Some conservative Episcopalians are splitting off

PROVIDENCE — A coalition of conservative New England Episcopalians announced Saturday that they are forming four new congregations, including two on Cape Cod, that will not be part of the Episcopal Church USA. The new group will instead seek oversight from a foreign Anglican bishop who shares their opposition to last year's consecration of a gay priest as bishop of New Hampshire.

The decision to establish the four new Anglican congregations marks the first concrete action taken in New England by Episcopalians unhappy with the election of the Right Rev. V. Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire.

The new worshiping communities, which are independent of the Episcopal Church USA, have just a few dozen members and are meeting in private homes. Several similar, but smaller, home-based prayer groups have also formed. Robinson, who lives with his longtime partner, is thought to be the first bishop in Christendom to have been open about his homosexuality at the time of his selection as a bishop.

The Episcopal Church USA is the American province of the Anglican Communion, which comprises 38 provinces around the world.

At the Rhode Island Convention Center Saturday, about 270 of the conservatives gathered. The conservatives, some of whom are still members of the Episcopal Church, and some of whom have left to join a variety of existing breakaway groups or to form new ones — assembled to launch a regional section of the Anglican Communion Network.

The national organization brings together dioceses, parishes, and individuals who call themselves "orthodox Anglicans" and who believe that biblical strictures against homosexuality should preclude the ordination of a gay bishop.

"This church, which I love, has been hijacked; as a result it has lost its course as a moral leader and has become a follower of the self-indulgent trends of the times," said Mark Wimbush of Kingston, R.I.

The local conservatives, along with much of the Anglican world, are looking with hope and trepidation toward a set of recommendations, called the Windsor Report, that is to be released Sunday in St. Paul's Cathedral Crypt in London. The report was drafted by a task force called the Lambeth Commission, appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, to offer recommendations about how to preserve the global denomination in the face of divisions over the roles of gays and lesbians in the church.