Eight members of Christ Church in Savannah attended an event in Chicago last week unveiling the constitution and laws of a proposed new North American arm of the Anglican Communion.

Christ Church spokeswoman Stephanie Lynch said the group signed a symbolic statement marking the congregation’s intention to join the new organization once membership details have been worked out.

“It’s really more of a symbolic gesture. Nothing is binding,” Lynch said. “At some point we’ll be released from (the Anglican province of) Uganda and transferred to this new North American province.”

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When conservative members of the Episcopal Church announced plans to found a new denomination this week, the fissure had a direct impact on one local church and appeared uncomfortably familiar to members of another.

No churches in the local Episcopal diocese planned to join the new denomination, called the Anglican Church in North America. But a Scranton parish was among the small denominations that had previously left the Episcopal Church that formed a coalition to develop the new province.

Grace Reformed Episcopal Church, on Laurel Drive, is a part of the Reformed Episcopal Church, which broke away from the mother Episcopal Church in 1873 for broadly evangelical reasons. The pastor of the local church, the Rev. Paul Howden, said the presiding bishop of his denomination helped lead the way in forming the coalition of conservative denominations and Episcopal dioceses that on Wednesday joined to make the new province.

For the small denomination ”” there are about 10,000 members of the Reformed Episcopal Church ”” the new province signals a much bigger alliance than it has had in its history as a breakaway group.

“Instead of feeling lonely and isolated with so few churches throughout the country, we go from 10,000 to 100,000 members,” he said, referring to the estimated number of adherents in the new province.

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The church started ordaining women in 1976, according to Phyllis Bartle, Rector of St. Jude’s Episcopal Church in Orange City. She counts herself as religiously conservative. She expressed empathy for the breakaway group, but said her church won’t join it.

“I actually understand where they’re coming from, but I’m not called there, yet,” Bartle said.

Colbert Norville, rector of Daytona Beach’s St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church, also sympathized with the seceding conservatives. However, he, too, is staying put.

“I believe in the Episcopal church as it stands now,” said Norville. “I think a lot of people have forgotten their ordination vows.”

Nevertheless, he was critical of a growing movement in his denomination to accept…[same sex practice].

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Speaking to a group of parishioners before Sunday’s service, Duncan likened the split to the Reformation, when Protestant churches split from a wealthy and powerful Catholic church that had “lost its way.”

“We’re in the midst of another Reformation,” Duncan said. “Protestantism has gotten off track, and God is doing what he always does, and that is to reform it.”

Without mentioning gay priests, Duncan said the established church has strayed from its adherence to Scripture. As an example, Duncan cited the refusal of a head bishop to say that the Christian faith is the only path to salvation in the afterlife.

In an interview after his sermon, Duncan called it “unfortunate” that the consecration of a gay bishop prompted the split. He said church members were already alienated by a church that diluted biblical teachings, but they were forced to leave because the consecration directly contradicted scripture.

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Connecticut Episcopal Bishop Andrew Smith, who has struggled with defections of individual churches within his diocese in recent years, said he cannot yet gauge the significance of this development in the ongoing struggle for the soul of the Episcopal Church.

“It’s immensely sad. It really is,” Smith said. “It’s also unprecedented. I think what would give any persons or churches pause [before leaving the Episcopal Church] is the reality that although they are calling this a new province, it is not in communion with the [Anglican Communion].”

That may be wishful thinking on Smith’s part.

The bishop has watched as several of his churches, which were part of a group called the “Connecticut Six,” left the diocese and affiliated with more conservative bishops. The diocese is still embroiled in a lawsuit with one of the churches ”” Bishop Seabury Church in Groton ”” over who owns the church property. The diocese recently defrocked Bishop Seabury’s priest, the Rev. Ronald Gauss.

Both Gauss and the Rev. Donald Helmandollar ”” whose Bristol congregation also left the Episcopal Church but chose to give up its property to avoid a legal battle ”” believe the creation of a new province will give other conservative churches the push they needed to leave.

