Hundreds of conservative Episcopal congregations in North America have formed a breakaway church that threatens to further divide the global Anglican body.

However, proponents of the new province could face a years-long process for gaining official recognition by the rest of the Anglican Communion.

A statement from Lambeth Palace, the London office of Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams,said legislative procedures must be followed in such instances.

"There are clear guidelines set out in the Anglican Consultative Council Reports, notably ACC10 in 1996 (resolution 12), detailing the steps necessary for the amendments of existing provincial constitutions and the creation of new provinces," the statement said.

"Once begun, any of these processes will take years to complete. In relation to the recent announcement from the meeting of the Common Cause Partnership in Chicago, the process has not yet begun."

But at least one leader of the movement has questioned the London-based ACC's process, asking "Why is England still considered the centre of the universe?"

Members of the 11 self-identified Anglican organizations that form the Common Cause Partnership (CCP) announced on December 3 the creation of an Anglican "province in formation" for those who say the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada promote erroneous biblical interpretation and theology, particularly in terms of the doctrine of salvation and acceptance of homosexuality.

The CCP moderator, Bishop Robert Duncan (formerly of Pittsburgh), who will become the proposed province's first archbishop and primate, told a news briefing that the movement is a descendant of the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Both periods in history required Christians to reassert the power of revelation that some of their leaders had lost, he said.

"That, brothers and sisters, is what I would submit is happening right now in the 21st century across the whole Christian church, particularly in the West," he told reporters.

He refused to claim that the announcement amounted to a schism of the Anglican Communion. But Cynthia Brust, communications director for the Anglican Mission in the Americas (a member of the partnership), told reporters that the Communion "has been fractured, it has been damaged, it has been in disarray, it's been coming for a long time."

"Rather than today being about division and breaking apart in disunity, it's the day that the Anglican Communion began to be healed," she said.

The leaders of the movement released a "provisional" constitution and canons during the meeting in the suburban Chicago community of Wheaton, Illinois. The two documents are due to be ratified by a summer 2009 "provincial assembly" at St Vincent's Cathedral in Bedford, Texas. (St Vincent's is in the Diocese of Fort Worth, one of four Episcopal dioceses in which many members have realigned with the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone.)

The leaders also signed the Jerusalem Declaration of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) and affirmed GAFCON's Statement on the Global Anglican Future.

The GAFCON documents said "the time is now ripe for the formation of a province in North America for the federation currently known as Common Cause Partnership to be recognized by the [GAFCON] Primates' Council."

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