c. 1997 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Like a spurned and angry spouse, the conservative wing of the Episcopal Church is sleeping these days in a separate bedroom and contemplating setting up its own household.

Leaders of the Episcopal Synod of America, an independent organization of conservatives within the denomination, meeting in the wake of the church’s General Convention and frustrated by the church’s generally liberal stands on gender and sexuality issues, have agreed to become a”church within a church”_ remaining Anglican while mainintaining a kind of internal exile within the Episcopal Church.

However, some leaders of the synod, which claims an estimated 250,000 followers, also suggest it could become a separate province, or denomination, in the worldwide Anglican Communion, rivaling the 2.4-million member Episcopal Church, the recognized Anglican body in the United States.

The synod, composed of traditionalist bishops, priests and lay people, has voiced dissatisfaction in its eight-year history with what it calls radical shifts in the Episcopal Church, including the decision to ordain women as priests and the recognition of gays and lesbians as full-fledged members.

That frustration bubbled to the surface during the ESA meeting, held July 27-29 in the Philadelphia suburb of Rosemont, that followed the Episcopal Church’s triennial General Convention.

The synod approved overwhelmingly a”Good Shepherd Declaration,”calling on Episcopalians to respect the consciences of bishops who will not ordain women. It also urged dissident conservative parishes in dioceses that ordain women to apply for “episcopal oversight” from bishops who share their opposition to women priests. Individual dissidents, the declaration said, should leave parishes and join more conservative congregations.

“We are not leaving anything or going anywhere,” the declaration said of the effort to be seen as a separate but still Anglican organization. “We will continue to be who we are. We have waited patiently for the right moment, and now is the acceptable time.”

The”acceptable time”was prompted in part by the decision of the General Convention, the church’s top policy-making body, to force dioceses that do not ordain or accept transfers of women priests to accept them. The four dioceses that currently do not accept women priests were given a three-year deadline to come into compliance.

In the church’s 21-year history of ordaining women, 1,500 have become priests.

Also angering conservatives were church actions that extended benefits to gay and lesbian partners of church employees, and a refusal to adopt a church law that would stop some bishops from ordaining non-celibate gays and lesbians to the priesthood. A church trial concluded earlier this year that there is no church law barring non-celibate gays and lesbians from the priesthood.

The move to become a separate province within the Anglican Communion is reminiscent of the formation several years ago of the Episcopal Missionary Diocese.

That movement, begun by a single retired Episcopal bishop, ultimately gave up its goal of remaining in the church while being recognized by the Anglican Communion as a distinct body within the church. The group of sparsely separated parishes ultimately left the church and became the Episcopal Missionary Church.

A sticking problem to forming a new province is that the church entities are geographical. The synod wants to form a jurisdiction spreading across the Episcopal Church’s eight geographical provinces.

In addition, according to ESA spokesman Joe Murchison, sympathy is growing in the synod to go beyond Episcopal Church boundaries to an alliance with other Anglican provinces that take a conservative approach to the gender and sexuality issues.

Eventually, Murchison said, the alliance would grow into “a counter Anglican Communion”that would rival that based in the Church of England and headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The July 16-25 General Convention demonstrated that the Episcopal Church is clearly divided over the gay and lesbian issue.

For example, diocesan-elected deputies and the church’s bishops divided nearly equally on a failed vote to study the development of a liturgical rite for the blessings of same-sex unions.

“There are two churches. There are two religions,” said Bishop John-David Schofield of the Diocese of San Joaquin, Calif. Schofield, one of four bishops who refuse to ordain women or accept their ministries in their jurisdictions, made the comment to about 125 ESA delegates at a meeting in the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, a Philadelphia suburb.

Implying schism was looming, Bishop William Wantland of the Diocese of Eau Claire, Wis., told the synod,”It’s not always possible to see the structure” of a new denomination as it’s forming.

But the four dioceses in which bishops refuse to ordain women _ Eau Claire, San Joaquin, Quincy, Ill., Fort Worth, Texas _ would form the core of the new province.

David Rawson of Berwin, Pa., the synod’s chancellor, or legal adviser, likened the Good Shepherd Declaration to the Declaration of Independence.”But, remember that it took 11 years after the Declaration (of Independence) before the U.S. had a Constitution,”Rawson said.

Episcopal Church officials had no comment on the synod.

END BRIGGS