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Read them carefully and read them all.

From here:

“The formation of a parallel province is aspirational claim at this point. While the Archbishop [of Canterbury] has made clear his displeasure with the Episcopal Church, he has made clear his equal displeasure with these attempts to reorder traditional Anglican polity,” Henry D.W. Burt, secretary of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, said in a statement yesterday.

“He did so not only by not inviting Bishop [V. Gene] Robinson of New Hampshire to the Lambeth Conference, but also by excluding those bishops irregularly consecrated under the auspices of overseas provinces….”

The Rev. Canon Robert G. Hetherington, retired rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, reacted to yesterday’s announcement by saying, “I think it’s too bad. It’s something that’s been coming.” He added that he thinks the Rt. Rev. Peter James Lee, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, had “bent over backwards to be helpful and try to accommodate some of [the breakaway congregations’] views, to be inclusive of them … I have tremendous respect for his leadership.”

Hetherington added, “In my view, the great thing about the Episcopal Church is we’re not a doctrinal church. You’re not a member based on some narrow set of beliefs. It’s a place where divergent views can be expressed and held and you’re still part of the same body. That’s the sadness of this group leaving, that they just don’t want to be part of the family anymore.”

Rector Gregg Riley of Grace Episcopal Church in Monroe said the beginnings of the separation surfaced in July of this year when conservative Episcopalians met in Jerusalem for the Global Anglican Future Conference.

Riley, who attended the conference, said archbishops, bishops and laity from 17 of the church’s provinces met to “determine the way forward for conservative Episcopalians in North America who felt like the Episcopal Church was going in a different theological direction ”” away from Scripture and away from the teachings of the Church.”

Riley, who described Grace Episcopal Church as a conservative congregation, said he would wait three to six months to consider affiliating his church with the breakaway group.

“Individual parishes will wait and see what the constitutions and canons are like,” Riley said. “We’ve got to wait to see as far as the particulars: who’s the leader, how an individual would affiliate with it.”

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Organizers of the new Anglican Communion in North America include leaders of the Reformed Episcopal church, which has churches in Deming and Los Lunas with a total membership of about 200, said the Rev. Win Mott, pastor of the St. Augustine Anglican Church in Deming.

The new denomination is an attempt to reunite conservative churches that have splintered from the U.S. Episcopal church over the years, Mott said. “The Anglican movement in the United States is fragmented,” said Mott, who is also assistant bishop for the 11-state Diocese of the West for the Reformed Episcopal Church. “Now we’re trying to glue it back together.”

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Realistically, how viable is the new denomination?

Historically, in the Anglican Communion, to form a new province required four existing dioceses to organize it and put forward a constitution. We have those four dioceses in Fort Worth, Pittsburgh, [San Joaquin, Calif.; and Quincy, Ill.]. ”‚.”‚.”‚.

I think the figure they were using [Wednesday] is .”‚.”‚. 100,000 average Sunday attendance. So it’s certainly viable financially, and it’s certainly viable in terms of number of dioceses involved because there are four already existing dioceses.

What do you foresee, legally and financially, for the local congregations that want to remain in Episcopal Church? Are lawsuits likely?

The congregations in this diocese that want to remain in TEC [Episcopal Church] will have to organize a new diocese or join an already existing diocese such as our neighboring Diocese of Dallas. I have offered my assistance to help them achieve this, as has the bishop of Dallas.

I certainly hope that lawsuits over property will be avoided and that a negotiated settlement will satisfy the interests of all parties. Sadly, the TEC authorities have been all too eager to litigate in disputes like this. However, unless the local churches want to litigate against the Diocese of Fort Worth, there isn’t much that the TEC leaders can do about it. Charity and forbearance are required on both sides.

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This week’s announcement that breakaway Episcopal churches around North America are forming their own province prompted sharply contrasting reactions among San Diego-area worshippers. Members of the independent churches in San Diego County said this is a momentous shift, and a recognition that the Episcopal church has strayed too far from the faith’s core principles.

