AFP - Tuesday, July 1 08:33 am
LONDON (AFP) - More than 1,300 Church of England clergy have written to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, threatening to leave the church if proposals allowing women to be consecrated as bishops are passed, The Times reported Tuesday.

Citing a copy of the letter that it had seen, the newspaper reported that the signatories, 60 percent of whom are serving clergy, including 11 bishops, will only accept the plans if there are areas where worship is led exclusively by males.

The letter comes with less than two weeks to go before the start of the Lambeth Conference, a gathering of Anglican bishops from all over the world which is held every 10 years in Canterbury.

The conference is already roiled in controversy with thousands of conservative church members up in arms over the ordination in 2003 of Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the US Episcopal Church - the US branch of Anglicanism.

"We will inevitably be asking whether we can, in conscience, continue to minister as bishops, priests and deacons in the Church of England which has been our home," the 1,333 signatories wrote in a letter addressed to Rowan Williams, the head of the world's 80 million Anglicans, and to John Sentamu, Archbishop of York.

"We do not write this in a spirit of making threats or throwing down gauntlets. Rather, we believe that the time has come to make our concerns plain, so that the possible consequences of a failure to make provision which allows us to flourish and to grow are clear."

The General Synod, the church's governing body, is to hold a series of debates on women bishops later this week in York.

On Monday, more than 4,000 Anglicans, including 1,276 women clergy and 1,012 male clergy, gave their support to the proposals for women bishops without special legislation to protect opponents of the move.

Also on Monday, a group of disgruntled Anglicans unhappy with the church's liberal stance on homosexuality following the ordination of gay bishop Robinson, said it would sever ties with the main churches in United States and Canada, accusing their leaders of ignoring biblical teachings.

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