Rebel Anglican meeting lamentable: U.S. church leader

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A just-concluded meeting of conservative church leaders in the worldwide Anglican Communion will have little lasting impact, the head of the Episcopal Church, the faith's U.S. branch, said on Monday.

"Much of the Anglican world must be lamenting the latest emission" from the Global Anglican Future Conference issued on on Sunday in Jerusalem, said Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church.

A communique issued at the end of the meeting of conservatives, who are upset by the Episcopal Church's consecration of an openly gay bishop and worried about other issues in the global Anglican church they consider an assault on orthodoxy, "does not represent the end of Anglicanism," she said.

Rather it is "merely another chapter in a centuries-old struggle for dominance by those who consider themselves the only true believers," said Jefferts Schori, who in 2006 became the first woman to head a national branch of the global church.

The Jerusalem meeting, whose participants said they represented 35 million people in the 77-million strong Anglican Communion, promised on Sunday to remain part of the global church confederation.

But they said they would form a council of bishops to provide an alternative to churches they said were preaching a "false gospel" of sexual immorality.

They pledged to continue sponsoring breakaway conservative parishes in what they consider liberal western countries and called for a separate conservative province or group of churches in North America.

Jefferts Schori issued a statement in response saying that "Anglicanism has always been broader than some find comfortable."

"Anglicans will continue to worship God in their churches, serve the hungry and needy in their communities, and build missional relationships with others across the globe, despite the desire of a few leaders to narrow the influence of the gospel," she added.

The Jerusalem meeting took place ahead of the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Communion's once-a-decade meeting which takes place later this summer in England.

Jefferts Schori said she was looking forward to that meeting for "constructive conversation, inspired prayer, and relational encounters."

Bishop Martyn Minns, a Virginia-based leader of the conservative Convocation of Anglicans in North America who attended the Jerusalem meeting, told U.S. reporters by phone from Israel on Monday that a split in the Anglican church is not being discussed.

"The language of split was not part of the conversation," he said. "We're all part of the family. It's more like the traditional family where children grow up and are treated differently," he said.

A number of U.S. congregations have left the Episcopal Church and placed themselves under the jurisdiction of church leaders in Africa and other countries. Minns was consecrated a bishop in 2007 by Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, a leading force among the Anglican conservatives.

The Anglican Communion and the 2.4-million-member Episcopal Church have been in upheaval since 2003 when the U.S. church consecrated Gene Robinson of New Hampshire as the first bishop known to be in an openly gay relationship in the more than four centuries of church history.

Disputes over scriptural authority, the blessing of gay unions and other matters have become a worldwide issue.

(Editing by Peter Bohan and Eric Walsh)