Conservative Episcopalians appeared on track to launch a new nationwide protest organization Tuesday as they began the second and final day of a meeting to launch their Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes.
The movement, which hopes for significant support from foreign Anglicans, was prompted by the decision of an Episcopal Church convention last August to approve openly gay Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.
But Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, the group's leader, told a Monday news briefing that Robinson's name wasn't even mentioned during the first day's deliberations.
Instead, he said, the 100 bishops, priests and lay delegates representing 12 dioceses and various conservative parishes in other dioceses, focused on building "a united, orthodox and missionary Anglicanism" in the United States.
The delegates at the meeting plan to complete an organizational charter for the network. They also are trying to produce a new theological statement based upon previous conservative platforms.
Organizers say the network is no schism but a "church within a church" whose followers will remain Episcopalians. One reason not to quit: most parishes would be forced to surrender their properties to the denomination.
Duncan said the Episcopal Church "split from its own history" when it endorsed Robinson, while the network upholds traditional Episcopal teaching, "so who left?"
Episcopal Church headquarters in New York has issued no formal statement about the meeting.
But the head of the denomination, Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, said in an interview with the religious Web site Beliefnet that "it's a political movement" as well as a religious one, because funding has come from conservative foundations.
"I think the money has been there for a long time, but I think the dynamic has just become clearer," Griswold told Beliefnet.
The Episcopal Church is the U.S. branch of the international Anglican Communion, in which many overseas churches have protested Robinson's consecration. Some have broken fellowship with the Episcopal Church or its majority of pro-gay bishops.
The network hopes to become the American entity to which foreign Anglicans can relate. Canon Bill Atwood of the Texas-based Ekklesia Society, which aids churches in developing nations, said in a phone interview from Uganda that bishops who lead a majority of the world's Anglicans are preparing a joint statement to recognize the network.
A leaked memo from one network activist said the ultimate goal is a "replacement" jurisdiction aligned with world Anglicanism. A key leader said Sunday that the concept originated with the overseas Anglican leaders and decisions on replacement are up to them.
The chief business of the Plano meeting is to agree on an organizational charter to govern the network's early phase. Some delegates worked Monday night in hopes of also fashioning a theological declaration drawn from previous conservative documents.
Perhaps the touchiest issue is whether the network should send bishops to minister to conservative parishes in liberal dioceses, even without denominational permission.
The 12 dioceses at the heart of the network have 235,000 members, or a 10th of the nation's Episcopalians, though some parishioners in these dioceses hold liberal views.
The world Anglican leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, named a commission to report by Sept. 30 on solutions to the global division over the U.S. actions and a parallel dispute over Canadian church blessings for same-sex couples.