As an Anglican row over gay clergy deepens, growing numbers of conservative American priests are abandoning the liberal US Church and pledging allegiance to traditionalist African bishops instead.
Africans, who take a tough line on homosexuality, are keen to recruit the dissident priests as bishops under their own authority and to provide a new spiritual home for their clusters of wealthy US congregations.But liberals say African bishops are violating Church rules by setting up fiefdoms in the United States and deepening a crisis that threatens to split the Anglican Communion, a worldwide federation of 38 member churches.
"It's a terrible breach of longstanding Christian tradition. You don't invade someone else's territory just because you disagree with them," said Jan Nunley, deputy communications director for the US Episcopal Church.
Traditionalist Anglicans, mostly from developing countries, are at loggerheads with the small but wealthy Episcopal Church -- the main Anglican church in the United States headed by liberal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori -- over whether to ordain openly gay priests.
Conservatives say Anglican provinces overseas have taken hundreds of the 7,000 Episcopal congregations under their wing, although liberals say the number is close to 70.
The Church of Rwanda started adopting conservative US congregations in 2000 as part of its missionary outreach. Its Anglican Mission to the Americas group says it began with seven churches and now has 116, all under Rwandan authority.
Outspoken Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola caused a storm in May when he consecrated dissident Episcopal priest Martyn Minns as bishop of a new Nigerian church in the United States.
And now archbishops in Kenya and Uganda plan to consecrate three priests as bishops for breakaway orthodox congregations in the United States in coming weeks, creating more conservative African outposts amid the liberal American mainstream.
