By Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent
A powerful coalition of conservative Anglican leaders is preparing to create a parallel Church for conservatives in America in defiance of the Archbishop of Canterbury, provoking the biggest split in Anglican history, The Daily Telegraph has learned.
According to sources, at least six primates are planning the consecration of a prominent American cleric as a bishop to minister to Americans who have rejected their liberal bishops over the issue of homosexuality.
The move will send shock waves through worldwide Anglicanism and may prove to be a fatal blow to the efforts of Dr Rowan Williams to hold together what he described last month as a "very vulnerable, very fragile" Church.
The initiative is understood to have been co-ordinated by senior African archbishops, including the Primate of Kenya, Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi, who represent the core of the so-called Global South group of conservative primates.
But the group has a wider base and is also thought to include several relatively moderate primates from outside Africa.
The size of the group - its leaders represent well over 10 million Anglicans - will alarm Lambeth Palace as it could eventually evolve into a powerful rival Anglican Church.
Insiders said the scheme was not being led by the maverick Global South leader, the Primate of Nigeria, Archbishop Peter Akinola, who has already set up a similar "missionary" Church in America headed by Bishop Martyn Minns. One said: "This enormous division has been provoked by the unilateral actions of the Americans. They have walked away and we have to care for the survivors."
Dr Williams has repeatedly appealed to his fellow primates to refrain from provocative actions while he struggles to avert what appears to be an increasingly inevitable schism.
Last month he attempted to placate the warring factions by announcing that neither Bishop Gene Robinson, the homosexual American bishop, nor Bishop Minns would be invited to next year's Lambeth Conference, the 10-yearly gathering of all the world's bishops in Canterbury. But conservative leaders were furious that Dr Williams had invited the rest of the liberal leadership of the American Church despite its reluctance to toe the line on homosexuality.
The move by the conservative primates will also dismay the liberal leadership of the Episcopal Church, the American branch of Anglicanism, which originally provoked the crisis by consecrating Bishop Robinson in 2003.
The new conservative organisation in America will create ripples in the Church of England, which has been increasingly torn over the issue of homosexuality. It is certain to surface at next month's meeting of the General Synod in York.
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