US: Three conservative US Episcopal dioceses have asked to be released from the authority of the US church's presiding bishop.
Citing differences over the ordination of gay bishops, the dioceses of San Joaquin, California, South Carolina and Pittsburgh voted to ask the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion, to place them under someone else's jurisdiction.
The move came after Archbishop Williams suggested creating a two-tier system that would move the US church to the fringes of Anglican life if it continued to pursue a progressive course on matters of human sexuality and interpretations of scripture.
Just a week ago, at their national convention in Columbus, Ohio, Episcopal leaders including the Rev Katharine Jefferts Schori - the newly-elected first woman presiding bishop of the US church - endorsed a proposal that does not ban gay bishops but discourages the church from electing them.
However, conservative congregants said the proposal showed only how the denomination had divided into, as Pittsburgh bishop Robert Duncan put it in a statement, "two bodies within our church".
"The decisions made today don't change who we are in the least," Bishop Duncan said, "but they do make clear here in Pittsburgh and to the rest of the communion with which body in the Episcopal church we stand."
On Wednesday, the Episcopal diocese of Newark underlined those differences by announcing that its nominees for bishop included a non-celibate homosexual living with his same-sex partner.
Cynthia Brust, a spokeswoman for the American Anglican Council, which has 300 affiliated churches in the US, said the Newark diocese's announcement was "staggering - way beyond defiance".
While individual churches have opted to operate under the authority of dioceses in Africa, this is the first time that entire dioceses have asked to splinter off.
The 2.3 million-member US Episcopal church, which represents a small portion of an estimated 80 million Anglicans worldwide, has been trying to stem defections by parishes since its decision in 2003 to consecrate an openly gay priest in a same-sex relationship as bishop of New Hampshire.
"It's heartbreaking; nobody wants to see hardship between brothers and sisters," said Fr Van McCalister, a spokesman for the Episcopal diocese of San Joaquin, which represents 50 churches from Sacramento to Bakersfield.
"We simply want someone else to represent us," he said. "The core issue at stake is this: as Christians, are we defining ourselves by adherence to scripture or revisions of scripture?"
The Most Rev Frank T Griswold, presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal church until the Rev Schori takes over in November, rejected that kind of talk as "consistent with their implicit intention of walking apart from the Episcopal church".