Mr. Minns was driving north on Interstate 95 from Richmond when he got the news on his cell phone from Anglican Archbishop Peter J. Akinola. The archbishop then put him on a speaker phone to address a gathering of Anglicans in Abuja, the country's capital.

"I said I was honored by their willingness to place their trust in me," said Mr. Minns, 63, who earlier this year had announced plans to retire.

The Archbishop said that those that refused to sign the doctrine would be excluded from full membership of the Church and would instead become "associates". It would mark the most significant shift in the Anglican Church since it was created in the Reformation.Dr Williams, in a letter to the primates of the 37 other Anglican provin-ces, said: "There is no way in which the Anglican Communion can remain unchanged by what is happening at the moment.

"These decisions are simply in character with those made by our own convention year after year," said Bishop Duncan. "We are and will remain the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh. We are living within the constitution and canons of the Episcopal Church. But as the presiding bishop-elect, Katharine Jefferts Schori, herself so helpfully stated during the recently completed General Convention, there are really two bodies within our church, each with its own heart and mind.

Second, the Archbishop has made it very clear that this whole controversy is, at a fundamental level, about the authority of the Bible, and the way in which we learn and follow God's will in fellowship with each other. The presenting issue may be human sexuality but the real issue remains the word of God.

Thirdly, the Archbishop has spoken of the need of a covenant to hold the constituent churches together and for new institutions to develop.