Traditionalist pressure mounts on Anglican Communion

By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor

PARIS (Reuters) - Traditionalist Anglican leaders have stepped up pressure on their deeply split Communion by urging it to postpone its consultative conference and pledging more support for rebels against liberal local churches.

Nine leaders from the "Global South", known as primates, want to delay the Lambeth Conference, a 10-yearly assembly due in 2008, and hold an emergency summit of primates to resolve a crisis sparked by a gay bishop being named in the United States.

Also this week, two leading traditionalist archbishops -- Peter Akinola in Nigeria and Gregory Venables in Argentina -- vowed to continue to defend parishes and dioceses seeking to leave the Episcopal Church, the U.S. branch of Anglicanism.

Four Episcopal dioceses are considering switching allegiance to foreign primates in protest against their church's support for gay bishop Gene Robinson, despite threats of disciplinary action from Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori.

"We reject the religion of accommodation and cultural conformity that offers neither transforming power nor eternal hope," said a statement signed by nine primates from Africa and Asia who also called for a delay in the Lambeth Conference.

The statement, dated October 30 but only posted on Wednesday on the traditionalist website Global South Anglican, added that primates from developing countries -- where traditionalist stands are strongest -- should hold their own summit next year.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual head of the world's 77 million Anglicans, has been struggling to keep the loose group of 38 church provinces together despite the traditionalist rebellion against liberal Western churches.

UNDERMINING ANGLICAN STRUCTURES

The dispute has split both the Communion and some Western churches, where vocal minorities are seeking support from the Global South leaders. Letting dioceses choose which primate to follow undermines Anglicanism's regional structure.

Venables, archbishop of the Southern Cone of South America, said in an interview his province had agreed to provide oversight for U.S. dioceses that quit the Episcopal Church.

"Conservatives in America and elsewhere cannot wait in limbo any longer. They need a safe haven now," he told the Daily Telegraph in London. "The new realignment demonstrates the depths of the divisions that already exist."

Traditionalists are increasingly invoking Martin Luther, the German monk who triggered the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. "We are facing a similar situation today," Akinola said in an open letter to fellow primates issued on Wednesday.

Bishop Robert Duncan, whose Pittsburgh diocese voted last week to realign with a foreign primate, responded to the threat of Episcopal Church disciplinary action with Luther's famous quote: "Here I stand, I can do no other."

The Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), a Virginia-based breakaway group linked to Nigeria, has announced that Akinola will consecrate four new bishops there in early December. CANA has two American bishops and one from Nigeria.

At the same time, liberals in the United States and Canada continue to campaign for their churches to allow blessings for same-sex unions, another policy the traditionalists reject.

A lesbian priest, Rev. Tracey Lind, is one of eight candidates in the vote this weekend for the next bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Chicago. Her election would further divide the Communion, but she is apparently not a frontrunner.