U.S. church leader says rebel Anglican meeting lamentable

By Michael Conlon, Religion Writer

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."