Some 280 conservative Anglican bishops from Africa, Latin America and Asia will attend a breakaway summit next month in Jerusalem which has raised fears of a schism in the 400-year-old church over homosexual priests.

The Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) said in a statement that it would group church leaders from 17 countries representing 35 million Anglicans, or nearly half its members.

It threatens to overshadow the Lambeth Conference, a 10-yearly conclave of over 800 bishops designed to shore-up church unity, which will take place six weeks later.

Churchmen from Australia, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda have already threatened to boycott the Lambeth summit.

Archbishop Peter Jensen of Sydney, chairman of GAFCON's programme committee, said in the statement that the meeting will discuss the challenges facing the Anglican Church, including secularism, other religions, poverty and HIV/AIDS, as well as moral and theological issues.

The Jerusalem summit will also "prepare for an Anglican future in which the Gospel is uncompromised and Christ-centred mission a top priority", said the statement released in Nigeria.

Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola, who spearheads the conservative Anglican lobby, has threatened to boycott the Lambeth Conference due to a dispute with liberals over the ordination of gay bishops and blessing of same-sex unions which has pushed the 77-million strong Anglican church toward schism for over a decade.

Conservatives from Africa, Asia and Latin America - known as "The Global South" - had said they would skip Lambeth in protest against what they called "intransigence" by pro-gay US and Canadian churches.


OPENLY GAY BISHOP

American liberals had warned the traditionalists that they would effectively expel themselves from the Anglican Church if they failed to attend the Lambeth Conference which is meant to cement the global communion once a decade.

The "Global South", which represents at least a third of global Anglicans, had said hopes for a unified faith were as dim as ever.

With 17.5 million members, Nigeria is the second-largest Anglican province after the Church of England, which has 26 million, but its number of regular church-goers is far higher and growing.

The worldwide Anglican Communion has been sharply divided since 2003 when the 2.4-million-strong US Episcopal Church consecrated Gene Robinson as the first openly-gay bishop.

About a year ago, Akinola consecrated dissident Episcopal priest Martyn Minns as bishop of a breakaway Nigerian church in the United States.

The Archbishops of Kenya and Uganda followed suit and consecrated some priests as bishops of orthodox congregations in the United States, creating more conservative outposts opposed to the liberal American mainstream.

African bishops say they want to rescue the US churches and individuals who might otherwise abandon Anglicanism. Liberals say Africans are violating church rules by setting up fiefdoms in the United States.

Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion, is struggling to stem a full-blown schism and has appealed to African primates to stop the consecrations.