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 10-yearly Lambeth Conference meeting of bishops of the worldwide Anglican Communion on Canterbury, southeast England.
The conference is already roiled in controversy with several conservative members of the church having vociferously objected to the ordination in 2003 of Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the US Episcopal Church.
"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 to Rowan Williams, the head of the world's 80 million Anglicans, and John Sentamu.
"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.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080701...FgDyLnXSJvaA8F
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