But the Right Rev. James R. Mathes, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of San Diego, said there is no official recognition of the new province, or governing unit, and therefore no real change. “You can say you’re a province, but that doesn’t make it so,” Mathes said. “It doesn’t affect us.”

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The Rev. Dr. Frank Larisey, pastor of Orangeburg’s Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, said “Theologically, we are on the same page with them. But we have no intention at the present time of going anywhere. We have not changed. We have not gone anywhere. We are the heart of Christian orthodoxy.”

Instead, Larisey said he, along with the diocese, will continue to speak out against the “liberal” and “unbiblical” trends in the hope that changes can occur.

Four Episcopal dioceses, plus individual churches, announced this week that they would leave the U.S. church to form a rival, conservative North American province.

But Larisey said for the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, “Our strategy at present is to remain within the Episcopal Church bearing witness to the truth of the Gospel and confronting the Episcopal Church on issues which we strongly disagree.”

He added in his estimation, most of the Episcopal Church has succumbed to “liberal revisionism.”

The split comes on the heels of long-standing theological controversy within the Episcopal Church. The controversy peaked in 2003 with the consecration of Gene Robinson as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire. At the time of his election, Robinson was openly living with a same-sex partner.

“That is the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said the Very Rev. John F. Scott, pastor of the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany. He said the liberalization of the U.S. church began with the teachings of a bishop who “denied the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

Scott, who attended some of the discussions in Illinois about the split last week, described the atmosphere as “reenactment of the Holy Spirit and Pentecost when the church was being rebirthed.”

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Conservative Anglicans in the United States and Canada said Friday that they intended to proceed immediately with plans to create their own branch of the Anglican Communion, separate from the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada, despite warnings from the archbishop of Canterbury that winning official recognition could take years.

“This is not being put on hold while we wait for a committee in England to tell us which form to fill out,” said the Rev. Peter Frank, a spokesman for Bishop Robert Duncan, who led a majority of churches in the Diocese of Pittsburgh out of the Episcopal Church this year and is to become the archbishop and primate of the new province.

Theological conservatives representing a collection of breakaway dioceses, parishes and church networks announced Wednesday in Wheaton, Ill., the creation of a new province called the Anglican Church in North America. Despite serious differences among them, they are united in their condemnation of what they call the Episcopal Church’s drift to the left, most significantly its decision five years ago to consecrate an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire.

Read it all. Please note: be very careful with this story and its coverage this week. The New York Times article incorrectly states “on Thursday, the archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, warned the conservatives to slow down.” He did no such thing. As in many recent situations, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said nothing (indeed his silence has been deafening on numerous recent North American developments including this one). I defy you to go to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s website and find anything he has said on this matter.

Ah, but there’s more. Where did the New York Times get the impression that the Archbishop of Canterbury had said anything? From the Episcopal News Service, most probably. And why?

On Friday, ENS ran a story which claimed that “A statement from Lambeth Palace” had been issued. What are we to make of this? Well, said statement is not on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s website nor (that I can find) on the Anglican Communion Service website. Hmm. Is it actually a statement from Lambeth Palace. Well, actually, er, no.

Why do I say this? First, because the Church Times blog, which certainly knows the Church of England situation in some depth, in response to the ENS story says (read this very carefully please): It would be good to hear directly from Lambeth Palace before reading too much into this. Got that? There is more. What is the real original source of this idea? Why, another ENS story (and why, one has to ask, are all these stories about the Church of England running on ENS but not English sources?). And if you read it carefully, what does this story say? Well, in spite of its misleading headline, actually it is a statement from “a spokesperson for Archbishop of Canterbury” Got that? It is a person at Lambeth Palace, and, wonder of wonders, we do not even know his or her name (I wonder why).

If you find all this a bit confusing, welcome to the world of English bureacracy, where what is said and who says it and how it is interpreted are all in play to send various signals, and where all these signals are sought to be played by many various parties involved. If I were preparing someone to understand this world, multiple episodes of “Yes Minister” would be required viewing–KSH.

