The spiritual head of the Anglican Communion’s 77-million followers, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, has admitted that the worldwide Church now faces a very possible split following the bitter row that has engulfed the Communion over the consecration of gay clergy.

|PIC1|A statement issued by his Lambeth Palace office on Tuesday, Dr Williams has outlined proposals that are expected to lead to the exclusion of The Episcopal Church USA (ECUSA) from the Anglican Communion as a consequence of consecrating a gay bishop in 2003, and for continuingly not backing down on the issue.

It revealed that Williams proposes that Churches should be asked to sign a formal covenant, which would allow some to be fuller members of the Anglican Communion than others.

A dual system is proposed, whereby there would be full “constituent” members to the Communion that have conformed to the traditional Biblical views of the Church, but also another section of “associate” members which will incorporate rebel and more liberally-viewed Churches.

The move has come following the ECUSA’s failure to "repent" for its actions to liberalise the gay agenda of the Church at its General Convention in Columbus, Ohio earlier this month. In addition, the ECUSA also failed to vote through a moratorium on any more gay consecrations.

Williams said: “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.”

“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.”

|TOP|All Anglican provinces will be offered to sign up to a "covenant" which will lay out traditional, Biblical standards on which all full members of the Anglican Church can agree.

However, Churches such as the ECUSA, as well as the Anglican Churches in Canada and New Zealand, and even the Scottish Episcopal Church are likely to refuse a commitment to such principles. Therefore, the option would be open whereby these Churches that refused to sign could choose to cut all ties with Canterbury, or they could elect to move to the new associate status.

The ECUSA was the body that brought the worldwide Communion to crisis point in 2003, when it consecrated the Communion’s first ever openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson, as the Bishop of New Hampshire.

Most recently, last week, US Episcopalians rejected demands from conservatives in Africa and at home that they elect no more gay bishops. Episcopalians voted instead to call simply for “restraint” to be used with regards to the issue.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, attempting to guide the 77-million-member Communion, has written a letter to its 38 archbishops stating: “There is no way in which the Anglican Communion can remain unchanged by what is happening at the moment.”

|QUOTE|Dr Rowan Williams also said in his letter that “associate” Churches would be comparable to the Methodist Church in Britain. In 2003 the Methodist Church also signed a covenant with the Church of England at Westminster’s Methodist Central Hall, which was witnessed by the Queen, who is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England.

Dr Williams’ letter also opens the possibility of Methodists moving slowly towards full unity with the Anglican Church. The Methodist Church proposes to start ordaining bishops in the future, and the Anglican Church of England also is proposing the commencement of ordaining women bishops; therefore potentially all barriers to the two bodies calling for full unity would have fallen away.

A row has been running between liberals and conservatives among the world's Anglicans since the consecration of openly gay American bishop Gene Robinson, in 2003.

Anglicans in Africa, in particular, condemned the move, saying homosexuality is un-Biblical, un-African and morally wrong.

In his new proposals, Dr Williams emphasised that the plans should be discussed in detail over the coming years, but he clearly 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.

|AD|“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.”

Some commentators have said that Williams' move was a “schism in all but name.”

The Times newspaper's editorial said on Wednesday that the plan would effectively expel the Americans from the worldwide Anglican church and warned: “The repercussions within the American Church will be profound.”

Canon Chris Sugden, Executive Secretary of Anglican Mainstream, supported the proposals saying: “The Archbishop’s letter rightly recognises the priority of scripture and that the church must respond on the basis of the Bible and historic teaching rather than cultural or rights based views.

“In asking for local churches to ‘opt-in’ to the Anglican Communion and by recognising that division exists not only between provinces of the Communion but also in each locality, he is providing a basis which an orthodox Anglican presence in the United States could be maintained.

“The oppression of minorities by majorities, or vice versa, clearly, and rightly, has no place in the Archbishop's vision for the future of the Communion.”

Bishop Robert Duncan, moderator of the Anglican Communion Network and bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, also welcomed Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’ recent statement.

“Archbishop Williams has clearly recognised the immediate need to stabilise the Communion according to agreed theological understandings and mutual submission. Further, for the first time, the Archbishop himself is acknowledging that some parts of the communion will not be able to continue in full membership if they insist on maintaining teaching and action outside of the received faith and order. Finally, the Archbishop clearly understands that the fault lines in the communion run not only between provinces, but through them, and that there may well be a need within provinces for an ‘ordered and mutually respectful separation,’ between those who desire to submit to the Communion’s teaching and those who do not,” said Bishop Duncan.

Bishop Duncan also lauded Archbishop Williams’ call to the church to “give the strongest support to the defence of homosexual people against violence, bigotry and legal disadvantage.”

“Discrimination or violence against them as persons should be abhorrent to Christians, regardless of our understanding of what the church can and cannot bless,” said Bishop Duncan.