Williams warns of risks for conservative Anglicans

By Paul Majendie

LONDON (Reuters) - Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, battling to avoid an Anglican schism over the issue of gay clergy, warned conservatives on Monday of the risks in setting up an alternative council of bishops.

"How is effective discipline to be maintained in a situation of overlapping and competing jurisdictions?" asked the spiritual leader of the world's 77 million Anglicans.

At a meeting in Jerusalem, conservative Anglican leaders vowed on Sunday to stay in the worldwide Anglican Communion but form a council of bishops to provide an alternative to churches they say are preaching a "false gospel" of sexual immorality.

The Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) said member churches would continue sponsoring breakaway conservative parishes in liberal western member countries and called for a separate conservative province in North America.

It also said Anglicanism, the third largest group of Christians after Roman Catholics and Orthodox, was not "determined necessarily through recognition by the Archbishop of Canterbury".

Williams, who next month hosts the 10-yearly Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops from around the globe, said the GAFCON proposals were "problematic in all sorts of ways."

Making a plea for unity, he said in a statement: "I urge those who have outlined these to think very carefully about the risks entailed."

The liberal and conservative wings of the Anglican Church have been divided since the consecration of openly gay U.S. Bishop Gene Robinson in 2003 and the blessing of same-sex marriages in Canada.