or horse," Bishop John W. Howe of Central Florida said in an interview on Wednesday.
His diocese was among those named as having joined the new network.
Episcopalians are divided over their church's decision last summer to approve an openly gay bishop for the Diocese of New Hampshire.
At stake is not only the future course of the Episcopal Church U.S.A., with 2.3 million members and more than 100 dioceses, but also the unity of the worldwide Anglican Communion, the 70-million-member branch of Christianity to which the Episcopal Church belongs.
On Tuesday, leaders of the American Anglican Council, which has taken the lead in organizing conservative Episcopalians, contacted The New York Times and said that on Wednesday they would announce the formation of the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes.
In an interview late Tuesday evening, Bishop Robert W. Duncan of Pittsburgh, the moderator and convening authority of the new network, said: "Thirteen dioceses are coming together to guarantee that the kind of Anglicanism that is authentic Anglicanism throughout the world is represented here in the United States and has its own voice."
Bishop Duncan said the network would not secede from the Episcopal Church. He said the long-term goal was for foreign Anglicans and other Christian churches to recognize the network as the true representative of Anglicanism in the United States. This, he said, could force the Episcopal Church to back off its decisions on homosexuality.
Bishop Duncan supplied a list of the 13 dioceses that he said had agreed to join the network.
After the article appeared in The Times on Wednesday, clergy and some parishioners contacted church offices to protest their dioceses' affiliation with the network.
Within two days, bishops of the dioceses of Florida, Central Florida and Southeast Florida had issued statements disavowing their participation. They gave various explanations. One explanation was that although 13 bishops had signed a "Theological Charter" for the new network, they could not include their whole dioceses as members until diocesan committees had been given a chance to approve.
Bishop John B. Lipscomb said in a statement, "The Diocese of Southwest Florida has not agreed to join the network," and would not send any representatives to the network's organizational meeting next month in Texas.
Bishop Duncan held a conference call with several concerned bishops on Wednesday evening. He said afterward in an interview that he should not have listed the dioceses because the entire effort is still "in utero."