Primates of the GAFCON Primates’ Council meeting in London have issued the following statement about the Province of the Anglican Church in North America.

We welcome the news of the North American Anglican Province in formation. We fully support this development with our prayer and blessing, since it demonstrates the determination of these faithful Christians to remain authentic Anglicans.

North American Anglicans have been tragically divided since 2003 when activities condemned by the clear teaching of Scripture and the vast majority of the Anglican Communion were publicly endorsed. This has left many Anglicans without a proper spiritual home. The steps taken to form the new Province are a necessary initiative. A new Province will draw together in unity many of those who wish to remain faithful to the teaching of God’s word, and also create the highest level of fellowship possible with the wider Anglican Communion.

Furthermore, it releases the energy of many Anglican Christians to be involved in mission, free from the difficulties of remaining in fellowship with those who have so clearly disregarded the word of God.

6th December, 2008 AD

“The new grouping is, in the eyes of many,” said [Ephram] Radner, “representative of diverse bodies whose theology and ecclesiology is, taken together, incoherent, and perhaps in some cases even incompatible.”

That bodes ill for the denomination’s future, [Ian] Douglas said. “Those who have been quick to separate themselves out in the past have that as part of their operational DNA,” he said.

Still, not everyone is writing off the new church.

“We cannot predict the future,” said David L. Holmes a professor of religious history at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., “but my hunch would be that this new Anglican denomination will persist over the years.”

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During a pre-service press conference, Bob Duncan, the former Episcopal bishop of Pittsburgh and now archbishop-designate for the new church, told news media that he expects the Episcopal Church (TEC) to continue its decline and that in time, the new province will come to replace it.

He said, “The Lord is displacing the Episcopal Church.”

This year, TEC leaders have seen the decades-long downward spiral continue in both attendance and finances. By some estimates, attendance and membership are declining by 1,000 people per week. Many dioceses are cutting budgets and staff, and drawing down endowment funds to maintain operations. The denomination has about two million members. It is spending millions of dollars on court actions to prevent individual churches and dioceses from pulling out.

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The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church declared Thursday that church members who joined a newly formed conservative denomination “are no longer Episcopalians,” even as she predicted that the exodus had largely run its course and would not trigger further large-scale defections.

In her first public comments since a coalition of 700 parishes announced the formation of a new North American church Wednesday, the Most. Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori also reiterated that church property must remain in Episcopal hands, a position disputed by breakaway leaders.

“They are no longer Episcopalians,” Jefferts Schori said of those who left. “They have made that very clear in their departures.

“Those who were formally bishops in the Episcopal Church are no longer understood to be bishops in the Episcopal Church,” she added in a meeting with Times reporters. “They are free to associate with whom they wish.”

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Episcopal Church experts and disaffected conservatives predicted yesterday that intense lobbying would soon begin over dissidents’ plans to leave the church and create a new Anglican community in the United States.

The two sides will try to convince Anglican leaders worldwide either of the value or the cost of a second branch of the U.S. church, one that would be based less on geography than on theology.

Bishop Martyn Minns, a Virginia-based leader of the breakaway movement, confidently predicted victory. “I think we’ve got a good basis of support for what we’re doing,” he said.

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The Rev. Hal T. Ley Hayek is the rector of Saint Anne’s Episcopal Church in Winston-Salem and the dean of the Winston-Salem convocation of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina. His church does not plan to join the new branch.

“Our hope in the Episcopal church is to live in the highest degree of communion that we possibly can,” Hayek said. “Our living in communion is a witness to the world and the reconciling mission of Jesus. That’s the mission of all Christians.”

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Long-standing divisions between liberals and conservatives had already fragmented the Episcopal Church by 2003 when it consecrated Gene Robinson of New Hampshire as the first bishop known to be in an openly gay relationship in more than four centuries of Anglican Church history.

