"We're in the midst of a vast reformation of the Christian Church in the West," Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, a church conservative, said Friday.

Fellow conservative Bishop Peter H. Beckwith of Springfield, Ill., goes much further. In a recent pastoral letter, he said the church was "in meltdown."

Fueling talk of schism was last month's election of Nevada Bishop Kathleen Jefferts Schori to be the Episcopal Church USA's next presiding bishop.

A former oceanographer who flies her own plane, Schori, 51, is not merely the first female archbishop in the mostly conservative, male-run, worldwide Anglican Communion. She also endorses the ordination of openly gay clergy and blessing rites for same-sex unions.

Her gender alone would be problematic for many of the worldwide Anglican Communion's 38 national churches, or provinces. Most do not ordain female priests, and only two other provinces outside the United States permit female bishops.

But what incenses traditionalists is Schori's liberal views on homosexuality. Those are proving more provocative than her sex.

Already outraged by the Episcopal Church's 2003 election as bishop of the openly gay Rev. Gene Robinson, foreign church leaders urged the General Convention to "renounce" the ordination of gay bishops and "repent" of the choice of Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire.

Instead, though convention delegates felt they were accommodating those concerns, their compromise in June only served to anger the conservatives more. The delegates voted last month to "exercise restraint" in ordaining anyone "whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church." They also declined the invitation to repent of Robinson's election.

"Basically," said David W. Virtue of West Chester, whose VirtueOnline Web site is a prominent voice of orthodox Anglican opinion, "the General Convention poked a stick in the eye of the whole Communion."

As a result of the elections of Robinson and Schori, 22 Anglican provinces have declared themselves in "impaired communion" with the American church. What this represents, so far, is a war of words - "impaired communion" has no legal standing, but it is no sign of friendship, either.

Schori, who will be installed as head of the 2.3 million-member denomination Nov. 4, did little to allay conservative anxieties when she was elected June 21 at the General Convention. In her very first address to the delegates, she declared a commitment to gay rights and invoked "Mother Jesus."

Of the 110 dioceses of the American church, eight, including Pittsburgh, have responded by stating their wish to quit. In a reversal of White's defiance 230 years ago, they have petitioned for direct oversight from the Church of England - the very establishment they left so long ago.

"It's not all about homosexuality," Duncan, the Pittsburgh bishop, said last week. "It's about the primacy of Scripture and tradition. For Anglicans, Scripture is the standard."

It is unclear, however, whether the Church of England has any authority to exercise oversight of dioceses outside the country.

The Rev. Rowan Williams - Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the Church of England, and titular leader of the 77 million-member worldwide Communion - has referred the request for oversight to a committee for study.

Meanwhile, to solve the rift, he also has suggested relegating the Episcopal Church and other gay-accommodating provinces to a lesser, "affiliate" status within the Communion.

Williams' attempt at a compromise has traditionalist bishops seething. Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria says a two-tier membership would be an accommodation of liberal "blasphemy."

He and other bishops in Africa, Asia and South America say they may boycott the next Lambeth Conference of archbishops, which convenes every 10 years and is scheduled to meet in London in 2008. Instead, they are threatening to hold their own conference, probably in Nigeria.

It is the fiercely outspoken Akinola who could decide the future of the worldwide Anglican Communion, said the Rev. David Moyer, rector of Good Shepherd parish in Rosemont and a bishop in a breakaway conservative group, the Anglican Church in America.

"Akinola's the identified leader of the orthodox resistance," Moyer said Thursday. "I don't see a definite split coming unless he really calls for such a thing and gathers the troops around him."

Duncan, the Pittsburgh conservative, indicated that he and the other dioceses seeking affiliation outside the Episcopal Church also were talking about oversight to African archbishops.

"There are conversations going on at every level as we seek a way forward for orthodox Episcopalians in the United States," he said.

Church lawyers say it is unclear whether a diocese can unilaterally depart a denomination. In the United States, different states have different laws governing the disposition of church property.

But schism is looming. The Rev. Charles Bennison, the liberal head of the Diocese of Pennsylvania who has clashed frequently with Duncan, is on a national committee planning how to retain church buildings and other assets.

Bennison said Friday that he did not believe schism was inevitable, although he said he foresaw some "splintering" of conservatives from what has become the liberal mainstream of modern Episcopalianism.

"Any time a community moves in a new direction," he said, "some people can't go where it's going, so they disaffiliate. I call it splintering."

And "while the bonds of affection are very fragile right now," Bennison said, he believed the Anglican tradition of "pulling together all sides on a passing issue of the day" would hold the communion together.

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Contact staff writer David O'Reilly at 215-854-5723 or at doreilly@phillynews.com.