His "provisional" comments are contained in an article prepared for the British-based Church Times which is published today.

The Anglican commission convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, to settle the widening rift over homosexuality, last week called on the liberal American Episcopal Church to apologise for ordaining an openly gay bishop and endangering church unity. It also called for a moratorium on the ordination of openly gay bishops and same-sex blessings.

But it stopped short of calling for the expulsion of the Episcopal Church or demanding the resignation of New Hampshire's openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson, whose consecration last November prompted the inquiry. It also refrained from judging homosexuality as a lifestyle, concentrating on unifying its 38 self-governing provinces.

There are signals from the African, Asian and South American clergy that the commission's findings will not avert their split from the church.

Yesterday, at the opening of a five-day summit of 300 African bishops in Nigeria, the conference vowed to bar clergy from training abroad and the Nigerian President backed the bishops' stance against homosexuality.

Dr Jensen said he supported the way the commission had resisted calls for "expulsion, disciplines and head-banging" and had instead offered a "calm tone, a long-term view, an endeavour to create space, a reconciling spirit and practical suggestions arising from a desire to hear and apply God's word".

Its attempts at reconciliation, however, were bound to fail given its limited mandate to directly tackle the issue of sexual ethics, he said.

The emphasis on church unity diverted the attention of the commission from the real needs of the many dissenting Christians within church provinces "who are in urgent need of help" and looked to be "schismatic outcasts of the Communion".

"The mandate for the commission was fatally flawed in not giving the commission the task of determining what the Bible says on this subject, or at least starting with what the Bible says," he said. "Given the hopes that were riding on the commission, it needed to speak with more authority on this issue.

"Failure to do so imperils the view that the Communion can be held together by the 'instruments of unity', no matter how they may further develop."

Dr Jensen said while the church could live with disagreement on women bishops, the report failed to grasp that the issue of sexual morality was far more "explosive".

In the long term, it may be that the church needed to accept that it was a federation or commonwealth of largely autonomous churches, and possibly permit the existence of "parallel jurisdictions".

"There are all sorts of Anglicans and all sorts of Anglican churches around the world. Parallel jurisdictions are always going to exist and topography is not an essential of church order," Dr Jensen said.

END