That act further roiled the 2.1 million-member U.S. church and the 77 million-member worldwide Anglican Communion of which it is part. In recent months, four dioceses, out of a total of 110, have split from the Episcopal Church in California, Pennsylvania, Texas and Illinois. The church says that fewer than 100 of 7,100 congregations had left or voted to leave before the recent diocesan defections.

The dissidents who met on Wednesday want to become a province within the Anglican Communion — on equal footing with the Episcopal Church. Achieving that status would require approval from two-thirds of the primates — the heads of national churches — in the Anglican Communion and ultimate recognition from the Anglican Consultative Council, another church body.

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After five years of battles over gay rights, the Anglican communion fractured yesterday with a new conservative denomination claiming to represent the historic tenets of the faith.

The self-titled Anglican Church in North America, claiming a membership of 100,000, unveiled a constitution and canons with a prayer service last night in the Chicago suburb of Wheaton. Founders said the new church hopes to be welcomed one day as the 39th province in the worldwide communion.

“It’s been a day that, in effect, reverses decades of Anglican history,” Bishop Robert Duncan, a leader in the breakaway movement, told a news conference.

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Conservative leaders, including former Episcopal bishops, announced the creation of the Anglican Church in North America on Wednesday. It is expected to begin with about 700 congregations and 100,000 members in North America.

“It’s a no brainer. We are already in, as far as I understand,” said Father Michael Fry of All Saints Anglican Church in Peachtree City.

Fry was happy to see theological conservatives in the U.S. finally form a national organization.

“It’s the opinion of the conservatives that the Episcopal Church has left its roots,” he said.

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Tim Morgan: Christianity Today. Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori released a statement 1 hr ago about TEC being the only recognized Anglican province in North America. Is the goal of this new enterprise to replace TEC or form a parallel structure?

Bp. Duncan: The Lord has been replacing TEC for 50 years. 2007 figures show losses of more than 1000 people a week in Average Sunday attendance. We will focus on our mission together. We are growing and planting new organizations of authentic Christian presence in US and Canada. Issue of who is the province here is not ours to determine. TEC is province now recognized. Of 38 provinces, 22 have declared broken or impaired communion with TEC. That’s roughly 75% of Anglicans around the world that are out of communion with TEC. Our anticipation is that the primates will recognize this province. One is official reality the other emerging reality. It is not ours to determine. The Lord called us to this work He blesses what he blesses. Standing where we stand, we expect a different result than our recent experiences in Anglican Church of Canada and TEC.

It is very important that you take the time to read it all carefully.

The bishop who led a group of Pittsburgh parishes that split from the Episcopal Church will serve as interim head of the Anglican Church in North America, a new church being formed by conservative congregations.

Bishop Robert Duncan will lead the new church until an archbishop is appointed next summer, said Peter Frank, spokesman for the Pittsburgh churches that voted in October to leave the national church.

“(It’s) an important, concrete step toward the goal of a biblical, missionary and united Anglican Church in North America,” Duncan said.

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Leaders of the Third Province movement sidestepped the contentious issue of women clergy last night, and have endorsed a provisional constitution and canons governing the emerging Third Province in the Americas.

“God did a great work today,” Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan told supporters at a church service in Wheaton, Illinois at the end of the Dec 1-3 gathering, as the disparate members of the Common Cause Partnership (CCP) of Anglican traditionalists in the US and Canada “came together with the proposed draft of the constitution and canons” and after discussing each proviso, “adopted unanimously” each article of the code.

This was “staggering considering who was around the table” said Bishop Duncan ”” the moderator of CCP and now the interim primate and archbishop of the provisional province.

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Members of the 11 self-identified Anglican organizations that form the Common Cause Partnership (CCP) announced December 3 the creation of what they called an Anglican “province in formation” for those who say that the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada promote erroneous biblical interpretation and theology, particularly in terms of the doctrine of salvation and acceptance of homosexuality.

Former Episcopal Church Diocese of Pittsburgh bishop and CCP moderator Robert Duncan, who will become the proposed province’s first archbishop and primate, told a December 3 news briefing that the movement he leads is a descendant of the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Both periods in history required Christians to reassert the power of revelation that some of their leaders had lost, he said.

