One of the group, the Rev John Richardson, said yesterday that he thought that their numbers could swell significantly over the next few weeks.

He said that a number of conservative parishes would not be able to participate in services of confirmation, baptism or communion with Bishop Gladwin.

"We have never had a collective group of clergy out of sacramental fellowship with their bishop since the 17th century", said Mr Richardson, a minister in Henham, Elsenham and Ugley, Essex.

"While this is not the end of the road, it is one of the most serious protests we could make short of leaving the Church."

The Rev Richard Farr, the priest in charge at the parish, added: "We want Bishop John to admit that he's made a mistake and for him to step back from what he has said. As far as we are concerned, we are now in a position of fractured communion."

According to observers, the protest could spread to other dioceses, a development that would alarm the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.

It follows the meeting of Anglican primates in Northern Ireland last month at which the North Americans were asked to withdraw from a key council because they had defied official Church policy over homosexuality.

Conservative primates had demanded discipline against them because of the consecration in the United States of Anglicanism's first openly homosexual bishop and the authorisation of blessings for same-sex unions in Canada.

A spokesman for the bishop said yesterday that he was unavailable for comment.

END

Statement on Sacramental Fellowship with the Bishop of Chelmsford

12th March 2005

The 'broken sacramental fellowship' between ourselves and the Bishop of Chelmsford, reported in the Daily Telegraph for the 12th March, is intended as a response to his own declaration of "full sacramental fellowship" with the churches of Canada and the US declared in a letter to the Times on the 7th March and signed by himself and five other diocesan bishops.

That letter described the actions of the Canadian and US churches which have brought the Anglican Communion to the brink of division and which have been censured by the Windsor Report and the Dromantine Communiqué as simply "different responses to ... lesbian and gay people". It also took issue with those Anglican archbishops meeting at Dromantine in February who refused to share in Holy Communion with Bishop Frank Griswold, saying that the six bishops "remain in full sacramental fellowship with" the churches of Canada and the US.

It is hard to see why writing to the Times in these terms was thought to be necessary or helpful at this stage. Moreover, the bishops have, by doing so, distanced themselves from their own clergy who adhere to the teaching and practices affirmed at the Lambeth Conference in 1998 and reaffirmed since then by numerous local and international reports and statements including those of our own House of Bishops.

Whatever statement the bishops were trying to make, we ask what response they thought it might produce in those members of the Church of England here and abroad who have been following the painful decision-making processes of the official Anglican bodies.

Moreover, if the bishops were to continue along the same path, of closer identification with the Canadian and US churches, they would find the same unhappy divisions that exist in north American rapidly being duplicated here.

In order to emphasise to them the way their actions have been perceived and the consequences they will have if pursued further, some of us have felt it necessary to declare our own "sacramental fellowship" with our diocesan bishop to be no longer "full", but rather "in abeyance".

This is not a rejection of the bishop's canonical and lawful authority. It is an issue of sacramental fellowship only. However, we hope he will appreciate from this the seriousness of his own actions and seek to be reconciled to ourselves and the wider church.

Revd John P Richardson
Revd Dick Farr