World News - Europe

LONDON (Reuters) - The leader of the world's 77 million Anglicans, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, has said the worldwide church may have to split to end a bitter row over the consecration of gay bishops

In a move which analysts say will effectively exclude Americans from the global Anglican communion, Williams proposed churches should be asked to sign a formal covenant, allowing some to be fuller members of the communion than others.

"Those churches that were prepared to take this on as an expression of their responsibility to each other would limit their local freedoms for the sake of a wider witness: some might not be willing to do this," he said in a lengthy statement issued by his Lambeth Palace office on Tuesday.

"We could arrive at a situation where there were "constituent" churches in the Anglican communion and other "churches in association," which were bound by historic and perhaps personal links, fed from many of the same sources but not bound in a single and unrestricted sacramental communion and not sharing the same constitutional structures."

A row has been running between liberals and conservatives among the world's Anglicans since the 2003 consecration of Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in more than 450 years of Anglican history. Anglicans in Africa, in particular, condemned the move, saying homosexuality is un-biblical and morally wrong.

The row deepened earlier this month when the U.S. Episcopal Church chose a liberal female bishop as its first woman leader since the ordination of women was approved 30 years ago.

In a bid to appease an increasingly alienated worldwide Anglican community, the U.S. Episcopal Church (ECUSA) last week agreed to try and avoid the consecration of more gay bishops, but commentators said this was not enough to resolve the feud.

COMMUNION LACKS STRUCTURE

In his proposal, which he stressed was not meant as any kind of decree and should be discussed in detail over the coming years, Williams said the church had to change to survive.

"What our communion lacks is a set of adequately developed structures which is able to cope with the diversity of views that will inevitably arise in a world of rapid global communication and huge cultural variety," he said.

"The tacit conventions between us need spelling out -- not for the sake of some central mechanism of control but so that we have ways of being sure we're still talking the same language."

The American Anglican Council, a conservative group in the ECUSA that opposed Robinson's consecration, welcomed Williams' proposal but said interim measures were crucial to stop individual parishes splitting away from the Episcopal Church before the covenant plan was implemented.

Some churches and dioceses have asked to be put under the authority of more conservative bishops in Africa and Latin America, and the AAC said more could follow. Splits in the U.S. Anglican community also threaten to fuel legal battles over church property.

"We fear tens of thousands of individuals will be lost from Anglicanism forever unless immediate, though interim, intervention is provided," it said in a statement.

"The situation in the American church is rapidly deteriorating and it is critical to act now in order to prevent the 'Balkanisation' of the entire Anglican Communion."

Some commentators said Williams' plan would represent a "schism in all but name." Britain's Times newspaper said on Wednesday the plan would effectively expel the Americans from the worldwide Anglican church and warned: "The repercussions within the American Church will be profound."