“That, brothers and sisters, is what I would submit is happening right now in the 21st century across the whole Christian church, particularly in the West,” he told reporters. When asked, Duncan refused to claim that the announcement amounted to a schism of the Anglican Communion. Cynthia Brust, communications director for the Anglican Mission in the Americas (a member of the partnership), told reporters that the communion “has been fractured, it has been damaged, it has been in disarray, it’s been coming for a long time.”

“Rather than today being about division and breaking apart in disunity, it’s the day that the Anglican Communion began to be healed,” she said.

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On Nov 11, Kenyan Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi told The Church of England Newspaper that a meeting had been tentatively set with Dr. Rowan Williams in London for Dec 5. He said the timeline under which the Gafcon primates were working was that on Dec 3 the leaders of the Common Cause Partnership would gather in Wheaton, Illinois to endorse a draft constitution for the emerging province.

The Gafcon archbishops: Benjamin Nzimbi of Kenya, Peter Akinola of Nigeria, [Emmanuel Kolini of Rwanda] Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone, Valentino Mokiwa of Tanzania, Henry Orombi of Uganda, Justice Akrofi of West Africa would then meet on Dec 4 in London to receive and endorse the agreement and bring it to Dr. Williams the following day.

Speaking to the congregation of Truro Parish in Fairfax, Virginia on Nov 30, Bishop Martyn Minns publicly confirmed the proposed timeline adding that the Gafcon primates were also planning on briefing the primates standing committee the day before the start of the Jan 31-Feb 6 Alexandria Primates meeting-however, US Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori will likely miss the pre-conference session as she is scheduled to attend the Episcopal Church’s Executive Council meeting from Jan 29-31.

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Anglican archbishops will hold an emergency meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury today to discuss the unfolding schism in the Church in America.

The meeting between Dr Rowan Williams and the primates of Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and the Southern Cone comes two days after conservatives in the US unveiled the constitution and canons of the new Anglican Church in North America.

With a membership of 100,000, drawn from disaffected members of the Episcopal Church of the US and from churches that broke away over the women’s ordination dispute, leaders of the new “province” claim they are not splitting from the 75 million-strong Anglican Communion.

A formal proposal arguing for recognition as the 39th province of the Anglican Communion will be put before the primates at their meeting in Alexandria, Egypt, at the end of January.

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[Bob] Duncan said 22 of the 38 Anglican provinces have broken or impaired communion with the Episcopal Church.

“We think many of them will begin to recognize this province,” Duncan said. “We stand in the mainstream of Anglicanism and Christianity.”

Alan Crippen, spokesman for the breakaway Grace Church and St. Stephen Parish in Colorado Springs, said the groups behind the new province have provided a safe haven, a sanctuary, for former Episcopalians alienated by the church’s increasingly liberal views.

“It’s become increasingly clear that these differences weren’t going to be worked out,” Crippen said.

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Bishop Michael Curry, who heads the Raleigh-based Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina, which includes Charlotte, said the conservatives had a right to do what they wanted. But he predicted that their declaration in Wheaton would matter little in the Tar Heel state.

“The Episcopal Church in North Carolina continues to grow,” he said in a statement. “I do not anticipate that these reported actions will have any significant impact on the church in North Carolina.”

The Charleston-based Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina ”“ the only one of five dioceses in the Carolinas that might be tempted to join the conservative province ”“ sent the Rev. John Scott of Eutawville, S.C., to Wheaton to be an observer and report back to Bishop Mark Lawrence, a conservative whose election was initially rejected by the Episcopal Church.

“We’re watching it and wishing them success,” said the Rev. Kendall Harmon, a spokesman for the S.C. diocese. “We’re in theological sympathy, but not in strategic agreement. ”¦ Right now, we’re seeking to be a faithful witness and tell the truth to an (Episcopal) church that’s lost its mind, that’s turned its back on God and his truth.”

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