Declaring themselves the rightful heirs of Anglican Christianity in America, more than 2,700 conservative Episcopalians this week urged the world's ranking Anglican archbishops to discipline the Episcopal Church for approving an openly gay bishop, writes Larry Stammer in Dallas
The conservatives said they are no longer asking for a separate or parallel Anglican church for "biblically orthodox" Episcopalians alongside the established 2.3-million-member Episcopal Church.
Instead they said they want to be recognized as a successor church if the Episcopal Church does not repent from its "unbiblical and schismatic actions".
The strongly worded "call to action" also urged disaffected Episcopalians to withhold their financial contributions from national church headquarters and to redirect the money towards "biblically orthodox mission and ministry".
The Dallas statement urges the primates, led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, not only to discipline errant US bishops, but to "guide the realignment of Anglicanism in North America". The conservative leaders said they would defer to the primates on how that might happen and made no mention of a possible expulsion of the Episcopal Church from the worldwide Anglican Communion.
The Dallas meeting has attracted attention from the Vatican. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, one of the most powerful cardinals in the Church, sent a letter from Rome on behalf of Pope John Paul II to Episcopalians assuring them of Ratzinger's "heartfelt prayers for all those taking part in this convocation".
"The significance of your meeting is sensed far beyond (Dallas)," Cardinal Ratzinger said in a letter that leaders here said he was invited to send.
The action in Dallas came at the conclusion of a three-day meeting of the conservative American Anglican Council and was by far the strongest repercussion yet to the national Episcopal Church's approval in August of the election of an openly gay priest, the Rev Canon V. Gene Robinson, as the next Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, and the tacit approval of marriage-like ceremonies for committed gay and lesbian couples.
"We repudiate the General Convention's confirmation of a non-celibate homosexual to be a bishop of the church, and its acceptance of same-sex blessings as part of our common life," the statement said. "These actions have broken fellowship with the larger body of Christ and have brought the Episcopal Church under God's judgment."
US Episcopalians who opposed Robinson and same-sex blessings are in a decided minority, based on the votes at General Convention - a bicameral legislature made up of bishops, priests and members of the laity from all 108 US dioceses. - (Los Angeles Times service)